Great Living Cincinnatians: Honorees

As the granddaughter, daughter and mother of physicians, Dr. Helen I. Glueck has medicine in her blood. Blood, in fact, was her own specialty – more specifically, blood clotting.

With a daily regimen that would exhaust those a fourth her age, Glueck was director of the Coagulation Laboratory at University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine. There she ran the lab, supervising a staff of 17, teaching, performing research, writing papers and consulting with referral patients into the 1990s.

Glueck, one of only three female students in her medical class of 75, received her medical degree from UC in 1934.

Glueck became interested in blood coagulation in the early 1940s while working at the May Institute for Medical Research at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital. She went on to become director of UC’s Student Health Service, and later founded the Coagulation Laboratory in 1946.

Among Glueck’s most important research is work that linked bleeding disorders in newborns to breastfeeding. Her research showed breast-fed newborns have a deficiency of vitamin K, necessary for blood clotting. As a result of Glueck’s work, newborns are now routinely given vitamin K shots.