About: John Alexander MacWilliam

John Alexander MacWilliam (31 July 1857 – 13 January 1937), a physiologist at the University of Aberdeen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was a pioneer in the field of cardiac electrophysiology. He spent many years studying ventricular fibrillation, and was the first person to propose that ventricular fibrillation was the most common cause of sudden death - and that fibrillation could be terminated (and life potentially saved) by a series of induction shocks to the heart. He was the first to accurately describe the condition of arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), and he suggested to treat transient asystole (cardiac arrest).Although his work was recognised within his lifetime, it was not until many decades later that it laid the foundations for developments in the under