Chlorothiazide. How the thiazides evolved as antihypertensive therapy.

Today, the opportunity to pause and reflect on our participation in the development of the therapy of hypertensive cardiovascular disease is most welcome, even timely, as we look ahead. It has been 35 years since chlorothiazide was put into clinical trial. Fifty years ago, I graduated from the stimulating MD and PhD program at the University of Wisconsin Medical and Graduate Schools with some knowledge of what to do in medicine that would be worthwhile and how to do it. Thirty years of learning and doing—first at Sharp & Dohme, then the combined Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, before 20 more years mostly in research and teaching as a Visiting Professor at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of The Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine, Hershey, Pa—have left little time to look back for looking forward, unless invited to do so. This is about chlorothiazide, how the thiazides evolved, and how they were expected to relate to edema and hypertension.