Altounyan, Roger (Ernest Collingwood)

al toon yan] (1922–87) British medical pioneer; introducer of the anti-asthma drug sodium cromoglycate.

Of Irish–Armenian and English parentage, he was also the grandson of W G Collingwood (1854–1932), the friend and biographer of John Ruskin (1819–1900). Roger Altounyan was born in Syria, but spent summer holidays sailing in the Lake District with his sisters. Here the family met Arthur Ransome (1884–1967) and became the model for his Swallows and Amazons children’s books. Roger’s asthma, however, was fact as well as fiction. He studied medicine, and practised it at the Armenian Hospital in Aleppo run by his father and grandfather. In 1956 he returned to England and joined a pharmaceutical company. He was concerned that asthma was not taken seriously and determined to find a cure. For the next 10 years he worked in his own time testing compounds on himself, inducing asthma attacks two or three times a week with a brew of guinea pig hair, to which he was allergic, almost certainly to the detriment of his own health. Compound 670, sodium cromoglycate, has been much used to prevent attacks of allergic asthma and rhinitis. The Spinhaler device he invented to inhale the drug was based on aircraft propellers; he had been a pilot and flying instructor during the war.