Roy Laver Swank

Roy Laver Swank (1909-2008) was an American academic neurologist who founded and led the Division of Neurology at the University of Oregon Medical School, now Oregon Health and Science University, from 1954 to 1976. He earned a BS in anatomy from the University of Washington in 1930 and an MD and a PhD in neurology and psychiatry from Northwestern University in 1935, then interned at Passavant Hospital in Chicago and held a residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston before a pathology fellowship at Harvard Medical School. While at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University from 1948, he began investigating the relationship between diet and multiple sclerosis, and went on to propose what became known as the Swank diet, a regimen low in saturated fat, as a treatment. He followed patients on the diet for decades, reporting reduced relapse frequency and severity and lower disability and mortality among those who kept saturated fat intake low. He founded the Swank Multiple Sclerosis Clinic and authored six books and more than 180 scientific articles.