Medicine Becomes A Science 1840-1999

tHe
History
of
Medicine
Medicine
BecoMes a
science
18401999
tHe
History
of
Medicine
Medicine
BecoMes a
science
18401999
Kate Kelly
MEDICINE BECOMES A SCIENCE: 18401999

Copyright 2010 by Kate Kelly
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Kelly, Kate, 1950
Medicine becomes a science : 18401999 / Kate Kelly.
p. ; cm.(History of medicine)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8160-7209-5 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4381-2752-1 (e-book)
1. MedicineHistory19th century. 2. MedicineHistory20th century.
I. Title. II. Series: History of medicine (Facts on File, Inc.)
[DNLM: 1. History of Medicine. 2. History, 19th Century. 3. History, 20th
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Date printed: January, 2010
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 MediCal sCienCe Finally advanCes

Louis Pasteur (18221895): Major Advances in Medicine
Pasteur and the Microbiologist Robert Koch Work
on Anthrax
Pasteur Extends Work on Immunization
Kochs Postulates
Anthrax: Modern Weapon in Bioterrorism
Ignaz Semmelweis (18181865): Identifies the Cause
of Hospital Infections
Rudolf Virchows Cellular Discoveries
Conclusion
2 WoMen and Modern MediCine

Elizabeth Blackwell (18211910): First Woman
Doctor in Modern Times
The Profession of Nursing
Nightingale and Seacole: The Women behind the
Movement
Clara Barton (18211912): Founder of the American
Red Cross
Linda Richards (18411930): First Professional
Nurse in the United States
N
Dorothea Dix (18021887): Social Reformer and
Advocate for the Insane
Alice Hamilton (18691970): Studied Field of
Industrial Toxicology
Conclusion
viii
xii
xiii
1
3
5
8
9
10
13
16
18
20
21
24
25
29
30
33
35
37
3 Science Moves Forward in Diagnosis

and Treatment
The Early Use of Anesthesia
The Development of X-rays
Marie Curie (18671934): Pioneer in the Field of
Radioactivity
The Application of Radiology
The Discovery of Viruses
Vaccines Precede Effective Treatment
New Methods of Treatment
Conclusion
4 Advances in Medications
Aspirin: Simple and Effective
How Aspirin Works
The Discovery of Penicillin Changes Medicine
The Creation of Other Antibiotics
The Search for a Magic Bullet
Superbugs and Resistance to Antibiotics
The Oral Contraceptive Pill
Conclusion
5 An Answer to Polio and Other

Changes in Medicine
Polio Outbreaks Create Great Fear
Polio Presents in Various Forms
Salk and Sabin
A New Method for Medical Decision Making
Archie Cochrane (19081988): Advocate for
Evidence-Based Medicine
How Medical Schools Present Evidence-Based Medicine
The Importance of Clinical Trials
Conclusion
6 More Changes Brought about by War

Advances in Prosthetics
38
40
44
48
50
53
55
56
57
58
59
64
66
70
71
72
74
79
80
82
82
84
88
90
93
94
97
99
102
The Use of Vaccines

Pioneers in Helping the Handicapped
The Better Management of Blood
MASH Units and Even More Advances in Triage
Improvements in Pain Management
John Wiegenstein (19302004): Father of
Emergency Medicine
Conclusion
7 The Science of the Heart

Early Knowledge of the Blood
The Importance of Blood Types
The Establishment of Blood Banks
Cardiac Surgery Advances
Artificial Hearts and Transplants
Michael DeBakey, Doctor and Patient
Plasma Therapy: A Possible New Sports Treatment
Current Thinking on Heart Health
Conclusion
8 DNA Changes the Medical

Knowledge Base
106
107
109
110
111
112
114
115
116
117
121
123
127
131
133
134
135
136
The Basics of DNA and How Genetics Were Viewed

in the Past
Scientists and Serendipity
DNA and the Criminal Justice System
The Human Genome Project
DNA and the Future
Ethical Issues Require Solutions
National Institutes of Health: Undiagnosed Cases
Conclusion
137
139
142
143
145
148
149
149
Chronology
Glossary
Further Resources
Index
150
153
156
161
PreFaCe
You have to know the past to understand the present.
American scientist Carl Sagan (193496)
he history of medicine offers a fascinating lens through which

to view humankind. Maintaining good health, overcoming
disease, and caring for wounds and broken bones was as important to primitive people as it is to us today, and every civilization
participated in efforts to keep its population healthy. As scientists
continue to study the past, they are finding more and more information about how early civilizations coped with health problems,
and they are gaining greater understanding of how health practitioners in earlier times made their discoveries. This information
contributes to our understanding today of the science of medicine
and healing.
In many ways, medicine is a very young science. Until the mid19th century, no one knew of the existence of germs, so as a result,
any solutions that healers might have tried could not address the
root cause of many illnesses. Yet for several thousand years, medicine has been practiced, often quite successfully. While progress
in any field is never linear (very early, nothing was written down;
later, it may have been written down, but there was little intracommunity communication), readers will see that some civilizations made great advances in certain health-related areas only to
see the knowledge forgotten or ignored after the civilization faded.
Two early examples of this are Hippocrates patient-centered healing philosophy and the amazing contributions of the Romans to
public health through water-delivery and waste-removal systems.
This knowledge was lost and had to be regained later.
The six volumes in the History of Medicine set are written
to stand alone, but combined, the set presents the entire sweep
of the history of medicine. It is written to put into perspective
viii
Preface
ix
for high school students and the general public how and when
various medical discoveries were made and how that information
affected health care of the time period. The set starts with primitive humans and concludes with a final volume that presents readers with the very vital information they will need as they must
answer societys questions of the future about everything from
understanding ones personal risk of certain diseases to the ethics
of organ transplants and the increasingly complex questions about
preservation of life.
Each volume is interdisciplinary, blending discussions of the
history, biology, chemistry, medicine and economic issues and public policy that are associated with each topic. Early Civilizations,
the first volume, presents new research about very old cultures
because modern technology has yielded new information on the
study of ancient civilizations. The healing practices of primitive
humans and of the ancient civilizations in India and China are
outlined, and this volume describes the many contributions of
the Greeks and Romans, including Hippocrates patient-centric
approach to illness and how the Romans improved public health.
The Middle Ages addresses the religious influence on the practice of medicine and the eventual growth of universities that provided a medical education. During the Middle Ages, sanitation
became a major issue, and necessity eventually drove improvements to public health. Women also made contributions to the
medical field during this time. The Middle Ages describes the
manner in which medieval society coped with the Black Death
(bubonic plague) and leprosy, as illustrative of the medical thinking of this era. The volume concludes with information on the
golden age of Islamic medicine, during which considerable medical
progress was made.
The Scientific Revolution and Medicine describes how disease
flourished because of an increase in population, and the book
describes the numerous discoveries that were an important aspect
of this time. The volume explains the progress made by Andreas
Vesalius (151464) who transformed Western concepts of the
structure of the human body; William Harvey (15781657), who
Medicine Becomes A Science

studied and wrote about the circulation of the human blood; and
Ambroise Par (151090), who was a leader in surgery. Syphilis
was a major scourge of this time, and the way that society coped
with what seemed to be a new illness is explained. Not all beliefs
of this time were progressive, and the occult sciences of astrology
and alchemy were an important influence in medicine, despite
scientific advances.
Old World and New describes what was happening in the colonies as America was being settled and examines the illnesses
that beset them and the way in which they were treated. However, before leaving the Old World, there are several important
figures who will be introduced: Thomas Sydenham (162489)
who was known as the English Hippocrates, Herman Boerhaave
(16681738) who revitalized the teaching of clinical medicine, and
Johann Peter Frank (17451821) who was an early proponent of
the public health movement.
Medicine Becomes a Science begins during the era in which
scientists discovered that bacteria was the cause of illness. Until
150 years ago, scientists had no idea why people became ill. This
volume describes the evolution of germ theory and describes
advances that followed quickly after bacteria was identified,
including vaccinations, antibiotics, and an understanding of the
importance of cleanliness. Evidence-based medicine is introduced
as are medical discoveries from the battlefield.
Medicine Today examines the current state of medicine and
reflects how DNA, genetic testing, nanotechnology, and stem cell
research all hold the promise of enormous developments within
the course of the next few years. It provides a framework for teachers and students to understand better the news stories that are
sure to be written on these various topics: What are stem cells,
and why is investigating them so important to scientists? And
what is nanotechnology? Should genetic testing be permitted?
Each of the issues discussed are placed in context of the ethical
issues surrounding it.
Each volume within the History of Medicine set includes an
index, a chronology of notable events, a glossary of significant
Preface xi
terms and concepts, a helpful list of Internet resources, and an
array of historical and current print sources for further research.
Photographs, tables, and line art accompany the text.
I am a science and medical writer with the good fortune to be
assigned this set. For a number of years I have written books in
collaboration with physicians who wanted to share their medical knowledge with laypeople, and this has provided an excellent background in understanding the science and medicine of
good health. In addition, I am a frequent guest at middle and high
schools and at public libraries addressing audiences on the history
of U.S. presidential election days, and this regular experience with
students keeps me fresh when it comes to understanding how best
to convey information to these audiences.
What is happening in the world of medicine and health technology today may affect the career choices of many, and it will
affect the health care of all, so the topics are of vital importance.
In addition, the public health policies under consideration (what
medicines to develop, whether to permit stem cell research, what
health records to put online, and how and when to use what types
of technology, etc.) will have a big impact on all people in the
future. These subjects are in the news daily, and students who can
turn to authoritative science volumes on the topic will be better
prepared to understand the story behind the news.
aCKnoWledgMents
his book, as well as the others in the set, was made possible
because of the guidance, inspiration, and advice offered by
many generous individuals who have helped me better understand
science and medicine and their histories. I would like to express
my heartfelt appreciation to Frank Darmstadt, whose vision and
enthusiastic encouragement, patience, and support helped shape
the set and saw it through to completion. Thank you, too, to the
Facts On File staff members who worked on it.
The line art and the photographs for the entire set were provided by two very helpful professionalsBobbi McCutcheon provided all the line art; she frequently reached out to me from her
office in Juneau, Alaska, to offer very welcome advice and support as we worked through the complexities of the renderings. A
very warm thank you to Elizabeth Oakes for finding a wealth of
wonderful photographs that helped bring the information to life.
Carol Sailors got me off to a great start, and Carole Johnson kept
me sane by providing able help on the back matter of all the books.
My agent Bob Diforio has remained steadfast in his shepherding
of the work.
I also want to acknowledge the wonderful archive collections
that have provided information for the book. Without places such
as the Sophia Smith Collection at the Smith College Library, firsthand accounts of the Civil War battlefield treatment or reports
such as Lillian Gilbreths on helping the disabled after World War
I would be lost to history.
xii
introduCtion
If it is a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the
multiplication of these minute bodies, it is a consoling
hope that Science will not always remain powerless before
such enemies . . .
Louis Pasteur in a paper read before the
French Academy of Sciences, April 29, 1878
nly 150 years ago, scientists did not know what made people sick. There were many theories of how and why illness
spread, but none of them were accurate. Though very primitive
microscopes had permitted the examination of bacteria as early
as the 1660s, it was not until the mid-19th century that bacterias
contribution to the spread of illness was understood. Medicine
Becomes a Science describes the historic events, scientific principles, and technical breakthroughs that led to a century and a half
of rapid advancement in combating disease.
Medicine Becomes a Science: 18401999 briefly introduces
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch cloth merchant who was first
to see and identify various forms of bacteria. However, heand
no one elsefully understood what he was seeing. Then in the
mid-1800s, Louis Pasteur, a professor of chemistry at Strasbourg
University, came up with the concept of germ theory, which was to
change the world of medicine forever. The German microbiologist
Robert Koch built on this theory by adding his own three laws in
1883. These laws provided a system that led to an understanding
of how to identify the organisms that cause disease.
From this time forward, medical progress has moved swiftly.
Louis Pasteur himself went on to make other important discoveries. His work on ways to prevent the transmission of rabies was
instrumental in laying the groundwork for vaccinesa method of
disease prevention we rely upon today.
xiii
xiv Medicine Becomes A Science

Students who have grown up being constantly told to go wash
up will be quite surprised to read about 19th-century surgeons
who routinely examined patients in the mornings and then performed surgeries in the afternoon; they wore no gloves and no one
thought of hand washing between activities. The physician Ignaz
Semmelweis made the connection between the lack of cleanliness
and the spread of infection, but few changes were made until the
Scottish physician Joseph Lister came along and pushed for greater
sanitation in hospitals.
In the 1890s, scientists came to suspect the existence of viruses
as causative agents for some diseases. They had to accept this discovery on faith as they did not yet know about viruses because
technology powerful enough to view them was not created until
the 1930s.
Women have always played a critical role in health care, but
they generally worked behind the scenes, caring for family members at home and helping with the births of friends and family. In
the 19th century, women began making major contributions to
medicine. The field of nursing was established as a professional
field, and women began breaking barriers to become both physicians and scientists. This paved the way for women of today who
are active in all areas of medical science.
Medicine Becomes a Science: 18401999 helps readers understand the medicine of today. In the 160 years covered by this volume, medical knowledge surged forward, and the information is
illuminating. The back matter contains a chronology, a glossary,
and an array of historical and current sources for further research.
These sections should prove especially helpful for readers who
need additional information on specific terms, topics, and developments in medical science.
Independent thinking is often an important part of scientific
inquiry, and this is well illustrated by the story of the bacteriologist Alexander Flemings discovery that mold could be grown and
used to fight deadly illnesses. Jonas Salks work to eradicate polio
further illustrates how a brilliant mind can solve a problem.
Introduction xv
Today, medical diagnosis and treatment follow what has come
to be called evidence-based medicine, which involves integrating
individual clinical expertise with the best available evidence from
systematic research. Scientists and medical practitioners rely on
science, engineering, the statistics from studies and randomizedcontrol trials, before they choose the medical treatment that seems
best for each individual.
Readers of this volume will come away with an understanding
of the state of medical care as it existed before the 21st century.
Chapter 1 describes the stunning discoveries made by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch that finally provided an understanding of
what caused disease. Germ theory opened a whole new world in
medicine by creating a way for physicians to do more than offer
palliative care. Chapter 2 introduces womens contributions to
medicine, including information about the first woman doctor,
the founding of the profession of nursing, and the contributions
of women like Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. Chapter 3
describes how X-rays were discovered and notes the contributions
of Marie and Pierre Curie. Chapter 4 highlights the accidental
discovery of penicillin, a medicine that became a vital part of
doctors weapons against disease. Chapter 5 focuses on polio and
explains how Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin both contributed to the
eradication of the disease. The chapter continues with a description of the new ideas behind evidence-based medicineideas
that have resulted in a new and more scientific way of looking
at disease. Chapter 6 examines the aftermath of 20th-century
warfare and what it meant for the disabled. For the first time,
considerable numbers of soldiers were surviving major injuries,
and this provided the impetus for improving treatment of people
who returned from war but had to cope with some type of handicap. Chapter 7 traces how scientists came to understand the science of the blood and continues with information about artificial
hearts, heart transplants, and what is known about heart disease.
Chapter 8 looks at medicine in the late 1990s, how diagnoses and
treatments have been influenced by the discovery of DNA.
xvi
Medicine BecoMes A science
This book is a vital addition to literature on the history of medicine because it puts into perspective the medical discoveries of
the period and provides readers with a better understanding of
the accomplishments of the time. During this period, scientists
and physicians finally realized the cause of disease, and, with this
discovery, medical progress began flying forward.
1
Medical science
Finally advances
ell into the 1800s, physicians continued to believe that

miasmas, gases that arose from sewers, swamps, garbage
pits, or open graves (and were thought to be poisonous), caused
illness. Because physicians did not yet understand the cause of
illness, guesswork was heavily involved when treatments were
devised. Doctors frequently used leeches to bleed patients, and
laxatives, opium, peppermint, and brandy were often considered
cures. While some herbal medications have come back into favor
today, many of the medicines used early onmercury among
themare now known to be poisonous or cause serious, if not
fatal, damage.
Many important steps preceded the identification of bacteria
and its role in causing diseases. The invention of the microscope
was key, and, while microscopes were actually invented by scientists who were working late in the 1500s, it was a hobbyist who
was actually the first to see bacteria. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
(16321723) was a Dutch cloth merchant who ground his own
magnifying lenses to more carefully inspect the fabric he was purchasing for his business. He succeeded in creating more powerful
lenses than the microscopes created by Robert Hooke in England
1

and Jan Swammerdam in the Netherlands; they created magnification that enlarged objects only 20 to 30 times. Leeuwenhoeks
grinding skill, his acute eyesight, and his intuitive understanding
of how to direct light onto the object permitted him to see items
that were estimated to be 200 times their natural size.
Leeuwenhoek was fascinated by the world he could see through
his lenses, and as a hobby he studied animal and plant tissues as
well as mineral crystals and fossils. He was the first to see microscopic animals such as nematodes (roundworms) and rotifers (multicelled animals that have a disk at one end with circles of strong
cilia that often look like spinning wheels), as well as blood cells and
living sperm. Leeuwenhoek created careful descriptions of exactly
what he saw, and he hired an illustrator to draw what he described.
He began submitting his information to the Royal Society of London, an organization founded in 1660 to bring attention to science
scholarship. Because of his meticulous efforts and his unique discoveries, the Society recognized the merit of this cloth merchants
work and began to publish it. Leeuwenhoeks articles often took
precedence over work from credentialed scientists. They had his
descriptions translated from Dutch into English or Latin, and his
findings were regularly published in the Societys publication.
The next person with a theory that might have moved the science of germ theory forward was totally ignored. In the 16th century, Giralamo Fracastoro (14781553) came up with the concept
that diseases were caused by living organisms that were too small
to see, but Fracastoros ideas died with him. Finally, in the early
19th century, progress began to be made. Rudolf Virchow (1821
1902) determined that cells were not only the basic unit of life,
but also the basic unit for disease. A few years later, Louis Pasteur (182295) developed a way to more fully explore and verify
germ theory. From Pasteurs work, microbiologist Robert Koch
(18431910) formulated the rules that helped scientists evaluate
the cause of disease.
This chapter sets the scene for how and why medical progress
began to happen quickly in so many areas. The work of Pasteur
and Koch finally explained the cause of disease, but it required
Medical Science Finally Advances

many others to help bring about clinical change. Ignaz Semmelweis (181865) was the first to realize that the unclean atmosphere during surgery was the likely cause of many infections,
but his abrasive personality hindered his ability to encourage others. Joseph Lister (18271912) was the right person to push for a
cleaner environment for surgery.
Louis Pasteur (18221895): Major Advances

in Medicine
Louis Pasteur contributed in multiple ways to the advancement of
science. He began to realize that disease was communicable and
that illnesses were spread by tiny microorganisms called germs.
Ultimately, Pasteur went on to demonstrate that microscopic
organisms could cause illnesses.
To understand Pasteurs contributions, it is important to recall
that spontaneous generation was still considered a viable explanation for the presence of any entity that appeared where it had not
been previously. This theory was countered somewhat by work
done in 1668 by the Italian biologist Francesco Redi (162697),
who successfully challenged spontaneous generation with an
experiment involving maggots and meat. When he covered the
meat with gauze to prevent flies from laying their eggs on it, no
maggots appeared on the meat. (The maggots they talked of were
actually fly larvae, which hatch from flies eggs.)
By the 19th century, spontaneous generation was hotly debated.
While scientists were beginning to believe that maggots, mice, and
worms could not generate spontaneously, they still had no other
explanation for the microscopic animals that were now visible
through microscopes. The topic was very much under discussion,
so the Paris Academy of Sciences offered a prize for any experiments that would help resolve the conflict.
Debunking Spontaneous Generation

From his work, Pasteur had come to believe that decay in organic
matter was caused by germsnow recognized as microbesthat

floated in the air. Pasteur devised a method to
study whether microbes
could generate spontaneously. He based his
experiment on a number of previous accepted
observations. Scientists
knew bacteria grew in
open containers of meat
broth, and they accepted
that bacteria would not
grow in broth in an airtight container. Pasteur
reasoned that if bacteria
could generate spontaLouis Pasteur was one of the greatest neously, then something
scientists of all times. (Dibner Library
that provided the right
of the History of Science and Technology,
environment (the broth)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries)
with something that permitted air to enter would
demonstrate whether spontaneous generation was possible.
Pasteur wanted a container that would allow air to flow in and
circulate but would keep other matter from entering, so he selected
a glass flask with a long thin, curved neck for his experiment. He
carefully sterilized the flask and poured a nutrient broth (a clear
soup) into it. Next he boiled the broth to kill any living matter
that might have started out in the liquid. The sterile broth was
then left to sit at room temperature. After several weeks, Pasteur
noted that the broth in the curved-neck flask exhibited no change
at allbacteria, which everyone agreed were in the air, had not
spontaneously generated when the air entered the flask. Though
air flowed in freely, germs were trapped in the curved neck of the
flask, and this prevented them from reaching the broth. If germs
could generate spontaneously, then of course they would have
grown in the broth.

In 1864, Louis Pasteur received the prize for devising an experiment that definitively proved that microorganisms are present
in air, but that air cannot give rise to organisms spontaneously,
finally putting the argument about spontaneous generation fully
to rest. Pasteur, who had previously been rejected by the Academy
of Sciences, was now admitted.
Using Science to Address Practical Problems

Pasteur was well regarded by people in science, business, and
government. When the wine industry, extremely important to
Frances economy, ran into fermentation problems, Emperor
Napolon I Bonaparte (17691821) personally stepped in to ask
Pasteur to apply his scientific knowledge to help winemakers. Pasteur worked with heating the wine just enough to kill most of
the microbes present and found that chilling the wine kept any
remaining microbes from multiplying. Pasteur later learned that
this process, which is now called pasteurization, could also prevent milk from turning sour and could be used with other food
as well.
The next industry to seek Pasteurs help was the silk industry. Output was down because of a disease that was affecting the
eggs of the silkworm and reducing their numbers. In 1865, Pasteur identified a microscopic parasite that was infesting the silkworms and the leaves they fed on and showed that by destroying
the infected ones the silk industry could be saved. He also devised
a method that farmers could use to tell where infection resided
so that diseased silkworm eggs could be eliminated from their
nurseries.
Pasteur and the Microbiologist

Robert Koch Work on Anthrax
The idea of applied sciencescience used to help overcome problemsbecame fashionable, after Pasteur proved successful at helping with several industry problems in France. One of the next
problems brought to the attention of scientists occurred in Ger-
Although Antoni van Leeuwenhoek had seen and described bacteria in the
17th century, it was not until the 19th century with the work done by Louis
Pasteur and Robert Koch that there was any conclusive understanding
that bacteria were the root cause of many diseases.
many, and the scientist who was approached was a young microbiologist and physician named Robert Koch (18431910). In the early
1870s, farmers in Germany were having a terrible problem with
anthrax, a devastating disease that was killing their cattle. (The
term anthrax comes from the Greek word anthrakitis, meaning
anthracite, which is coal, in reference to the black skin lesions
that develop with some forms of the illness.)
In the late 19th century, anthrax was a major problem. It caused
a deadly and highly communicable disease in animals. The spore
that caused the disease was hardy and could live a long time. An
entire herd of cattle could be infected by walking over the ground
where an infected animal had died. The only hope of preventing
the spread of the disease was to kill any infected animals and bury
them deep in the ground, something that was not easy to do in the
winter. (See the sidebar Anthrax: Modern Weapon in Bioterrorism on page 11 for information on how terrorists are trying to
benefit from the hardiness of the spores.)
Robert Koch was aware of Pasteurs ideas about germs and the
work Pasteur had done in the wine and silk industries, and Koch
was interested in helping the farmers. He set up a laboratory in

his home and began investigating blood samples from the affected
cattle. Through the microscope, he identified rod-shaped bacilli as
the sign of anthrax, and he began to track the anthrax life cycle
by infecting mice with the disease and studying the changes in
the infected blood. (Robert Kochs work was the first proof that
diseases could be caused by microbes.)
An Anthrax Vaccine
A vaccine had been created to prevent smallpox, and this seemed
a logical course of action with the anthrax. However, Edward Jenner (17491823) had been able to use the weaker cowpox to inject
humans in order to create the antibodies to fight against the more
The process of vaccination was first used with smallpox and, although
scientists were now finding ways to vaccinate against some other
diseases, they did not yet have a scientific understanding of why vaccines
worked.

deadly smallpox. Scientists knew of no weaker form of anthrax, and
injecting anthrax itself, even in small amounts, would have been
deadly. Robert Kochs documentation of the anthrax life cycle and his
determination that disease is caused by microbes were very important, but the livestock vaccine to prevent against anthrax resulted
from work done by Louis Pasteur. Pasteurs continued experimentation had revealed that with some illnesses, a weakened form of the
microbe could be used to immunize against more virulent forms.
Pasteur decided that heat might weaken the germs, so he
heated some of the anthrax to reduce virulence and then vaccinated the sheep. He also anticipated the need for a control group.
He prepared two groups of 25 sheep, one goat, and several cows.
The animals of one group were injected with an anti-anthrax
vaccine prepared by Pasteur twice at an interval of 15 days;
the control group was left unvaccinated. Thirty days after the
first injection, both groups were injected with a culture of live
anthrax bacteria. All the animals in the nonvaccinated group
died, whereas all in the vaccinated group survived. Though Pasteur perfected this vaccine in 1881, a vaccine for humans was
not created until 1954.
Pasteur Extends Work on Immunization

Pasteur continued to explore immunization. Rabies was a terrible
problem at that time and was fatal to both animals and people. He
began his rabies experiments using animals. The study of rabies
was time-consuming as there was generally a long delay of several weeks between the time an animal was bitten and the germ
reached the brain. However, Pasteur began to develop the idea
that the longer reaction time might mean that vaccination could
be given within a certain time period after the bite. The other
benefit here was that only those who had been bitten by a rabid
animal needed to be treated. Pasteur had not yet used the vaccine
on humans, but in 1885 a small boy who been bitten by a rabid
dog was brought to Pasteurs laboratory. He knew the boy would
die if nothing were done, so he administered the vaccine. Several

tense weeks later, he knew the
vaccine had worked.
In 1888, the Pasteur Institute was founded in France as
a clinic for rabies treatment,
a research center for disease, and a teaching institute.
When a Pasteur Institute was
founded in Saigon in 1891, it
became the first in a world network and showed the esteem
in which his work was held.
Kochs Postulates
In addition to investigating
anthrax, Koch continued stud- Robert Kochs postulates created
ies of various other types of dis- a framework for assessing each
disease that was studied.
eases. He made notable inroads
into creating a theory of contagion, and in 1883 he set out three laws that explained the cause of
disease. Kochs postulates have been used ever since to determine
whether an organism causes a disease and are as follows:
1. The suspected germ must be consistently associated with
the disease.
2. It must be isolated from the sick person and cultured in
the laboratory.
3. Experimental inoculation with the organism must cause
the symptoms of the disease to appear.
In 1905, a fourth rule was added:
4. Organisms must be isolated again from the experimental
infection.
(continues on page 12)
10 Medicine Becomes A Science
Anthrax:
Modern Weapon in Bioterrorism
As the farmers who consulted Robert Koch came to realize,
one of the challenges of anthrax is that it can form long-lived
spores that are capable of surviving in a hostile environment. The bacteria become dormant but can remain viable
for decades and perhaps centuries. When anthrax-infected
animal burial sites have been disturbed as many as 70 years
after the fact, spores have been known to reinfect living animals. (Today, anthrax infections in domestic animals are
relatively rare because of animal vaccination programs and
sterilization of waste materials. While the disease is most
common in animals, it can be transferred to humans. Some
forms are so dangerous that a person who has been exposed
needs to be quarantined.)
Exposure used to be primarily by occupational exposure to infected animals or their products (usually wool
or meat)the more dangerous form of anthrax used to be
called wool sorters disease. The exposure to this version
is via inhalation, and it is very rare. In 2006, a musician
who had brought African goatskins to make drums into the
United States became very ill from exposure to the anthrax
spores on the unprocessed skins. Hospitalized for a month,
the 44-year-old victim was able to return to performing
within a few months. Prior to this time, the last known case
in the United States was in California in 1976 when a home
weaver died after working with wool imported from Pakistan. The spores are so deadly that it was very dangerous
to do the autopsy. The body had to be carefully sealed in
plastic and then sealed again in a metal container before it
could be sent for study by scientists at University of California at Los Angeles.
Because of their potency and hardy life, anthrax spores
have been used in biological warfare. The spores were
Medical Science Finally Advances 11
expected to be used in biological warfare when Scandinavia

supplied the Germans with anthrax in 1916, and the British
experimented with it for use during World War II (193945).
One plan involved creating cattle cakes injected with anthrax
that would be dropped on Germany. (This never occurred.)
Because of concern over anthrax being used in bioterrorism,
American and British army personnel are routinely vaccinated
against anthrax prior to serving in certain parts of the world.
The vaccine that is used is 93 percent effective.
Shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, several letters containing a few grams of concentrated anthrax
were mailed through the U.S. postal system, exposing
people to anthrax. Mailed to several media offices and two
Democratic U.S. senators, five people were killed and 17 others became ill from the exposure. In order to avoid further
human contamination, the buildings where the letters were
sent had to be thoroughly cleaned. Though better methods
have since been devised, clearing the Senate Office Building
of spores cost $27 million.
A firm identification of a suspect took a long time. After
pursuing one particular scientist for a very long time, in 2008
the governments focus finally shifted. Strains of anthrax are
unique, so the FBI examined the laboratories with the same
strain of anthrax that was sent through the mail. Their continued inquiry led them to Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist who worked in a government biodefense lab at Fort
Detrick, Maryland, where he had access to this particular
type of anthrax. Shortly after being notified of the current
line of investigation, he died of an overdose of Tylenol with
codeine. There was no suicide note to verify suspicions, but
law enforcement personnel feel that he took his own life
(continues)
(continued)
to avoid the consequences. In a January 3, 2009, article in

the New York Times, Brad Garrett, a respected retired F.B.I.
agent who had worked on the case, was quoted as saying
that both logic and evidence point to Dr. Ivins as the most
likely perpetrator.
Today, scientists know that the best way to deal with
anthrax used in bioterrorism is to come up with a way to
detect it before people are exposed. In response to the October 2001 attacks, the United States Postal Service installed
BioDetection Systems (BDS) in their largest mail cancellation facilities. In addition, community plans were drawn up
for local responders to show them how to handle a situation where there was an indication that anthrax had been
released.
Though experts still worry about anthrax, the reality is
that it requires a relatively high level of expertise to make in
the large quantities that would be suitable for warfare or any
large-scale attack. A great deal of knowledge, training, and
equipment are needed, and while it is certainly possible, it is
not a first-choice option for most U.S. enemies.
(continued from page 9)
Using Pasteurs theory and Kochs postulates, scientists began

to figure out cures for disease after disease. Pasteurs germ theory
became the foundation of the science of microbiology and a cornerstone of modern medicine. Koch went on to discover the cholera
bacillus (1892) and also the cause of tuberculosis (TB), though he
was unable to determine a cure. In 1905, Koch received the Nobel
Prize in medicine or physiology, primarily for his work on the
causes of TB.
Koch also made another lasting contribution to scientific study,
one that is still used today. He created pure methods for growing
A colony of Bacillus anthracis on a selective agar plate after 42 hours at

37C (World Health Organization)
cultures of bacteria using a gelatinous medium called agar, which

is composed from seaweed. The culture dish he used was invented
by his assistant Julius Richard Petri.
Ignaz Semmelweis (18181865): Identifies the

Cause of Hospital Infections
Medical knowledge in the mid-19th century was desperately inadequate. In hospitals, surgery was performed without gloves and
instruments were wiped clean on the physicians aprons. In the
1840s, Ignaz Semmelweis was a successful obstetrician at the
Allgemeine Krankenhaus (Vienna). At the hospital, it was common
practice for doctors to do autopsies in the morning and perform
pelvic examinations on expectant women or deliver babies in the
afternoon. No one knew about sterilization of instruments or the
importance of washing hands or wearing gloves, and puerperal
fever (childbirth fever) was rampant.
Ignaz Semmelweis was the first surgeon to make the connection between
unclean surgical practices and the occurrence of puerperal fever.
Semmelweis was unable to persuade many to change their ways. In the
1870s, Joseph Lister began to teach about cleanliness, and in 1878 Robert
Koch demonstrated that surgical tools could be sterilized using steam.
All of these elements helped reduce infection.
Dr. Semmelweis thought lack of cleanliness might be to blame

for the high rate of the illness among new mothers, and he ordered
the doctors to wash the pus, blood, and tissue from their hands
after the autopsies and before seeing patients. Deaths from infections on Semmelweiss wards plunged (from 12 percent to 1 percent), but because Semmelweis had an an abrasive personality
and could not communicate his ideas well, the hospital staff was
resistant to his ideas for long-term change.
A few years later, Joseph Lister (18271912), a Scottish physician, rediscovered the importance of cleanliness in surgical proceedings and was able to bring about change.
Antiseptic Methods Adopted

By the middle of the 1800s, postoperative sepsis infections
accounted for the death of almost half of the patients undergo-

ing major surgery. A chemist by the name of Justin von Liebig
determined that sepsis occurred when the injury was exposed to
air, so starting in 1839 he advocated that wounds should be covered with plasters. Lister was skeptical of this explanation and
von Liebigs recommendation. Lister had devoted a good number
of years studying inflammation of wounds at the Glasgow Royal
Infirmary and eventually was promoted to be the chief surgeon
there, which provided an opportunity to take a look at the overall
picture of processes at the infirmary. One of the facts Lister noted
was that 45 to 50 percent of the amputation cases in the male
accident ward were dying of sepsis (186165).
Lister suspected that a cleaner environment might be helpful.
He began wearing clean clothes when he performed surgery. (This
was not the norm for the daysurgeons frequently considered
it a badge of honor to appear in blood-spattered aprons.) He also
washed his hands before each procedure. At first Lister made no
noticeable progress.
Then he became aware of the work being done by Louis Pasteur.
Pasteurs work suggested that decay came from living organisms
that affected human tissues, and Pasteur advocated the use of heat
or chemicals to destroy the microorganisms. Lister determined
that Pasteurs microorganisms might be causing the gangrene
that so often plagued surgery patients and decided that chemicals
would be the best way to stem the spread of microorganisms during and after surgery. He read that carbolic acid was being used
to treat sewage in some places, so he created a solution of carbolic
acid and began to spray surgical tools, surfaces, and even surgical incisions with his newly created mixture. For the next nine
months, his patients at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary remained
clear of sepsis.
At first, London and the United States resisted this theory;
though they quibbled less about the theory of germs, they disagreed with the use of carbolic acid. To overcome this resistance,
Lister arrived to become chair of clinical surgery at Kings College
where he began performing surgery under antiseptic conditions.
Without much delay, his methods were accepted. Within just a

few years, other surgeons began using Listers antiseptic methods,
and in 1878 Robert Koch demonstrated that steam could be used
for sterilizing surgical tools and dressings. While the methods of
sterilization have changed over the years, the concept of antiseptic
surgery is still vital to success.
Rudolf Virchows Cellular Discoveries

Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (18211902) is known as the founder
of cellular pathology because of his extensive research that stated
that disease is created and reproduced at the cellular level of the
body. While his discovery preceded the work of Louis Pasteur and
Robert Koch and would have affected their thinking, Virchows
discovery took a long time to have any effect on patient care. However, his work created a foundation for a vital part of modern medical science.
From the early 17th century when scientists started peering
through microscopes, they were fascinated by being able to view
a world they could not see with normal vision. Many spent time
investigating and theorizing about what they were seeing, and
two scientists preceded Rudolf Virchow in noting the existence of
cells in their different fields of study. The German botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden (180481) was the first to recognize that
all plants, and all the different parts of a plant, are composed of
cells. Schleiden was friendly with the zoologist Theodor Schwann
(181082) and mentioned to Schwann what he had observed in
his plant studies. Schwann took a new look at the animal tissues
he studied and realized that plants and animals seemed to share
this commonality. This was quite a new thought in science. In
1839, Schwann was the first to write about cell theory when he
published Microscopic Investigations on the Accordance in the
Structure and Growth of Plants and Animals.
Rudolf Virchow was familiar with the work of Matthias
Schleiden and Theodor Schwann. Almost 20 years later (1858),
Virchow defied many scientists of the time by teaching Omnis
cellula e cellula or Every cell originates from another cell. (Some
scientists continued to believe that all matter was generated sponta-

neously.) Virchow published Cellular Pathology in 1858, where he
addressed his reasoning that diseases also begin at a cellular level.
This was a revolutionary thought for the time, and in his teachings
he always encouraged students to think microscopically.
Virchows Earlier Life and Other Contributions

Virchow was born into a farming family and studied medicine on
scholarship, gaining a medical degree in 1843 at the University
of Berlin. In 1848, he was sent to investigate a typhus epidemic
in Upper Silesia (part of what is now Poland), and in his report
he stated that such outbreaks were caused not merely by poor
hygiene but by conditions that a better government could help
rectifypoverty, illiteracy, and political subjugation. (The Prussian government was busy dealing with a revolution in Berlin so
they did not go after him, but his outspokenness did cost him an
early professorship.)
From this time forward, Virchow became very active in campaigning for better standards for public health to help control the
spread of illness. From 1859 to 1893, he served on the Berlin city
council where he argued for inspection of meat and poultry, and he
designed a plan for modern sewage disposal in the city. During the
Franco-German War, Virchow helped train workers and provided
medical care for soldiers.
Autopsy Findings
One of his greatest accomplishments happened much later in his
career. During his lifetime, Virchow had spent a great deal of time
in the laboratory, and much of what he had learned he taught
himself by doing autopsies. By 1874, his organized and methodical system had become well known and other physicians came to
learn his technique. Virchows system is still one of the two methods used in autopsies today and involves removing each organ one
by one. Others had advocated organ removal in units.
As a result of increasing autopsies, academic institutions began
to create pathology departments to study the diseased tissues and
body parts as they were removed. This created a new focus for science. Physicians began cataloging their findings, and while much
Physicians were beginning to accept autopsies as a tool in understanding

death and disease. While todays medical examiners can use body
temperature, blood analysis, and stomach contents and other tools to provide
a detailed story of how and when someone died, when autopsies were first
conducted scientists could really only observe the most superficial things,
such as the type of instrument that might have left a particular wound.
of it was meaningless at the time, it provided vital information for

scientists as study continued.
In addition to hospital autopsies to learn more about underlying
diseases, the 19th century also saw an increase in the number of
autopsies being conducted as part of criminal investigations. While
their studies were extremely primitive compared to crime scene
investigators work today, scientists began to understand the differences in types of surface wounds and other causes of death.
Conclusion
The mid-19th century was a time of robust accomplishment. Virchows identification of the importance of the cell, Pasteur and
Kochs work on germ theory as well as on practical solutions to daily
While several methods of conducting an autopsy are used today, one of the
most commonly used is the one devised by Rudolf Virchow, who taught
that organs should be removed one at a time and studied separately.
problems like the spoiling of wine and the spread of anthrax brought
science into the mainstream. Businesses and government saw that
there were very practical ways to benefit from the new theories.
Ignaz Semmelweis and Joseph Lister together ushered in a new
era of hospital management that greatly reduced the infection rate
and highlighted the need for sanitation as part of any medical
treatment process.
2
Women and
Modern Medicine
omen have always played an important role in health

care, and, although there were female physicians in
some cultures in ancient Egypt and in the early Middle Ages,
women were relegated to serving as local healers, family caregivers, and midwives. With the exception of midwifery, their jobs
were positions where they learned by doing and were often
self-taught.
In the 19th century, these circumstances began to change. A
very few women graduated from medical schools and became physicians. Women like Elizabeth Blackwell not only broke barriers
for other women to become doctors, but many of them extended
themselves by establishing organizations that made it easier for
other women to follow.
Other women helped professionalize the field of nursing so that
there was organization and a methodology to what was done. Florence Nightingale led the way for nurses to be an integral part of
wartime medical care, and the methods she used when setting
up her hospitals in the Crimean area served her well when she
returned to England. The lesser-known Mary Seacole also made
great contributions to nursing during the same period as Nightin20
Women and Modern Medicine
21
gale, but Seacoles contributions were not acknowledged for a long

time because of racial prejudice.
Clara Barton not only worked in nursing, but she saw the
need for the United States to join an international movement now
known as the Red Cross. The ideals that guided this organization
in the beginning are still in place today. Its original intention was
to provide disaster relief without prejudice. Today, most people
would say they do even more.
Dorothea Dix observed the inhumane treatment of those with
mental problems and dedicated her life to improving the care of
those who could not speak for themselves. Alice Hamilton created
a new field, industrial toxicology, when she realized the health
problems that resulted from unclean and unsupervised working
environments.
These are just a few of the women who have contributed greatly
to medical progress, but their experiences are highlighted here
because they demonstrate women who overcome the hurdles that
were often placed in their paths. Each of these women contributed
significantly to important steps forward in medical care.
elizaBeth BlaCKWell (18211910):

First WoMan doCtor in Modern tiMes
While Elizabeth Blackwells name will always be connected
with her status as the first woman doctor, she also contributed significantly to changes in the medical profession. Blackwell
established a hospital in New York City where poor women and
children could come for care, and during the Civil War she and
her sister founded the Womans Central Association of Relief
that was a vital part of providing better care for all soldiers,
particularly the wounded, during the war. Later on, she opened
a Womans Medical College in New York to offer easier access to
education for women.
Blackwell was born in England to a Quaker family. British
custom dictated that upper-class women were only supposed to
marry well, but the Quakers were more broad-minded. Blackwells

parents felt strongly that their
daughters should receive the
same education as their sons.
A spirit of social justice pervaded the family; they were
also strongly antislavery and
two of her brothers, Henry
and Sam, married suffragettes
(Lucy Stone and Antoinette
Brown, respectively).
In her teens, Blackwell
moved with her family to
America, and they eventually settled in Cincinnati. Her
father died soon after their
Elizabeth Blackwell (National Library
arrival. To support the family,
of Medicine)
her mother established a school
where she and her daughters
taught. During this time, Blackwell nursed a good friend who was
dying, and her interest in becoming a physician is thought to have
been inspired by this experience. The woman complained of rough
treatment by the male doctor, and she encouraged Blackwell to
become a physician. Blackwell decided to do what she could to be
a doctor, and she convinced two family friends who were physicians to let her read (study) under them while she continued to
teach and save money.
Undaunted by the fact that no woman had ever been admitted
to an American medical school, she applied to 30 schools and was
rejected by 29 of them before she received an acceptance letter
from Geneva College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges in
Geneva, New York). Her admission had been intended as a joke,
but Blackwell had no way of knowing this. She arrived when
classes started, took what she felt was her rightful place, and
began her studies. The school administration decided to let her
stay although they barred her from attending classes on topics
that might have led to embarrassing discussions. In January
Women and Modern Medicine 23

1849, she received her diploma, and many women in the community attended the graduation ceremony to signal their support
of her.
Blackwell was now a naturalized U.S. citizen, but she felt her
next step should be to return to Europe to learn more about medicine. The only hospital that granted her access was La Maternit
de Paris, the lying-in hospital for poor women, which had a midwife-training program that required no prior education. Though
she was treated in the same manner as the uneducated French
girls, Blackwell felt she was learning, so she stayed. She eventually
moved to London to study at a hospital there, but she contracted an
infectious eye disease and lost one of her eyes as a result.
In 1851, she returned to the United States where she attempted
to start a private practice, but paying patients were not interested
in going to a woman doctor, and she had very little business. This
experience was to be a pivotal one for Blackwell. Though it took
time for her to gain adequate funding, she did so, establishing
the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in
1857. (The hospital still exists; it is located in lower Manhattan
and is now known as New York Downtown Hospital, owned by
New York University.) She also hired the second woman to earn
a medical degree in the United States, Marie Zakrzewska, a German-born physician of Polish descent. (Zakrzewska went on to
found the New England Hospital for Women and Children, the
first hospital in Boston.) Blackwells younger sister Emily, who
also became a physician, soon joined them. Blackwell focused on
two particular missions with her hospital. By accepting women
to study and work at her hospital as both nurses and physicians,
Blackwell opened more educational opportunities for women. She
also felt strongly about teaching both laypeople and professionals
about the importance of hygiene and preventive medicine.
During the Civil War, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell founded
the Womans Central Association of Relief. The original intent of
the organization was to hire and train nurses for war service. Over
time, it evolved into the United States Sanitary Commission, the
federal agency responsible for training nurses and coordinating

volunteer efforts. The Commission also provided battlefront hospital and kitchen services.
After the war, in 1868, Elizabeth and Emily opened a Womans
Medical College next to the hospital they had founded (with support from Florence Nightingale, discussed later in this chapter).
Shortly after, Elizabeth was summoned back to London to do for
the British what she had done for American women. She spent
the remainder of her life in London and cofounded the London
School of Medicine.
Blackwell wrote several books that primarily had to do with
women and medicine:
Lectures on the Laws of Life (1852): a book that presents
the case for physical education and exercise for childrena lifelong cause for Blackwell. It was written simply enough that it was accessible to all readers, not just
those in the medical profession.
Medicine as a Profession for Women (1860): this book was
cowritten with her sister Emily and advocated for more
women to enter the medical profession.
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women
(1895): her autobiography.
Blackwell also wrote several other books, including one on parents

responsibility to provide strong moral values for their children, and
another about sex, a topic not often addressed in the 19th century.
Blackwells contributions to medicine far exceeded the act of breaking barriers to become a doctor, because she made certain to turn
and help those who might follow her. By the time she died in 1910,
more than 7,000 women in America had become physicians.
The Profession of Nursing

Though there have always been women tending to the ill, the profession of nursing actually has a relatively brief history. While
wives and mothers throughout time have provided nursing care

within a family and even a neighborhood, any organized care
within a community was generally done by a religious order that
dedicated itself to caring for the sick. If soldiers on battlefields
were in need of medical or nursing care, that care was generally
provided by a fellow soldier.
The primary role of nurses is sometimes assumed to be to carry
out the instructions left them by physicians, but this is often not
the case. When nursing first began during the mid-19th century,
there were not enough physicians to handle the wartime patient
load, so nurses who tended to the injured were often the best and
only medical care a soldier would receive.
Treatment of the whole patient is the core belief of the nursing
profession. While some medical specialties manage just one aspect
of a patients condition, the profession of nursing prides itself on
a holistic approach. (Economic realities and too many patients
sometimes prevent this from being a reality, but it is still the intent
of those who go into the profession.)
Today, there has been an additional shift in the profession, and
nurses care for all types of people suffering all types of illnesses
with nursing specialties ranging from mental and physical to neonatal and specialists in anesthesia. Degrees range from licensed
practical nurse (LPN) to registered nurse (RN). The designation
of nurse practitioner (NP) is for a registered nurse who has completed specific advanced nursing education (generally a masters
degree) and trained in the diagnosis and management of common
as well as complex medical conditions. In many states, nurse practitioners are considered qualified to provide basic medical care on
their own, diagnosing, treating, and prescribing without having
to work under a physician.
Nightingale and Seacole: The Women

behind the Movement
Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole were two women at the
forefront of professionalizing nursing care. Both got their start
during the Crimean War. Nightingale has long been acknowledged

for her contributions, but Mary Seacole, who was part Jamaican,
faced racial discrimination, and this kept her work from being
acknowledged for a very long time.
Florence Nightingale (18201910): Lady with the Lamp

Florence Nightingale laid the foundation for the nursing profession when she set out to improve the conditions for soldiers during
the Crimean War in the 1850s. She worked tirelessly to implement
hospital reform and bring compassion to patient care. Nightingale
also developed a way to collect data and systematize recordkeeping
of patient care, something that was not done regularly at the time.
Her efforts proved the benefits of maintaining health statistics
because she could graph a statistical report on disease trends or
on how well a hospital was doing. This work was acknowledged
when she became the first woman elected to the Royal Statistical
Society (1859).
Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 to a wealthy British
family, and her childhood was spent at an estate in Derbyshire,
England. Well-to-do young women of the time were trained to be
refined ladies so they could marry well, but William Edward Nightingale believed his daughters should receive the same type of education as boys. Florence and her sister were taught Italian, Latin,
Greek, history, and mathematics. Florence particularly excelled at
mathematics, and her father was happy to teach her all he could.
Though there was a sentiment at this time that the sight of
naked flesh would corrupt young women, Nightingale volunteered
at area hospitals and felt she was answering a divine calling, so
she worked out a way to gain the necessary knowledge. In 1846,
she visited Kaiserwerth, a pioneering hospital in Germany established and managed by an order of Catholic sisters, and she was
greatly impressed by the quality of medical care and by the commitment and practices of the sisters. Later, Nightingale returned
to Germany and spent four months studying to be a nurse at
Kaiserwerth.
Her next steps would not have been possible had Nightingale
not had the necessary political connections through her family.
The Lady with the Lamp from a painting by Henrietta Rae (Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, Frances soldiers were
aided by women from several religious orders, but British medical
care was seriously lacking. With the approval of her friend Sidney Herbert, who held a governmental office, Nightingale selected
and trained 38 volunteer nurses whom she took with her to the

Crimean area. The group arrived in Scutari (now part of Istanbul)
and found desperate circumstances. The temporary hospitals were
unclean, and there was little equipment to use to help care for the
patients. The injured were left lying in their filthy, blood-stained
uniforms, and there was no soap or towels or clean clothing. There
was very little to eat and no containers to take water to the men.
Shortly after her arrival, the death rate actually rose and was the
highest of any hospital in the area. Nightingale saw that 10 times
more soldiers were dying from illnesses than from their wounds.
She contacted the British government and implored them to send
help. A sanitary commission was deployed; they flushed the sewers, helped obtain freshwater for the hospital, and improved the
ventilation. Nightingale kept careful statistical records of how
patients at the hospital were faring, and after the sanitary commission brought about the needed changes she was able to prove
that the death rate dropped from 42.7 to 2.2 percent. Her point
was made.
Nightingale came to be known as a sign of hope, the lady with
the lamp, partly because of the good work she did for the soldiers,
but also because she was the last person to go through the hospital
each night to check on all of the patientsshe really was the lady
with the lamp.
Her good deeds quickly became known in Britain, and when
she returned home a fund was started to recognize her for her
work. Nightingale directed that the money be used for setting up
the Nightingale Training School in 1860 (now known as the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, a part of Kings
College, London). In 1860, she also wrote and published Notes on
Nursing, which is considered a classic introduction to nursing. (It
was also simply written and the home nursing advice was taken
up by many laywomen who read it to learn more about providing
care at home.) Later she wrote Notes on Hospitals (1863).
Mary Seacole (18051881): Fought Barriers to Help

Mary Seacole was a multiracial woman born to a Scottish father
and a free black mother. Her mother was a doctress [sic], and the

family ran a boardinghouse in Jamaica where those suffering from
tropical diseases often stayed until they got better. Seacole learned
about patient care from her mother and spent several years in Central America and the Caribbean where she became familiar with
cholera and other illnesses that were common in the Tropics.
When the Crimean War broke out, Seacole heard of the
intended use of nurses near the battlefield, and she wanted to
help. Armed with letters of recommendations from area doctors,
she traveled to London where she attempted to meet with someone so that she could volunteer. However, no one took her up on
her offer nor was she selected to be among Nightingales volunteers. Seacole assumed personal responsibility for getting to the
Crimea and set about raising money for her travel expenses. Once
in Crimea, she was again turned away by Florence Nightingale,
so she established a hotel in the areaprobably not unlike the
boardinghouse her family had run in Kingston, Jamaicawhere
she took care of the sick and wounded. Nightingale was dismissive of Seacoles efforts. Because Seacoles retreat was also a hotel,
alcohol was served, and this led Nightingale to refer to it as little
more than a brothel.
Though Seacole was long overshadowed by Nightingales contributions to nursing, the 21st century has seen a new understanding
of the racial obstacles that stood in Seacoles way. Several nursing prizes have been established in her honor, and a long-running
exhibit of her contributions was held at the Florence Nightingale
Museum in London to celebrate her very real contributions to
nursing.
Clara Barton (18211912): Founder of the

American Red Cross
Clara (Clarissa Harlowe) Barton was a dedicated humanitarian
who recognized a needthat of taking supplies to the soldiers
in the field during the Civil Warand stepped in to help out.
She was nearly 40 years old when she started traveling with
wagons to the battlefront to provide medical supplies and food
Linda Richards (18411930):

First Professional Nurse in the United States
Linda Richards was the first professionally trained American nurse. She is credited with establishing nurse-training programs in various parts of the United States and in
Japan. She also is recognized for creating the first system
for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized
patients.
Richardss early life experiences directed her toward an
interest in nursing. While she was still a child, both of her
parents died of tuberculosis. She was four when her father
died but a young teen when her mother became ill, and
she nursed her mother until the end of the illness. Living
in Newburyport, Vermont, there was no way to prepare for
becoming a nurse, so Richards trained to be a teacher and
soon married a local farmer who then went off to serve as
part of the Green Mountain Boys (a unit of Vermonters) in
the Civil War. In 1865, her husband returned, wounded, and
Richards nursed him until his death in 1869.
where they were most needed. Later, at the age of 60 (1881),

she founded the American Red Cross and led it for the next 23
years.
Clara Barton was working as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office
in Washington, D.C., when the Civil War started. The Sixth Massachusetts Infantry had been attacked in Baltimore, Maryland,
by southern sympathizers. The men were temporarily housed in
Washington in the unfinished Capitol building. Barton appealed
to the public for donations, gathered items herself, and also collected relief supplies from the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Barton
also offered personal support to the men in hopes of keeping their
Richards moved to Boston and took a job at Boston City

Hospital, but she was relegated to cleaning chores. She soon
heard of an educational program started by Marie Zakrzewska and was one of five women to sign up for the nursetraining course at the New England Hospital for Women and
Children. In 1873, she was the programs first graduate.
She eventually moved to New York City where she
became the night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital and
created a system for keeping individual records for each
patient. Her system became widely used in this country
and in England. As her career progressed, Richards became
intent on establishing more nurse-training programs. Her
program in Boston became known as one of the best in the
country. She went on to establish and direct nurse-training
programs in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Michigan.
She also traveled to Japan and established the first training
program for nurses in that country (188586).
spirits up: She read to them, wrote letters for them, listened to
their personal problems, and prayed with them.
Though it was highly unusual, Barton wanted to follow the
men to the front lines and, after much effort, Barton was eventually given passes to bring her voluntary services and medical supplies to the battlefront and to field hospitals. Her first trip was to
Virginia in August 1862, and, when she arrived with her supplies,
the overwhelmed surgeon on duty wrote later, I thought that
night if heaven ever sent out a[n] ... angel, she must be oneher
assistance was so timely. She became known as the Angel of the
Battlefield.

After the war, Clara Barton
visited Europe in 1869 and was
introduced to a book by Henry
Dunant, who had founded the
Red Cross movement. Henry
Dunant (18281910) was the
son of a Swiss businessman
who witnessed horrific fighting in 1859 at the Battle of
Solferino in Italy. This experience led him to social activism. He devised the idea for an
International Red Cross that
he intended as a multicountry
movement to protect the sick
and wounded during wartime
Clara Barton (Library of Congress without respect to nationalPrints and Photographs Division)
ity. As part of his dedication
to getting this idea accepted,
Dunant pushed hard for what became known as the Geneva Conventions at which a treaty embodying Dunants idea was negotiated. This treaty (also referred to as the Geneva Treaty or the
Red Cross Treaty) was ratified by 12 European nations in 1864,
and Clara Barton campaigned tirelessly, and ultimately successfully, for the United States to ratify it as well, which the country
ultimately did in 1882.
In 1881, Barton formed the American Association of the Red
Cross. In 1893, it was reincorporated as the American National
Red Cross, and it received charters by Congress in 1900 and 1905
that provide for a close working relationship with the government.
The first time Bartons organization provided aid was in 1881 to
victims of a devastating forest fire in Michigan; in 1884, she chartered steamers to carry needed supplies up and down the Ohio
and Mississippi Rivers to assist flood victims. In 1889, she and 50
volunteers rode the first train into Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to
help the survivors of a dam break that caused 2,200 deaths. While

disaster relief remains a primary mission of the organization, the
Red Cross also sends help to war zones; 1892 was the first time
that the American Red Cross provided assistance to American
armed forces and civilians during wartime.
Dorothea Dix (18021887): Social Reformer

and Advocate for the Insane
At a time when no one understood the causes or issues surrounding mental illness, Dorothea Dix gave voice to those who could not
advocate for themselves, the mentally ill. Later in life she served
as superintendent of female nurses for the Union during the Civil
War, an unpaid position for which she volunteered.
Dorothea Dix was born in Maine to an itinerant preacher, and
her early intention was to become a teacher. After receiving her education, she approached her well-to-do grandmother about funding a
school to offer opportunities to more girls to get an education, and
her grandmother provided
Dix with space for the school
in her home in Boston.
In her mid-30s, Dix suffered an emotional breakdown. She went to England to
recover and was befriended
by the Rathbones, a Quaker
family dedicated to social
reform. The Rathbones were
very involved in a lunacy
reform movement in Britain
that was dedicated to investigating madhouses and asylums, and this was to have a
major effect on Dixs life.
When Dix returned to
the United States in 1840 Dorothea Dix (Library of Congress Prints
41, she saw firsthand what and Photographs Division)

was happening to the mentally disadvantaged in her own country.
She volunteered to teach a Sunday school class for women inmates
at the East Cambridge jail, and this gave her the opportunity to
see the terrible living conditions of the prisoners. She also noted
that prostitutes, drunks, criminals, retarded individuals and the
mentally ill were all housed together. When she asked why the
mentally ill were being kept in jail, she was told the insane do
not feel heat or cold.
This experience inspired her to begin an investigation of how
the state of Massachusetts cared for the insane poor. She found
that, typically, towns paid local individuals to care for people with
mental disorders. However, the system was unregulated and underfunded, and it produced widespread abuse. According to a report
presented by Dix to the state legislature, people were kept in cages,
in stalls, and in pens, while others went naked, and chained in
place. Many were beaten to make them obedient. As a result of
Dixs efforts, Massachusetts finally set aside money to expand the
states mental hospital in Worcester to accommodate more patients.
Dix then focused on other states, traveling from New Hampshire
to Louisiana to document the conditions of the insane.
Dixs views were radical for the time. People believed that the
insane would never be cured, so it did not matter in what way they
were housed. Dixs actions led to better living conditions, and, in
some cases, this led to improvements in patients mental health as
well. She played a major role in founding 32 mental hospitals, 15
schools for the feebleminded, a school for the blind, and numerous training facilities for nurses.
When the Civil War began, Dix suggested that women could
be recruited and trained to help in military hospitals, and she volunteered to help out. In June 1861, Dix was appointed to recruit
and supervise these women. Dixs advocacy for women in these
positions broke certain gender barriers, but she maintained certain prejudices. She didnt want marriage-minded young women
working near the soldiers, so she insisted applicants be over 30
and plain looking. She also implemented a dress code of black or
brown skirts, no hoopskirts, and no jewelry.

Dix was better suited to be a social reformer than a member of a
bureaucracy. She clashed frequently with army officers. Nonetheless, nursing care was much better under her leadership. She was
capable of procuring badly needed medical supplies from private
sources, and she enforced the need to care for southern soldiers as
well as northern ones.
Alice Hamilton (18691970): Studied Field

of Industrial Toxicology
Alice Hamilton became a chemist at a time when it was not easy for
women to work in science, and she devoted her career to investigating workplace health hazards to which employees are exposed.
Hamilton was one of five children born to prominent parents
in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She attended Miss Porters School, a girls
boarding school in Farmington, Connecticut, intending to go on to
medical school. (At that time, students could go from high school
directly to medical school.) She began at the Fort Wayne College
of Medicine in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and she continued her education at the University of Michigan Medical School, graduating in
1893. While in medical school she became fascinated by pathology
so she decided to become a research scientist. Hamiltons sister
was going to Europe to study the classics, and Hamilton decided to
accompany her to continue her studies in bacteriology. (Her sister
was Edith Hamilton, the world-renowned classicist whose Mythology remains most American childrens introduction to mythology.)
Universities in Munich and Leipzig had never before admitted
female students, so she was permitted to attend lectures in bacteriology and pathology if she made herself inconspicuous. She
then returned to the United States where she became a researcher
at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
In 1897, she became professor of pathology at the short-lived
Womens Medical School at Northwestern University near Chicago. Hamilton attended a public lecture given by Jane Addams,
the founder of the settlement house known as Hull House. Settlement houses were run by idealistic people who intended to

rovide badly needed housing for newly arrived urban immip
grants. Hamilton decided that living at Hull House would provide insight into the health problems of the urban poor who
seemed to have particularly high rates of typhoid fever and
tuberculosis.
In 1902, Chicago had a typhoid epidemic, and Hamilton made
a connection between poor sewage disposal and the role of flies
in transmitting disease. Her information led to reorganization of
the Chicago health department, and soon the governor of Illinois
appointed her to the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, which ran a groundbreaking study surveying industrial
diseases in Illinois. At the time, there were no laws regulating
safety in the workplace. Her efforts became well known, and she
was soon called upon to address issues for the national government. From 1911 to 1920, she served as a special investigator for
the federal Bureau of Labor (later called the Department of Labor)
where she undertook a study of the use of lead and lead oxide in
manufacturing paint. (No one understood the dangers of lead poisoning at this time.) She also noted the health problems of those
who were exposed to noxious chemicals at work.
By 1919, Alice Hamilton was the acknowledged expert in the
field of industrial medicine, and, although Harvard Universitys
entire faculty was male, the medical school determined that they
would create a department of industrial medicine with Hamilton
as its leader. She was given the title of assistant professor. However, Harvard placed three qualifications on her appointment: Dr.
Hamilton was not to use the Faculty Club; she would not be permitted to march in commencement processions with the rest of
the faculty; and she would never be given football tickets, a perk
available to the rest of the faculty. She took the position and was
never given a higher standing than assistant professor.
Hamilton continued to devote six months a years to conducting her surveys of employment conditions within various industries, and over time she revealed to government and business the
dangers of certain dyes, carbon monoxide, mercury, lead, radium
(commonly used in wristwatch dials), benzene, the chemicals in

storage batteries, and carbon disulfide and hydrogen sulfide bases
which were created during the process of making rayon.
Hamilton dedicated her life to making life better for other
people, and she was active with both health-related and political
causes. She died in 1970 at the age of 101.
Conclusion
Today, women physicians are so common that it is shocking to
think that only 160 years ago the women who entered the profession had a very difficult time. Elizabeth Blackwell was instrumental in helping other women enter the medical profession, and her
own contributions to the field were enormous. The field of nursing
was professionalized through the efforts of women like Florence
Nightingale, Mary Seacole, and Linda Richards. Today, nurses
can pursue a myriad of medical specialties, and there is a growing level of respect for the nursing profession. Dorothea Dix and
Alice Hamilton both made vital contributions in fields that were
getting little attention at the time. Dix addressed the needs of the
mentally ill, and Alice Hamilton brought attention to the hazards
of the workplace. Both these fields were to become increasingly
important in the 20th century.
3
science Moves Forward
in diagnosis and treatment
y the mid-19th century, science was moving forward in many

fields, and the information gleaned in various areas was proving useful to those looking for better methods of medical diagnosis and treatment. Several of the discoveriesanesthesia and
X-rayswere accidental findings that proved highly beneficial.
Others like the discovery of viruses came after a very prolonged
period of study, and even then it was several decades before scientists had access to powerful enough microscopes to reveal the
presence of the tiny infectious agents scientists had come to suspect were there.
Surgery was one treatment that was often necessary but
extremely problematic. When other options were exhausted and
surgery seemed the best recourse, doctors had no reliable way to
dull the pain, and, after the surgery, there was no way to prevent
infection. Most surgical procedures were limited to the extremities and superficial parts of the body, mainly because surgeons
had limited understanding of how the internal organs worked.
Surgeons were beginning to understand anatomy, but much of
physiologyhow the body workedwas still a mystery. The field
of pathology was very young.
38
science Moves Forward in diagnosis and Treatment
39
In the 1840s, two forms of anesthesia began to be used: one

was nitrous oxide (often called laughing gas) and the other was
ether (which became more popular for surgery). Nitrous oxide was
first used with dental patients, and over time it became more commonly used by dentists than physicians. (Some dentists today still
use it.) For surgical patients, ether was often administered by having a patient breathe into a cloth saturated with it, and this method
of drug delivery was used into the 20th century. Because physicians were in disbelief that surgery could be accomplished without
causing pain to the patient, these early operations with the patient
under ether were frequently performed in front of audiences.
Diagnostics took a big jump forward with the introduction of
the X-ray process. At the time X-rays were discovered, no scientist was searching for a method for looking through the human
body, but once Wilhelm Rntgen made such a discovery, he and
others quickly found ways to apply it to medicine. Marie Curies
work was helpful in many fields of science, but she took particular
interest in helping people understand how radiation could be used
diagnostically.
In other areas of diagnostics, scientists were quickly ticking
off the identification of more and more types of bacteria that
caused illnesses, but they were still baffled by the fact that they
could not identify the causes of certain diseases. Ironically, physicians had created vaccines that could protect against diseases
like smallpox, but they still could not identify the causative
agent. Viruses were finally discovered after two scientists diligently studied diseased tobacco plants. With this new information, scientists were able to look for new types of cures. Serum
therapies were tried based on what scientists were learning about
creating vaccines, and this new method of treatment was introduced at this time.
This chapter reveals the surprising way that anesthesia was
introduced for use on surgical patients, and it relates how the Xray process developed. The chapter concludes with an explanation
of why viruses were so difficult to identify and who it was who
finally made the discovery of these pathogens.
The Early Use of Anesthesia

Through the early 19th century, patients had to endure great pain
if they had surgery. Many years after the fact, one elderly Boston
physician wrote of the horror of patients yells and screams while
he operated on them. The pain during surgery was so accepted
and so unavoidablethat some surgeons believed that keeping
the patient conscious during surgery was actually beneficial and
promoted healing. Surgeons used able-bodied assistants to help tie
patients to the operating table for the procedure. Some surgeons
looked for ways to dull a patients sensations before surgery. A
few physicians literally knocked their patients out with a blow
to the jaw; others believed the solution lay in counterirritants,
such as having an assistant rub another part of the patients body
with stinging nettles to distract the person from the part of the
body undergoing surgery. A few doctors began experimenting with
herbs and alcohol. Plants such as marijuana, belladonna, and jimsonweed were among those that provided some relief to patients
prior to a procedure. Alcohol and opium also were used, but alcohol in large enough doses to produce a stupor tended to cause nausea, vomiting, and sometimes death instead of sleep. Opium had
significant side effects as well, and typically it was not powerful
enough to blunt the feeling of surgery.
The road to the development of anesthesia was built on the findings of a succession of people, and the discoveries started as early
as the 17th century. The chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestley
(17331804) noted and described the properties of nitrous oxide
(laughing gas). Many years later, Humphry Davy (17781829) discovered the exhilarating effects of the gas and noted the possibility
of using it for surgery. In 1818, the English chemist and physicist Michael Faraday (17911867) found that vapors from sulfuric
ether also created mind-altering effects that could numb pain.
At this point, no one had employed ether or nitrous oxide for
any practical use. However, the gases were popular among well-todo partygoers and students who had access to laboratories. Those
people who could obtain and bring along a bag of nitrous oxide or a
flask of ether to share at a party were very popular, as everyone saw
Science Moves Forward in Diagnosis and Treatment 41

that parties were a lot more fun under the influence. Even in a
small town like Jefferson, Georgia, the fun of a party that included
ether was something to relish. Dr. Crawford Long (181578), a physician, was accommodating fun-loving friends by providing ether
for their parties when Long observed that those who had breathed
the ether never seemed to notice if they tripped and fell or banged
into things. This gave Long an idea. One of his friends, James Venable, had a tumor on his neck that needed to be removed. Long
approached Venable and suggested that if Venable took a whiff of
ether, perhaps Long could remove the tumor without causing too
much pain. Venables tumor was successfully excised, and Venable
was not bothered by the process. Encouraged by this success, Long
tested the ether when he performed minor operations on other
people. However, it was a full seven years before he documented
what he had learned, finally submitting an article on the process
to Southern Medical and Surgical Journal. There was no adequate
explanation as to why he waited so long to report his discovery, but
some experts feel that since Long was a small-town doctor, he may
have encountered a disapproving citizenry, and perhaps he worried
that additional publicity for his use of ether would have negative
effects on his practice.
In the meantime, ether frolics and nitrous oxide parties continued, and soon showmen realized they could benefit from the craze.
Just as the men who demonstrated patent medicines created traveling road shows, other fellows developed shows involving nitrous
oxide. Audiences paid to attend the events, and then lucky volunteers were invited to the stage to sniff the nitrous oxide; friends
and neighbors were mightily entertained by watching what the
volunteers did after breathing in the laughing gas. In 1844, a dentist by the name of Horace Wells (181548) attended a show in his
hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. He and a companion willingly volunteered to participate, and afterward Wells noted that
his friend had bumped into something and cut his leg while under
the nitrous oxide and yet seemed to feel no pain. Wells thought
this over and wondered about whether this gas could be helpful
in dentistry, and he was in a perfect circumstance for finding out.

He himself had a wisdom tooth that was bothering him but he
had resisted letting anyone pull it because of the pain. Wells solicited help from another dentist, and together they approached the
fellow who ran the road show for help. Wells wanted to be given
the nitrous oxide and then have his friend pull the tooth. The
road show fellow agreed. Wells went under, his friend pulled the
tooth, and Wells did not feel anything.
Wells realized that to introduce the use of this gas to a wider
population for general surgery was going to take some thought
and effort. He got in touch with a friend and business partner,
William Morton (181968), who had contacts in the Boston medical community. As Morton quickly saw this as an opportunity to
profit and bring esteem to himself, he took Wells to meet the highly
respected head of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr.
John Collins Warren. Surgeons were well aware that progress
needed to be made in creating a way for patients to withstand surgery, so Warren thought this proposal was interesting. In January
1845, he arranged to pull a patients tooth after the patient had
breathed in nitrous oxide. Because this offered a groundbreaking
opportunity, Wells arranged for the procedure to be conducted
in front of an audience of interested medical professionals. Wells
was asked to administer the appropriate dose of nitrous oxide, but
when Warren pulled the fellows tooth the patient cried out. Later
the patient said he felt nothing and must have simply groaned, but
the damage was done. Wells was humiliated, and the medical community continued its brutal but familiar methods for conducting
surgery and dental work.
William Morton was not tainted by the experiment since he
had merely provided an introduction to Dr. Warren, and he sensed
there was still great opportunity. He began experimenting with
ether, the other substance that was popular on the party circuit.
In 1846, he got in touch with Charles Jackson (180580) a brilliant
but reputedly cantankerous scientist. Morton consulted Jackson
on how to use ether to numb a patient for dental work. Jackson
provided Morton with some additional information, and Morton
immediately set to work experimenting with it. Mortons work

became known to another young surgeon who practiced at Massachusetts General, and, since the substance to be used was different, the surgeon was successful in encouraging Dr. Warren to give
this new procedure a chance. Warren agreed and set an appointment for another public demonstration the next day.
Traditionally, doctors had always shared medical advances so
that all could benefit, but Morton wanted to make the ether a
proprietary product on which he could make money. He had to
figure out a way to disguise what he was doing so that no one else
could do it. With only 24 hours notice of the demonstration, Morton created a slightly different delivery method and added orange
oil to mask the basic ingredient he was using. He arrived for the
surgery 25 minutes late, to the great annoyance of Dr. Warren
who was about to go ahead and
make the first incision. Warren reluctantly paused and
permitted Morton to proceed
with putting the patient to
sleepa feat that was accomplished quickly. The surgery
was a success, and the patient
felt no pain.
The use of ether for surgery spread quickly, and scientists began to experiment
with other similar substances
such as chloroform, which
soon replaced ether in many
operating rooms. Chloroform
was easier to handle because
it was less likely to combust,
and patients tolerated it better.
Ether often caused vomiting, As the use of anesthesia grew,
and people who had chloro- chloroform became more popular
than ether for surgical procedures.
form were less likely to have Chloroform was easier to administer
an upset stomach afterward. and caused fewer upset stomachs.

The use of chloroform before surgery grew quickly; it was a major
advance for both patient and surgeon.
Today, anesthesia is administered by a specialist who has studied anesthesiology and not only understands the different types
of anesthesia but how to carefully monitor the person during surgery. The anesthesiologist also helps determine whether general
anesthesialoss of consciousnessor local anesthesia, where the
nerves in a particular part of the body are frozen, is appropriate for each situation. Today, less than one patient out of 250,000
people die from anesthesia used for surgery. Interestingly, nitrous
oxide has regained popularity in dentistry. It seems to be unique
in having no toxic effects on the body.
While the gains made in anesthesia have been remarkable for
patients, the end did not work out so well for those who introduced
the process to the world. Crawford Long, who remained largely
unrecognized for his work, is the only one who emerged unscathed
from the experience. He continued to practice medicine until he
died of a stroke in 1878. Wells switched from nitrous oxide to chloroform for his dental practice, and he soon became addicted to
chloroform. He was arrested in 1848 for pouring sulfuric acid on a
prostitute and committed suicide while in jail. Morton and Jackson
ended their lives feuding over credit for creating a way to anesthetize surgical patients. Morton had gotten Jackson to cosign on a patent application for the use of ether. Morton called it Letheon, and
he tried to sell licensing rights but the patent was worthless; others
were readily able to figure out how to use ether for surgery so they
saw no need to pay Morton for the rights to anything. Morton died
at a young age, greatly frustrated. Dr. Jackson spent the rest of his
life trying to be recognized for inventing anesthesia.
The Development of X-rays

Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen was a dedicated physicist who made a
major contribution to medical science by his accidental discovery
of rays that were capable of passing through the human body. This
discovery was to have a major effect on 20th-century medicine,

and in 1901 Rntgen was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for
his 1895 discovery of X-rays.
In 1895, Rntgen was in his laboratory experimenting with
electron beams emitted from a gas discharge tube (a Crookes tube).
Rntgen noticed that a fluorescent screen in his lab started to emit
a faint green glow when the electron beam was turned on. Fluorescent material was known to glow in reaction to electromagnetic
radiation, so this would not have surprised him, but Rntgens
tube was wrapped with heavy black cardboard that should have
blocked the rays. In order for the glow to be created, the rays had
to have been passing through the cardboard. Rntgen tried placing
books and papers between the tube and the screen, but the glow
still occurred. For the next two months, he undertook systematic
After Rntgen identified the meaning of his discovery of what he called

X-rays, he created a device similar to this one so that he could further
experiment with the process.

experimentation of what was happening. Because of the unknown
nature of the rays, he called them X-rays.
As he experimented, he saw that the rays also passed through
the human body, providing a silhouette of the bones within. To
prove what he witnessed, Rntgen needed to capture it photographically. He asked his wife to let him photograph her hand as
it looked when penetrated by radiation. This X-ray photograph was
the first of a human body part. Upon seeing it, physicians began to
realize how X-rays could be helpful in medicine. On December 28,
1895, he submitted a report On a New Kind of Ray: A Preliminary Communication to the Wrzburg Physico-Medical Society.
On January 5, 1896, a little more than a week later, a reporter for
the Vienna press wrote a story, and excitement for the process
began to spread around the world. Rntgens remarkable discovery
created a significant advance in diagnostic medicine, permitting
doctors to see straight through human tissue. See the sidebar The
Application of Radiology on page 50 for more information about
the medical uses of radiation.
Unlike many medical discoveries, X-rays were embraced
quickly. To people in the early 20th century, it may have seemed
like what would be considered a science fiction advance today. To
be able to view the skeleton through clothesand fleshseemed
amazing. Within weeks, doctors were using X-rays to locate bullets and detect broken bones, and they soon found that if they had
their patients drink barium salts dissolved in water, X-rays could
reveal the esophagus, stomach, and small intestine. A solution of
iodine could be used to diagnose problems in the bladder or kidneys, and other chemicals permitted doctors to see the veins.
Rntgen never tried to make money from his discovery, though
others certainly capitalized on the public excitement over this new
discovery. Thomas Edison built an X-ray device with a screen
large enough to permit people to see their entire bodies via X-ray,
and people lined up for turns seeing themselves. X-ray machines
also began appearing at game arcades and in department stores.
Shoe stores decided there was a very practical purpose for an X-ray
machine for the foot that permitted shoe salesmen to check the fit
The ability to use radiation in many different ways became popular

with the public. This is an example of a device that permitted a shoe
salesman to see an X-ray of a childs foot in a new pair of shoes through
the fluoroscope and then pronounce whether or not the shoe was the
right fit.
of a shoe based on an X-ray. Unfortunately, the negative effects

of X-rays soon became apparent, as those who worked near these
new devices began to suffer from sickness caused by radiation
exposure. Edisons assistant, Clarence Dally, was one of the first
to become ill. His hands turned red, his skin peeled away, and
his hair fell out, and he died within a few years. However, it was
a long time before scientists started taking adequate measures to
protect themselves when working with radiation.
Marie Curie (18671934): Pioneer in the Field

of Radioactivity
Marie Curie made major contributions to physics and chemistry
and was the first person to win two Nobel prizes. She is remembered as the discoverer of the radioactive elements polonium and
radium, and, while this discovery changed scientists understanding of matter and energy, the application of this knowledge also
ushered in a new era in medical research and treatment.
Building on the work of Wilhelm Rntgen and his discovery
of X-rays, Marie and Pierre Curie (Pierre was a physicist married
to Marie) along with French physicist Antoine-Henri Becquerel
began investigating what other elements might emit similar rays.
Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emit radiation, and Marie
Curie discovered radiation coming from the metallic element thorium and even stronger radiation from a mineral called pitchblende.
She called the substances that gave off these rays radioactive. The
Curies next undertook to discover exactly what chemical element
produced the radioactivity. In July 1898, they announced the discovery of a new chemical element, which they named polonium
after Marie Curies homeland of Poland. The discovery of another
element, radium, followed in December 1898. In 1903, Marie and
Pierre Curie and Antoine-Henri Becquerel received the Nobel
Prize in physics for their research on radioactivity.
The Curies successful partnership was brought to an untimely
end in 1906 when Pierre was hit by a horse and carriage while
crossing the street. Marie Curie went on to study the chemistry
and medical applications of radium, and in 1911 she was awarded
the Nobel Prize in chemistry in recognition of her work in discovering radium and polonium and in isolating radium. In 1914, the
University of Paris built the Institut du Radium (now the Institut
Curie) to provide laboratory space for research on radioactive materials, and Marie Curie contributed to the advancement of scientific
work at the institute by directing that the Nobel Prize money and
other financial rewards be used to finance further research. The
Curies refused to patent any of their discoveries as they wanted
others to benefit from what they had learned.
Marie and Pierre Curie Museum, Warsaw (Museum of Warsaw)
During World War I (191418), Marie Curie played an active

role in the use of radiation for diagnostic purposes. She helped
equip ambulances with X-ray equipment and drove to the front
lines herself. The International Red Cross made her head of its
radiological service. She and her colleagues at the Institut du
Radium also held courses for medical orderlies and doctors, teaching them how to use the new technique.
Maries health eventually suffered from her work. The dangers of
radioactivity were unknown at that time, and the Curies had never
worn protective clothing or taken any measures to guard against
exposure to radiation. Marie encountered vision problems from the
radiation exposure, and she underwent several cataract operations,
which was not an easy procedure at that time. She died of leukemia,
almost certainly caused by radiation, on July 4, 1934. A few months
before Maries death, her daughter and son-in-law, the Joliot-Curies,
had announced the discovery of artificial radioactivity.
The Application of Radiology

In the century since Rntgens discovery and Marie and Pierre
Curies work in the field, electromagnetic radiation has been
put to medical use in several ways: for diagnostic radiology,
to treat many kinds of cancer, and interventionally, to optimize
treatment without surgery.
Diagnostic Radiology
Diagnostic radiology permits physicians to obtain both static
(still) and dynamic (moving) images of body tissues and functions to study both normal anatomy and physiology and abnormalities caused by disease or injury. The process involves
passing a localized beam of radiation through the part of the
body being examined to produce an X-ray, which can take several forms. It can be a plain image such as the common chest
X-ray; a mammogram (an X-ray image of the female breast
used to scan for cancerous tumors); a tomograph (an image
that reveals depth within a structure by using a series of Xrays); or a computed tomography (CT or CAT) scan, a computer analysis of a cross-sectional image of the body.
Some body parts (certain organ systems and muscular
and skeletal structures) cannot be viewed using normal diagnostic radiology. However, physicians learned that if patients
drink, inhale, or are injected with substances called contrast
media, radiation can then be used to reveal these systems.
Contrast media can be used to study the upper gastrointestinal tract, or a contrast substance can be injected into an
artery, vein, or lymph vessel in order to produce an angiogram so that doctors can obtain more information about a
patients bodily functions. To capture these systems in action,
radiologists can use fluoroscopy to obtain dynamic images
of the intestinal tract or the flow of contrast material through
blood vessels or the spinal canal. Fluoroscopy can either be
analyzed while the test is being conducted or the images can

be recorded for later study.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans are used to diagnose brain tumors and strokes by injecting the patient with
glucose with radioactive tracers. As the body metabolizes the
glucose, the PET scan monitors the radioactive particles emitted
by the tracers in the glucose. Since the 1970s, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly being used to produce computer-processed views of soft tissue, such as arteries, nerves,
tendons, and some tumors, and ultrasound uses high-frequency
sound waves, which are reflected by tissue in the body.
Therapeutic Radiology
Therapeutic radiology uses ionizing radiation in the treatment
of cancer. Normal tissues have a greater ability to recover from
the effects of radiation than tumors and tumor cells. A radiation dose sufficient to destroy cancerous cells only temporarily injures adjacent normal cells. (Certain cancers are resistant
to radiology, and then radiation is not part of the therapy.)
Radiation therapy is commonly employed either before
or shortly after surgical removal of certain tumors to destroy
tumor cells that could (or may already have) spread beyond
the surgical margins. Radiation therapy may be used alone
as the treatment of choice in most cancers of the skin, in certain stages of cancers involving the cervix, uterus, breast,
and prostate gland, and in some types of leukemia and lymphoma, particularly Hodgkins disease. Radiation is also used
in conjunction with cancer-treatment drugs.
Scientists are exploring therapies for brain-controlled
movement disorders such as tremors, epilepsy, and Parkinsons disease that would use targeted radiation.
(continues)
(continued)
Interventional Radiology
Interventional radiology uses radiologic imaging to guide
catheters (hollow, flexible tubes), balloons, filters, and other
tiny instruments through the bodys blood vessels and other
organs in order to bring about a solution without surgery.
These types of interventional uses of radiology include balloon angioplasty, the use of a balloon to open blocked or
narrowed arteries; chemo-embolization, the delivery of anticancer drugs directly to a tumor; fallopian tube catheterization, which opens blocked fallopian tubes, a common cause
of infertility in women; and thrombolysis, which dissolves
blood clots.
The Aquilion 320 provides a three-dimensional view of the intended organs

in much less time than was previously required, thus reducing a patients
radiation exposure time. (Johns Hopkins Medical Center)

Curie was one of the most famous women of her time. Though
she resented the time fame took away from her work, she was able
to use her good name to promote the medical uses of radium by
facilitating the foundation of radium therapy institutes in France,
Poland, and the United States.
The Discovery of Viruses

After Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch identified bacteria as the
cause of many diseases, most scientists became increasingly certain that it was just a matter of time until they unlocked the causes
of every illness. Scientists identified a wide range of organisms,
one by one, including those responsible for cholera, diphtheria,
bubonic plague, and malaria, among others. However, there were
still some diseases that left scientists mystified. Pasteur himself
puzzled over onerabies. Though he successfully created a vaccine to prevent rabies, Pasteur was never able to isolate or culture
the agent that caused it. He speculated that whatever the entity
was seemed to be too small for him to find.
The work of two men on behalf of the tobacco industry laid the
groundwork for the field of virology. The process started in 1890
when a Russian graduate student in botany, Dmitri Ivanovsky
(18641920), undertook a study of diseased tobacco plants to help
Russian farmers reduce the damage occurring to their tobacco
crops. A German botanist Adolf Mayer had identified that juice
from sick plants could transmit illness to healthy plants, so Ivanovsky set out to find the causative microbe. In this early era of
bacteriology, scientists had discovered that a filter could be used to
trap the microbes they were investigating, and Ivanovsky selected
an extraordinarily fine filter, known as a Chamberland candle,
to use. Ivanovsky soon saw that whatever caused the illness was
still too small to be stopped by his filter. He noted that the illness
continued to spread from plant to plant, and he was unable to see
the microbe, to catch it in a super-fine filter, or to grow it in a cultureall of which would have been possible had the agent been

similar in size to bacteria. In 1892, he presented his findings to the
St. Petersburg Academy of Science, concluding that the cause of
the disease was either a toxin produced by the microbe or perhaps
some type of minute microbial spore.
Farmers were still looking for help with the tobacco crops, and
a Dutch botanist Martinus Beijerinck (18511931) began work on
the problem. His experiments were similar to Ivanovskys, but
he added the element of heat. He heated the sap drawn from sick
plants to 194F (90C) and found that the sap no longer caused
illness. If the agent had been bacteria it would have survived the
heating. He also noted that the alcohol and disinfectant that would
have killed bacteria had no effect on the disease-carrying ability
of the saptherefore, it had to be a different causative agent. He
termed it contagium vivum fluidum (soluble living germ). From
Beijerincks reference comes the term virus.
What are now known as viruses remained unseen, but scientists acknowledged that there was something there that was
smaller than bacteria that was causing illnesses. Scientists also
put forward the theory that only plants and animals were susceptible to these minute agents. In 1898, two German scientists
were studying foot-and-mouth disease in hoofed animals, and they
determined that this disease, too, was caused by this soluble living germ, but they continued to believe that this type of germ did
not invade the human species.
Viruses that infect bacteria (bacteriophages) were identified in
the 1910s, and this permitted scientists to begin observing viruses
effects and how they multiplied. Finally, in 1931, with the aid
of the newly invented electron microscope, scientists finally saw
what a virus looked like, and the tobacco mosaic virus was one of
the first to be studied in detail. Over time, scientists came to understand that viruses are subcellular organisms, which means they
are smaller than most cells, including human cells and bacteria.
(Bacteria can be measured in micrometers, viruses are described
in nanometers.) Scientists were surprised to discover that most
viruses consist of minute particles, not just fluid as had been suspected. Unlike bacteria, viruses are not living cells; they are tiny

packets of genetic material that are parasitic. They must infect a
host cell in order to reproduce and to manufacture substances for
their own life cycle. Outside a host, some viruses can survive in a
dormant state for quite some time and reactivate when absorbed
into a new host. (Viruses have long been thought to be the smallest
infectious agent, but recently that position has been taken over by
two smaller pathogens known as prions and viroids.)
Vaccines Precede Effective Treatment

Physicians had some success in finding ways to prevent the spread
of some of these illnesses. In 1798, Edward Jenner created the first
vaccine against smallpox. Rabies was another disease for which
a vaccine proved effective. Despite these gains, there was still a
lot to learn, starting with a new discovery of how an illness could
travel from person to person. In 1901, Walter Reed (18511902)
and the Reed Commission, a team of investigators, confirmed the
vector theory first conceived by Dr. Carlos Finlay. Finlay suggested
that yellow fever was actually a highly contagious illness, but it
did not pass from person to person unaided. The virus traveled
from sick people to healthy people via a vector (carrier), in this
case, the mosquito. Since scientists could not identify a bacteria
connected with the disease, this was the first proof that a virus
caused illness in humans.
As technology has improved, scientists have been able to undertake detailed identification and characterization of viruses. They
now know that viruses enter the body in many waysfor example,
they can be ingested, inhaled, or passed person to person via a vector. Physicians were fortunate that they gained a weapon against
some viruses through the creation of vaccines, as viruses are hard
to cure once they invade the body. They take up residence inside
the bodys own cells, making it difficult for the immune system to
attack them. It was not until the 1970s that there were drugs available to the general public that were helpful in curing viruses.
Scientists are still baffled by many viruses. Many types of viruses
can mutate quickly, so the search for a cure is often very fluid as the

virus changes in order to survive. SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome) and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) are two of
the more troubling viruses that still await answers today.
New Methods of Treatment

Emil Behring (18541917) was the pioneering doctor who introduced the first serum therapies. The use of serum therapies
involved immunizing animals against specific diseases and then
extracting blood serum from those animals to inject into people
with the disease. Behring primarily focused on diphtheria and
tetanus, two diseases that were untreatable at the end of the 19th
century. In the late 19th century, statistics for Germany alone
reveal that 50,000 children died annually from the disease.
Behring started his medical career in the military, but he
became interested in research when he had the opportunity to
work under the renowned Robert Koch at the Institute for Infectious Diseases. Behring began experimenting using a vaccinelike
method to create a cure. Working with rats, guinea pigs, and rabbits, Behring immunized the animals to create a weakened form of
the infectious agent that caused diphtheria. The researchers then
extracted the blood serum from these newly immunized animals
and injected it into nonimmunized animals that were infected
with diphtheria. They discovered that the sick animals could be
cured with the serum. Behring and a colleague were credited with
developing the first effective therapeutic serum against diphtheria.
Behring and another colleague Shibasaburo Kitasato went on to
develop a serum against tetanus. Neither, however, had yet been
tested on people. Behrings early tests using the serum on people
were unsuccessful as he had not yet mastered how to create the
proper concentration of the antitoxinsstrong enough to fight the
disease but not so strong to add to the infection.
Working separately, bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich (see chapter 4)
developed a standardized way to determine the quality and quantity of antitoxins to use in the serum. By 1894, a pharmaceutical
company was producing the serum.

Behring went on to explore whether he could create a therapy
to use against tuberculosis. He soon realized this was not feasible,
and he applied his knowledge to creating vaccines to use against
diphtheria and tetanus.
Conclusion
The progress in medicine during this erathe late 1800s and early
1900swas truly remarkable, but different segments of the population would give very different answers if they were asked to
identify the most significant advance during the time period. Certainly, some scientists would point to the discovery of radiation
that is now used diagnostically, therapeutically, and interventionally; others would highlight the discovery of viruses. But anesthesia would undoubtedly be cited by patients as the most significant
progress of the era. At last, patients could receive surgical treatment without undergoing the searing pain of the process.
4
advances in Medications
hen scientists determined that bacteria was often the

cause of illness, this marked a major step forward because
now scientists and physicians had a new lens through which to
consider their ideas for treatment. They realized that medications that made a patient feel better were valuable but that they
did not necessarily bring an end to an illness. For that they
needed something that could actually kill bacteria. The search
for these medications, now known as antibiotics, began in the
late 1800s.
The early sulfonamide drugs (sulfa drugs) helped manage infections until antibiotics were discovered. The sulfa drugs inhibit
bacterial growth and activity by interfering with the metabolic
processes in some types of bacteria. The development of these
drugs showed that there were medications that could fight several strains of infection. In the 1930s, when the first sulfa drug,
Protonsil, was shown to be effective, a sulfa drug craze ensued.
Pharmaceutical companies were particularly excited when they
realized that the prime active ingredient was not patent protected,
meaning that any company could make it. The sulfa drugs saved
thousands of lives in World War II by providing something that
could help fight infection in wounded soldiers.
58
Advances in Medications
59
But medicine was truly transformed by the accidental discovery of penicillin, which marked the start of modern antibiotics.
Initially penicillin and the antibiotics that followed were greeted
as miracle drugs that could wipe out serious illness, and, of course,
they were. However, today physicians are much more cautious.
They now have witnessed that a number of patients develop allergies to the medications from overuse, and, more frighteningly, bacteria have proven capable of evolving and developing into what are
unscientifically referred to as superbugs, which are not controlled
or eliminated by the current arsenal of antibiotics.
Three other drugs are worthy of highlighting in this chapter.
The first, aspirin, preceded the development of penicillin, and
physicians still marvel that this very simple medication is highly
effective; scientists today continue to explore ways it can be used.
This chapter introduces Salversan, a drug that was developed by
the scientist Paul Ehrlich. Salversan was the first effective drug
against syphilis, and it is particularly significant because it is considered the first of the chemotherapy drugs, which are primarily
used to fight cancer.
The final medication that is described in this chapter is one
that also changed historythe birth control pill. For the first time,
women were given an increased ability to choose their own fate by
managing their childbearing. This has had an enormous effect on
developed countries, and the manner in which the medication was
created required the confluence of both science and social opinion.
asPirin: siMPle and eFFeCtive

As long ago as Hippocrates time, people knew that there were
ingredients in nature that could be used to ease aches and pains. In
the Egyptian Ebers papyrus that dates back 3,500 years ago, it was
noted that the juice from the bark of the willow tree could ease
discomfort. This same recommendation appeared in the 1700s,
when the scientist Reverend Edmund Stone wrote of using willow bark to help with fevers and agues. As scientists began to

explore the chemical makeup of this
cure-all, the useful
chemical in the willow bark came to be
known as salicin
(the name is derived
from salix, Latin for
willow).
The next challenge was how to
In addition to aspirin, one of Bayers early products make the chemical
was heroinas the advertisement indicates, it
into something that
was highly regarded for relieving coughs.
could be proffered
as a medication. An
Italian chemist by the name of Piria began working to turn salicin
into an ingredient that could be taken medicinally. He found that
he could create salicylic acid, and it worked very well to reduce
pain and swelling. The only hindrance was that this new medicine
often caused patients to have upset stomachs. For some people, the
stomach pain was only a mild ache, but other people experienced
bleeding from the digestive tract, forcing them to stop treatment.
In 1853, a French chemist named Charles-Frdric Gerhardt tried
to improve on the sodium salicylate concoction by combining it
with acetyl chloride. He produced a new compound that was less
irritating to the stomach, and he published a paper on the topic.
However, he soon abandoned the project because the process of
making the new preparation was time-consuming and tedious.
(Some experts think Gerhardt deserves more credit than he gets
in the creation of aspirin.)
Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist employed by Friedrich
Bayer & Company, is the person credited with coming up with a
way for salicylic acid to be taken with fewer negative side effects.
Hoffmanns father suffered from terrible joint pain, and Hoffmann
saw firsthand how uncomfortable his father was when taking salicylic acid for his pain. He began looking for a way to reduce the
Advances in Medications 61
stomach distress. Hoffmann assumed that the damage was occurring because the drug was an acid, so he worked to find something
that would mask the acidic aspect of the drug without harming its
ability to help with pain and swelling. He eventually discovered
that he could cover the acidic parts by converting it to acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), which seemed to work well for patients without
damaging the stomach.
Though today the names Bayer and aspirin are deeply
interconnected and the worldwide market for this over-the-counter drug is huge, Bayer did not respond enthusiastically to Felix
Hoffmanns discovery after he revealed what he was working on.
It turned out that Hoffmann and his drug became entangled in
a company turf war. Hoffmann worked in the research department under a fellow named Arthur Eichengrn; Eichengrn and
Hoffmann had contracts with Bayer by which they would receive
a royalty on any patentable product they invented, and Eichengrn knew that Hoffmanns discovery held that potential. They
encountered stalling and resistance from Heinrich Dreser, who
was in charge of Bayers pharmacological testing and standardization department. Dreser had an agreement with Bayer by which
he would receive a royalty on any product he introduced. If Dreser could introduce the project, and Hoffmann and Eichengrn
never patented it, they were out of the picture. When the drug
finally entered the marketplace under the Bayer name, Dreser
was the financial beneficiary. This was the way it eventually
worked out. As for calling it aspirin, the people at Bayer came
up with the term: A was for acetyl chloride, and spir was
for the spiraea ulmaria plant (the plant from which the salicylic
acid was derived), and in was added as a common ending for
medications.
While aspirin was the perfect drug for wide introduction
since it had many applications and could help with many types
of pain, the Bayer Company was also the perfect company to be
the first major manufacturer of it. Bayer had been started in 1863
as a dye-manufacturing plant, but as the dye industry began to
fade during the 1880s, the company decided to switch from dyes

to pharmaceuticals. However, from their past as a dye company,
they were accustomed to a business model that involved mass
production and marketing on a scale far beyond what drug companies had done in the past. Bayer had their own sales representatives, they took out trade ads, and they assumed that their
work should be patented just as it would be in the dye industry.
These practices were quickly incorporated by the pharmaceutical
industry. Drugs became commodities that needed to be standardized and were manufactured in an industrial setting for profit.
Early advertising for aspirin stressed safety, particularly heart
safety. Today scientists know that aspirin can actually be beneficial for heart health but early on, it was actually a top concern.
During the 1920s, when only one brand of aspirin existed, Bayer
advertisements promised: Does Not Affect the Heart.
Bayer was extremely successful with its new drug, but its exclusivity was to end after World War I. Bayer was a German company,
and at the end of World War I part of Germanys agreement in
Cornstarch and water are added to the active ingredient, acetylsalicylic

acid, to create a pill form of the medication. The cornstarch serves as
binder and filler, and a portion of the lubricant, ranging from vegetable oil
to a water-soluble acid, keep the mixture from sticking to the machinery.
The mixture is dried and then formed into tablets.
concluding the war involved reparations by specific companies.
Bayer had trademarks on aspirin as well as heroin (at this time,
heroin was used medicinally as a very powerful cough suppressant and pain reliever) and had to give up both trademarks to
France, England, and Russia. This agreement was actually part
of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Evolution of the Use of Aspirin

During the 1880s and 1890s, physicians were very concerned
about the negative effects of fevers; a high body temperature was
considered very worrisome. Physicians reasoned that fever indicated that patients tissues were burning up. Aspirin successfully
brought down fevers, and, because it was so effective, this was
one of the first uses for which it was touted. However, as medical
study advanced, physicians began to note that even when aspirin
lowered a patients fever, it did not necessarily change the course
of the disease. Over time, they began to realize that if the aspirin
did not alter the outcome of the disease, there was probably less
need to focus on bringing down the fever.
Aspirin was still viewed as a helpful medicine, and the focus
returned to the benefit of taking it to relieve pain, a use for which
it is still recommended. Now aspirin is manufactured by numerous companies in various forms and is one of the most widely used
drugs in the world. Though aspirin is still a vital tool in the fight
against pain and is often recommended in cases where physicians
want a patients fever to be brought down, today the majority of
people who take aspirin do so for heart health. Americans alone
take at least 80 million aspirin tablets a day.
The remaining side effects of aspirin that persist have to do with
stomach aches or actual harm to the stomach lining (see the following sidebar How Aspirin Works on page 64). Scientists have introduced drugs such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen and naproxen.
(The latter two are known as nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs,
referred to as NSAIDS.) These are often used for people who should
not take aspirin, and while they are helpful with pain relief, none
have the same protective effect in guarding against heart disease.

As scientists contemplate the future of aspirin, they continue
to marvel at its versatility. They are finding that it can help with
high blood pressure, guard against strokes, be mixed into a salve to
relieve itching, calm the irritation from a sunburn, reduce the risk
of heart attack, soften calluses, shorten the length of time a cold
How Aspirin Works

When physicians began recommending aspirin (in the form
of salicylic acid) for pain or to bring down fevers, they had no
idea how it actually worked. Doctors knew it was not site specific; if a patients head ached, the aspirin still traveled through
the whole body, and yet the only noticeable effect on the person had to do with the reduction of the pain in the persons
head. It was not until 1982 that a scientist grasped how aspirin
worked, and the British pharmacologist Sir John Vane won
the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery.
The first step in understanding how aspirin decreased pain
had to do with learning more about how people register their
sense of feeling. Over time, scientists came to realize that no one
feels anything until a message is sent to the brain via a nerve
that is designated to take in various informationwhether it is
the feeling of warmth, cold, pain, something rough against the
skin, or the sensation of a blow to the body.
The next thing Sir John Vane came to understand was that
when the body is hurt, the damaged tissue releases messagesending chemicals, some of which are prostaglandins. Based
on the strength of the chemical signal, the brain tells the body
how to respond, which can vary from telling the hand to move
away from a hot pan or to simply register that the person has
a headache and the person may rub his forehead as a result.
Vane realized that prostaglandins were key, but he had
more unraveling to do because he knew the body pro-
sore lasts, and may decrease the odds of a person getting Alzheimers by reducing inflammation in the brain.
Aspirin may also prove helpful with cancer. Researchers at
Newcastle University in England explored a biological process that
makes blood vessels grow, and they have observed that aspirin
duces two types of prostaglandins. Some prostaglandins

are released by damaged tissue and create swelling and
send pain messages; others help to provide a protective lining for the stomach and small intestine. The prostaglandins
that are created from a painful incident are created using an
enzyme called cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2). Eventually, Vane
learned that aspirin has the ability to stick to COX-2, reducing the creation of prostaglandins. Aspirin does not correct
or cure a headache or arthritis or totally reduce pain, but it
does reduce the number of pain signals traveling through the
nerves to the brain.
When a patient takes an aspirin, it dissolves in the stomach
or the small intestine and is absorbed into the bloodstream.
Although it travels throughout the body, it only works where
there are prostaglandins being made, and this includes both
the area where there is pain as well as the stomach. Because
aspirin is nonselective, it prevents prostaglandins from being
made both in the stomach and in the area experiencing discomfort. When aspirin is taken too often or in too great a
quantity, it can cause thinning of the stomach lining, and this
is why aspirin can cause stomach pain or bleeding. People
have always suspected that aspirin hurt the stomach because
it was an acid, but stomach problems are actually the result
of the reduction of prostaglandins needed in the lining of the
stomach.

seems to block the formation of blood vessels that feed the growth
of cancer. This needs further study, but it is one more amazing
application for a very simple, very old drug.
The Discovery of Penicillin Changes Medicine

An accidental discovery by the Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming (18811955) changed the world of medicine. As Fleming identified the power of what he and Howard
Florey and Ernst B. Chain would eventually develop into penicillin, physicians suddenly had a drug that could fight bacterial
infectionsa very important first that was to revolutionize medical care.
Alexander Fleming was born into a farming family in Scotland. His father died while Fleming was very young, so Fleming
was greatly affected by the life paths of his brothers. One of them
became a physician, and Fleming followed his path to medical
school. He was particularly influenced by one of his professors, Sir
Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy and immunology.
Fleming became interested in the natural bacterial action of the
blood and in antiseptics and, after serving as a captain of the army
medical corps during World War I, he returned to St. Marys Hospital in London to search for antibacterial substances that would
not be toxic to animal tissues.
Flemings war experiences had influenced him greatly; he saw
many soldiers die from septicemia from infected wounds. The
treatment of wounds at that time involved cleaning the wounds
with strong antiseptics, which had an unfortunate result. In addition to killing bacteria on the surface of the wound, the antiseptics
also weakened the soldiers immunological defenses. Fleming also
saw that bacteria in deep wounds were not affected by the antiseptic agent. During World War I, Fleming had an article about this
problem published in the respected medical journal the Lancet,
but it did not stimulate discussion or change. Physicians on the
battlefield did not change their practices; there was actually not
much they could do because there were no good alternatives.
In 1928, Fleming noticed
something that was to lead to
a significant discovery. He was
cleaning up his laboratory from
some earlier experiments when
he observed that mold had
developed on a staphylococcus
culture plate. Inexplicably, the
mold had created a bacteriafree circle around itselfthe
staph infection culture that
was growing elsewhere in the
plate disappeared around the
mold. Curious, Fleming grew
Sir Alexander Fleming (18811955)
the mold (Penicillium notatum) discovered penicillin in 1928, thus
in a pure culture and found making one of the greatest contributhat it produced a substance tions to medicine.
that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria.
He was inspired to experiment further, and he found that a
mold culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when it was
diluted. He continued his research and determined that the mold
could kill other types of bacteria. In experiments with small animals, it seemed to have no ill effect. Fleming published his discovery in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology. He
noted that his discovery might have therapeutic value if it could
be produced in quantity. Fleming continued working but found
that cultivating it was quite difficult, and he was unsuccessful at
isolating the antibiotic agent involved. As he experimented, he
found the penicillium he was working with was slow to act, and
he determined it would not last long enough to fight bacteria in
the human body. Fleming also worried that it would be hard to
produce in quantity.
Other research tasks interrupted Flemings work on penicillium, and it was a full 10 years later that two Oxford University
scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain took the investigation

a step further and isolated the substance in the mold that killed
the bacteria, now known as penicillin. Together, they worked out
how to isolate and concentrate penicillin, and an associate Norman Heatley came up with a method of maintaining the active
ingredient so that it could be delivered into the bodies of animals
or humans.
As the laboratory work progressed, penicillin still had not faced
an ultimate test of whether or not it could save lives by curing
infections. The physician Charles Fletcher, who worked in a hospital near Oxford where Florey and Chain were based, heard of
their work and approached them on behalf of one of his patients.
Fletcher had a patient with a severe bacterial infection who was
dyingnothing the physician tried had helped. Fletcher connected
with Chain and Florey and asked for some penicillin to try with
the patient. Florey and Chain quickly agreed, and, to the delight of
the scientists and the physician, the patients condition improved.
Unfortunately, the importance of dosage and quantity were not
understood. Though the patient got better in the beginning, the
dosage was not enough to kill all the bacteria in the patients body,
and he eventually succumbed to the infection. Though the result
of this case was disappointing, the experience had provided a great
deal of information about penicillin. They knew it worked; they
just needed more of it.
As World War II continued, the men knew that penicillin could
be key to helping many of the wounded, but they needed a way to
get it produced in quantity. England was overwhelmed by the war,
which was draining industrial and government resources, so Florey made contact with friends in the United States who referred
him to a lab in Peoria, Illinois, that was already doing some work
with growing fungal cultures. On July 9, 1941, Howard Florey and
Norman Heatley traveled to Peoria carrying a small quantity of
penicillin. The scientists at the American lab already had created
a way to speed fungal growth that involved submerging mold and
several chemical ingredients in deep vats into which they pumped
air. They also encouraged Florey to experiment with other sources
of mold, and, as it happened, the sturdiest fastest-growing mold
Penicillin kills bacteria by interfering with its ability to synthesize cell

wall material. The bacterium lengthens in preparation for dividing, but
eventually the weak cell wall ruptures, and the bacteria cannot multiply.
came from a strain of penicillin from a moldy cantaloupe purchased by Florey in a Peoria grocery store.
By November 26, 1941, Dr. Heatley and Andrew J. Moyer,
one of the lab scientists familiar with mold, succeeded in greatly
increasing the yield of penicillin that was possible, and, for the
first time, it seemed viable that penicillin might one day be mass
produced. In 1943, penicillin was tested in clinical trials, and it
was shown to be the most effective antibacterial agent anyone had

yet seen. The number of injured soldiers fighting for the Allies was
very much on everyones minds, and penicillin production was
increased quickly. With increased production, the price dropped
from an astronomical per dose price in 1940 to $20 per dose in
July 1943 to $0.55 per dose by 1946.
Penicillin soon became known as the wonder drug, and in 1945
Fleming, Chain, and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, thereby ushering in the era of antibiotics. On
May 25, 1948, Andrew J. Moyer was granted a patent for a method
of mass production of penicillin.
The Creation of Other Antibiotics

An antibiotic is a chemical substance produced by one organism
that is destructive to another. The chemist Dorothy Crowfoot
Hodgkin used X-rays to find the structural layouts of atoms and
the overall molecular shape of more than 100 molecules including penicillin. Hodgkins discovery of the molecular layout of
penicillin contributed to scientists ability to develop other antibiotics. Some of the early or more common ones include the
following:
Tetracycline. This is a large family of antibiotics that
is used to treat a broad spectrum of illnesses; it was first
observed in plants by the American physiologist Benjamin Minge Duggar. Lloyd Conover, a scientist working
at Pfizer, patented the antibiotic in 1950, and it became
a widely prescribed medication. Tetracycline sparked
the development of many chemically altered antibiotics.
Today, it is often prescribed to treat acne, but when it was
first discovered, it played an important role in stamping
out cholera in the developed world.
Nystatin. This drug was patented in 1957. It is often
used as prophylaxis in patients who are at risk for fungal
infections, such as AIDS patients and patients receiving
chemotherapy. Like many other antifungals and antibi
otics, nystatin was developed from a bacteria. It was isolated from Streptomyces noursei found in a soil sample in
1950 by Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown,
who were employed by the Division of Laboratories and
Research of the New York State Department of Health.
In 1954, Hazen and Brown named nystatin after the
New York State Public Health Department. In addition
to human ailments, the drug has been used to treat such
problems as Dutch elm disease and to restore water-damaged artwork from the effects of mold. The two scientists
donated the royalties from their invention, more than
$13 million, to a nonprofit corporation for the advancement of academic scientific study.
Amoxicillin. SmithKline Beecham patented Amoxicillin or amoxicillin/clavulanate potassium tablets in
1981 and first sold the antibiotic in 1998 under the trade
names of Amoxicillin, Amoxil, and Trimox. Amoxicillin is a semi-synthetic antibiotic. It is a commonly prescribed drug because it is administered orally and is well
absorbed and well tolerated by most people.
When antibiotics were first introduced, no one predicted that
overuse of these medications would cause the emergence of stronger, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The mutations in these infectious
agents pose huge dangers for the future. Currently, government
health groups worldwide are recommending that doctors curb the
number of antibiotics prescribed and use them only when no other
remedy will help.
The Search for a Magic Bullet

Paul Ehrlich (18541915) was a German chemist and bacteriologist
who made progress in many fields. He worked with Emil Behring
(see chapter 3) on developing an antitoxin to diphtheria and pioneered work in blood and histology that established hematology as
a field. But his search for a magic bullet to find chemical substances

that would specifically target pathogenic organisms launched the
field of chemotherapy. In the process, Ehrlich developed a very
important drug that was key to helping the many people who had
syphilis, which until that time was incurable.
Superbugs and Resistance

to Antibiotics
The widespread use of antibiotics to fight bacterial illness
beginning in the 1940s revolutionized medical care and dramatically reduced illness and death from infectious diseases.
Today, however, many bacterial infections in the United
States and throughout the world are developing resistance
to the most commonly prescribed antibiotic treatments.
The first microbes that appeared to be resistant were
noted very early. In 1947, just a few years after drug companies began mass-producing penicillin, scientists saw that
some microbes were resistant. The first to be identified was
Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that is often a harmless
passenger in the human body. However, it can cause illness,
such as pneumonia or toxic shock syndrome, when it overgrows or produces a toxin. A succession of other microbes
have followed.
Antibiotic-resistant infections are increasingly a problem
for hospitals and nursing homes where they can spread from
one patient to another, taking advantage of open wounds and
suppressed or overtaxed immune systems. In its October 2007
issue, the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that 94,360 U.S. patients developed an invasive infection from antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA) in 2005
and that nearly one of every five, or 18,650 of them, died.
Sometimes called superbugs, these infections cannot be
successfully treated with commonly prescribed antibiotics
The spirochete that causes syphilis was discovered by two
researchers in Berlin. Ehrlich decided to look for a drug that would
be effective against this particular bacterium and began exploring
some arsenic-based drugs. Though arsenic was poisonous, Ehrlich
and often involve longer illnesses, extended hospital stays,

severe side effects from last resort drugs, and lead to higher
treatment costs. Increasing numbers of U.S. soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have been plagued with highly
resistant infections. In addition, several cases of antibioticresistant infections have recently occurred in the general
population. The elderly, the immuno-compromised, and the
very young are most vulnerable, and some cases are virulent
enough to cause fatalities in young children.
A major factor in the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.
Most illnesses are caused by two kinds of germs: bacteria and viruses. Antibiotics are effective against infections
caused by bacteria, like a strep throat. Antibiotics do not
work against viruses, like the common cold, the flu, and
the majority of sore throats and runny noses, even though
sometimes physicians will take a chance it will help and
prescribe them.
This overuse threatens the effectiveness of these precious drugs, says Dr. Cindy Friedman, a medical director
at the Centers for Disease Control. Doctors and patients
are both part of the problem. Studies show that if a doctor believes a patient wants an antibiotic, he or she is much
more likely to prescribe one, even if the patient doesnt really
need one.

hoped he could find a magic bullet that was fatal to bacteria but not
fatal for humans. When a Japanese bacteriologist Sahachiro Hata
(18731938) came to work at Ehrlichs institute, he brought some
experience that intrigued Ehrlich. Hata had succeeded in infecting
rabbits with syphilis, so Ehrlich and Hata began to review some
of the arsenical drugs that had been set aside as ineffective. When
Hata tried 606 (the 606th compound out of 900 tried), it cured the
rabbits. Hata and Ehrlich then ran experiment after experiment
until they were sure it worked. When Ehrlich announced its success, he called it Salvarsan.
Like many other drugs, the medication was not accepted immediately, but eventually Salvarsan or Neosalvarsan (the more easily
manufactured and better tolerated version) were accepted for the
treatment of human syphilis. At last, the medical world had a way
to treat the devastating illness of syphilis, and Ehrlich laid the
groundwork for future forms of chemotherapy.
The Oral Contraceptive Pill

Few medications have created the stir that the pill has. It changed
the lives of women by permitting them to control the number of
children they havesomething that was impossible in earlier
times. (This form of birth control is viewed negatively by many
religious groups.) Many of the issues surrounding birth control
have become hot button issues for modern society. While the work
of several scientists made the creation of an oral contraceptive
possible, the work of a single woman must be acknowledged first
without Margaret Sanger the social conditions for the scientific
advancements would not have been in place.
Margaret Sanger (18791966) was born into poverty in Corning, New York, and was one of 11 children in a Catholic family.
Her mother had been pregnant 18 times, and seven of the pregnancies had ended in miscarriages. She died at the age of 50 from
tuberculosis. Margaret was 19 at the time and was said to feel
that her mothers numerous pregnancies had been a major factor
in her ill health and subsequent death. Margaret also noted class
differences in Corning. She observed that the wealthy families
had fewer children and seemed to have fewer problems, while
poorer families had more offspring and also encountered other
difficult family issues including unemployment, drunkenness,
and fighting.
With help from her sisters, Sanger worked her way through
nursing school and married a young architect. When Sanger
first began her nursing career, she frequently was asked by poor
women for the secret that rich women, who had fewer children,
seemed to know. By law, only doctors could talk about birth control; nurses were not to comment. In addition, the only methods available to doctors for women who wanted to limit their
pregnancies were condoms and diaphragmswhat are known as
barrier methods. If a womans doctor did not tell her about these
methods, it was not easy to get the information. Federal and state
laws prohibited birth control information to exist in print. Both
married women and single women frequently were desperate to
avoid childbirth, and when they became pregnant and felt they
could not cope with a pregnancy, they went to back-alley abortionists. Some died during the abortion; others died afterward
from infection. Those who survived often had difficulty having
children in the future.
Sanger and her husband started a family but rejected the normal
suburban lifestyle. Margaret and her husband spent time in Greenwich Village and were friends with social activists, free thinkers,
labor activists, and womens rights leaders. Sanger happened to
attend a lecture by the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856
1939), and, for her, his comments on sexuality and sexualization
of women provided inspiration to fight against female repression.
To Sanger, this social subjugation began with the lack of control
women had over their bodies. In 1914, she published a newspaper
The Woman Rebel that offered a platform for her views and in the
June issue she used the term birth control for the first time.
Since there were laws that banned any written material about
ways to prevent conception, the government indicted Sanger on
an indecency charge and pronounced her publication obscene. If

found guilty, Sanger could have been sentenced to 45 years in
prison, so she fled the country, leaving her husband to take care
of their children. William Sanger was soon jailed for handing out
copies of his wifes book Family Limitation, so Margaret decided
her only option was to come back to face trial. By this time, there
had been an outpouring of support for Sanger, and the government, receiving a negative response to what they were doing,
dropped the case.
Sangers next step was to open a birth control clinic, the first
ever in the United States. She faced condemnation by the Catholic Church, and sentiment against the presence of a birth control
clinic was strong enough that police raided the facility only 19
days after it opened. Sanger and one of her sisters who worked
with her were tried and sentenced to 30 days in jail for distributing contraceptive information. Both women refused to eat while
incarcerated and had to be force-fed for the length of their sentence. Shortly after their release, there was a glimmer of hope. The
New York State Court of Appeals broadened the laws definition of
disease to incorporate the risks of pregnancy and thus began the
process of legalizing contraception.
Sanger continued her social activism, starting clinics and
creating the Planned Parenthood Federation. All the attention
heightened interest from a number of people. Katherine Dexter
McCormick (18751967), a wealthy woman whose husband was
part of the family who ran a major agricultural machinery manufacturing company, was one of the first to step forward to offer
help. McCormicks husband developed schizophrenia, and McCormick feared the disease could be passed genetically, so she did not
want children. This gave her a vested interest in the cause, and
she offered to fund research for the search for an oral form of birth
control that women could take regularly and easily.
The work of several scientists contributed to the ultimate development of an oral contraceptive. A scientist named Gregory Pincus
(190367) had done research in genetics and embryology. He had
encouraged cell division in rabbit embryos, a precursor of cloning.
This was not well received by Harvard where he was teaching, so
he was denied tenure. He and a scientist friend started a company,
the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology. Sanger felt
Pincuss expansive thinking made him right to approach about
looking for a safe oral contraceptive. Pincus was familiar with
research that had identified progesterone, and researchers at the
University of Rochester had shown that progesterone prohibited
ovulation. This was further extended in 1937 by researchers at the
University of Pennsylvania who successfully used progesterone to
block ovulation in rabbits.
Pincus knew the next thing he needed was affordable synthetic
hormones, and he turned to Russell Marker, an organic chemist at
the University of Pennsylvania who developed a method of creating hormones from natural substances. Marker was soon replaced
by the chemist Carl Djerassi who extended the method and perfected an oral form of progesterone that was effective at halting
ovulation.
Next, Pincus added a physician to his team, a Catholic doctor named John Rock (18901984) who specialized in fertility
problems. Rock had angered the Catholic Church by supporting
the right for medical doctors to talk about contraception, and
he wrote a book called Voluntary Parenthood. Rock was an able
and well-qualified person to work on the product. Pincus and
Rock wanted to establish some drug trials to see how it worked
in women. A network of health clinics in Puerto Rico permitted
the trials to be conducted and asked for volunteers from their
patient base. Women came eagerly to get what became known as
the Pill. The statistics gathered from these trials were promising.
Pincus and Rock noted that it seemed to be 30 times more effective than other forms of birth control, but 17 percent of women
suffered side effects (some of which were quite debilitating, such
as daily vomiting). The possibilities of these side effects did not
deter women, the scientists, or even the Food and Drug Administration, the governmental body that needed to approve the drug
before it could be marketed. When Pincuss group approached
the FDA, the approval actually went through quite easily. One of
the main ingredients, Enovid, had been approved in 1957 for the

treatment of severe menstrual bleeding, and the Pill itself was
approved on May 11, 1960.
Today there are many versions of the birth control pill. The
efficacy remains quite good and scientists have found ways to
reduce the side effects by creating a medication that uses the lowest hormone dosage possible. While there is still a degree of risk
to those who take the oral contraceptive, including a slight risk of
blood clots, strokes, and cancer in some women, on the whole it is
a well-regarded medicine.
The availability of a birth control pill has changed the lives
of women in developed countries. Women in poor countries still
face the same problems women in the United States faced 100
years ago. They have difficulty preventing pregnancy, and abortions contain a big element of risk because they are still often done
by amateurs.
Despite the availability of an oral contraceptive for almost
50 years, the issues revolving around birth control are far from
settled. While most women would agree that the oral contraceptive offers a great improvement over the inconvenience of the diaphragm (since the condom also prevents against disease, it should
be used even if other forms of birth control are in place), the fact
that a woman must be on a medication for 365 days a year in order
to prevent pregnancy has its drawbacks. It also places full responsibility for birth control on the female.
As the field progresses, the morning-after pill (RU-486) is now
available by prescription. This drug, known as Mifeprex, causes
a potential fetus to abort. As of 2006, the FDA approved Plan B
as a nonprescription, behind-the-counter medicine that could be
sold to adults (including men) as an after-the-fact, emergency contraceptive. In 2009, the courts ruled that the FDA should make
Plan B available to girls 17 and older without a prescription. (This
lowers the age by one year for those who can buy it without a doctors prescription.) Scientists are at work on a male contraceptive
pill that interferes with sperm production but shows no long-term
effects once the medication is stopped. It is anticipated that it will
be available within the next five years.
Conclusion
As the cause of illnesses became better understood, scientists
finally could make notable inroads in creating pharmacological
treatments. Antibacterial medications like penicillin and other
antibiotics meant that more patients could survive serious infections, and the search for a magic bullet not only gave the medical
world a way to cure syphilis but Salvarsan was the first of the medications now known as a chemotherapy treatment, a class of drugs
that creates the main arsenal against cancer. The development of
the oral contraceptive pill made a major difference in womens lives
by giving them an opportunity to control child-bearing, and there
are doubtless more gains in store in this field as efforts are made
to create a male contraceptive pill. Not to be forgotten is the basic
wonder drug of the chapter, aspirin, an inexpensive nonprescription medication for which scientists continue to find new uses.
5
an answer to Polio and
other Changes in Medicine
he world of medicine changed enormously during the 20th

century. Scientists and physicians solved major health
threats like polio, but there were general weaknesses in the
overall approach to medicine. Leaders in the field began to see
that without a decision-making system, physicians were only a
little better off at making diagnoses than the physicians of 50
years ago.
Infantile paralysis, or poliomyelitis, has been around for a long
time, but it did not make headlines until the 20th century. The
most famous polio victim was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882
1945), who contracted polio in 1921 but went on to be elected to an
unprecedented four terms as president of the United States (1933
45). Roosevelt was outspoken about the need to raise money to
prevent or cure the disease, but he went to great lengths to hide
from the public the true nature of his illness. He was never photographed in his wheelchair, and when he arrived at public events,
he usually had a son and an aide to help him as he appeared to
walk along; people might have thought his legs were simply weakened, not paralyzed.
80
An Answer to Polio and other changes in Medicine
81
With a public that was gripped by fear of this terribly frightening disease, the news of a preventive vaccine was greeted with
great excitement, only to have that excitement dashed by a manufacturing error that resulted in many children being sickened by
the vaccine and even causing the deaths of a few. While the situation was remedied and other vaccines were quickly ushered forward, the experience with polio explains the medical world into
which Archie Cochrane, known as the father of evidence-based
medicine, entered. Cochrane advocated for a new way of managing patient care, one that relied on clinical evidence as viewed
through the lens of the physician, who was also expected to factor
in the specific needs of the patient when recommendations for
treatment were made.
The chapter begins with a description of the devastating effect
polio had on American children and how two different physicians
Jonas Salk and Albert
Sabinsought to find a
way to prevent the disease.
Though the two men were
never able to reconcile their
different approaches, a polio
vaccine did emerge and has
saved the world from more
outbreaks of this terrible
scourge. As doctors fought
to create better vaccines
and improved treatments,
they began to realize the
importance of a systematic
approach to medicine. The
chapter concludes with
an explanation of Archie
Cochranes campaign for
Jonas Salk (191495) is best known for
evidence-based medical creating the killed-virus polio vaccine.
practices.
(Centers for Disease Control)
Polio Outbreaks Create Great Fear

Small localized paralytic polio epidemics began to appear in
Europe and the United States around 1900 and spread to Australia and New Zealand during the next decade. These outbreaks of
polio in the early 20th century were alarming, but not because
the disease was new. Polio had actually been around for a long
time. In the past, however, its pattern had been very different.
The disease spreads through fecal matter, so children who lived
Polio Presents in Various Forms

Like many other illnesses, not every form of polio is the same.
The disease can present itself in any of the following forms:
Abortive polio is the mildest form of polio, as

referred to by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Up to 95 percent of people who have this polio
never suspect that they actually have it. For them
the disease is limited to a flulike illness, often with
upper respiratory involvement (sore throat, etc.).
Nonparalytic polio, the next level of the illness,
generally involves aseptic meningitis. According
to the CDC, 1 to 5 percent of people with this type
of illness show neurological symptoms such as
light sensitivity and neck stiffness.
Paralytic polio occurs in 0.1 to 2 percent of cases
and results in permanent paralysis of the limbs,
usually the legs. Of this group, 5 to 10 percent died
from complications. In some cases, paralysis eventually moved to the respiratory muscles, so iron
lungs were used to keep them alive. (An iron lung
is a contraption used to help people breathe. Some
people had to remain in these for months at a time.)
An Answer to Polio and Other Changes in Medicine 83

in the 19th century and earlier when sanitation standards were
lower became immune to the bacteria through early exposure. By
the 20th century, improvements in sanitation meant fewer children were exposed to the illness, so when they did encounter it,
they tended to be older and the results were more severe. (See the
sidebar Polio Presents in Various Forms on page 82.)
By 1950, physicians started noticing a change in the virulence
of the disease. Polio was primarily affecting children; many died
Iron lung ward of Ranchos Los Amigos Hospital, Downey, California, ca.
1953 (USDA)
The polio virus enters the body via the intestinal tract and
then moves to the bloodstream. If it goes on to attack the
nerves, the patient may suffer one of the two more serious
forms of polio.

of it or, if they survived, they might be paralyzed for life. The outbreaks occurred primarily in the summer, and there was a great
fear that public swimming pools were the environment where the
disease was most likely to spread. Parents fled the cities with their
children once school was out and kept them out of public pools to
try to eliminate exposure. In 1952, the United States encountered
the worst polio epidemic in the nations history. Of nearly 58,000
cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild
to disabling paralysis.
Salk and Sabin

Because the results were so devastating, the public was desperate
for answers, and scientists were eager to comply. Facing such a
major challenge, several groups took on the task of looking for a
cure. Ultimately, two well-respected scientists developed methods
that worked. The biologist and physician Jonas Salk eventually set
the pace by creating a dead virus that worked in a vaccine. However,
when problems with that immunization process occurred, Albert
Sabin stepped in with something safer and equally effective.
Jonas Edward Salk (191495) was a New Yorker who began
his medical career in the department of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, where he had accepted an invitation to join a
colleague Thomas Francis. Their first joint project was to create a
vaccine against influenza. In 1939, Francis and Salk were given a
grant to explore this possibility. During World War I, an estimated
20 million people died from the flu in a single year (1918). As the
international scene pointed toward the likelihood of World War II,
the government wanted something that might protect people from
a repeat of the horrors of the influenza virus. By 1943, Salk and
Francis had created a successful vaccine that worked for two of the
most common types of flu, and their ability to work well together
came in handy later on.
In the mid-1940s, Salk moved on to the University of Pittsburgh. He had begun working on a polio vaccine, and papers he
had written on the subject came to the attention of the head of the

National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. As a result, the organization committed major funding to Salks efforts. Salk based his
work on the efforts of those who had preceded him. Other scientists had learned that the virus is taken in via digestion and then
resides in the bloodstream for a time before invading the nerve
tissue. With this understanding, Salk began experimenting with
ways to attack the virus before it moved beyond the blood. Most
vaccines used weakened viruses to stimulate antibodies to fight
disease, but Salk felt that polio was too dangerous to do this and
wanted to use a dead virus. However, he needed to find a way to
evaluate when the virus was dead enough not to cause infection,
but not so inert that it was totally inactive. To determine this, he
worked with monkeys to assess various levels of the killed virus,
evaluating the quality of the vaccine based on the survival of monkeys who had been exposed to the illness. By 1952, Salk felt he
had an answer and put out an announcement about what he had
discovered. This ran counter to the accepted professional practices
of scientists of the time who were expected to present the facts to
other scientists in a scientific journal before announcing a cure,
and Salk was greatly criticized for not following protocol. Salk was
unperturbed; he felt the country was in the midst of a crisis and
needed the information, so in 1954 he began preparing to inoculate more than 400,000 children in a clinical trial. The old team
of Salk and Francis reunited for this event, with Thomas Francis serving as director of the trials. More than 1 million children
ages six to nine were vaccinated. One-third received the prepared
vaccination; one-third received an injection that was actually a
placebo; the final group was the control group and received nothing at all.
By 1955, America knew that Salks vaccine was a success. It
was formally announced that for 90 percent of the clinical participants Jonas Salks vaccine was very effective and safethese
statistics went a long way toward easing the publics worry about
future polio epidemics.
Once news of Salks success became known, there were all
types of grateful responses from the worried public. Churches held
When Jonas Salks killed-virus polio vaccine was first made available, it
was given by injection. Later on, Albert Sabin developed a vaccine using a
weakened form of the virus, and it could be given in liquid form or placed
in sugar cubes, making it easier to administer.
special services to give thanks and communities arranged for the

town bells to ring or observed moments of silence in Salks honor.
The public celebrations quieted quickly when a tragedy occurred
within the first month of the vaccines use.
Prior to the clinical trial, Jonas Salk visited each facility that
was making the vaccine to train them in working with the virus,
but once the trial was over and had been so successful, Salk
assumed the manufacturers understood the process to be used in
creating the vaccine. Unfortunately, one of the facilities made a
mistake. Two hundred of the children injected came down with
paralytic poliomyelitis, and 11 of them died. The public was horrified, and the government temporarily abandoned the vaccination
program. The fear of polio returned.
However, the medical community was better prepared than
they had been before Salks discovery. Other scientists had been
looking for cures for the disease or better ways to vaccinate, so the
disruption of the vaccination program opened opportunities for
other researchers. One such was Albert Sabin, a Russian who had
become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Dr. Sabin believed that working
with a live virus was more effective and actually less dangerous
than handling a dead one, and he was at work on a vaccine that

used a weakened form of the virus. In the late 1950s, Sabin conducted tests, first on monkeys and then on humans (including his
own family), and by 1960 the U.S. Public Health Service approved
it for manufacture.
Salk and Sabin never made peace with their two views of the
polio vaccine. While both vaccines were effective, Sabins grew
to be more popular because it could be given orally instead of by
injection, making it easier to use. Though Salk is more commonly
associated with developing the vaccineand he certainly did so
A global effort has been made to eradicate polio, and cases have
decreased by over 99 percent since 1988 (from an estimated more than
350,000 cases to only 1,997 reported cases in 2006). Today, only four
countries in the world remain polio-endemic (India, Nigeria, Pakistan,
and Afghanistan).

firstSabins vaccine has proven to be more useful to the world.
After these early efforts, countries around the world have tried to
vaccinate an increasing proportion of their populations. In 1985,
the World Health Organization (WHO) began a worldwide effort
to eradicate polio by 2000, and no new case of polio has been
reported in America since 1991.
A New Method for Medical Decision Making

For those who read the fine print in the financial stimulus package signed into law by U.S. president Barack Obama in 2009,
one of the health care provisions for which money is being set
aside traces back to a philosophy that was put forward by Archie
Cochrane, who pushed for evidence-based medicine 40 years
ago. In 1972, Cochrane wrote a book advocating for a clear system
to evaluate a condition and to use statistical reports on treatments
to determine what method of cure was best suited for each particular patient.
Since the beginning of time, healers have practiced evidencebased medicine, repeating the methods that worked and eliminating those that did not. However, even during periods when
medicine was patient-centric (as Hippocrates advocated), it has
always been difficult to evaluate all the variables in order to really
understand what was effective and what was not. From bloodletting to the use of the bezoar stone (a rocklike bit from the
intestinal tract of an animal that was believed to be an antidote
to poisons), certain practices were continued because everybody
knew they were effective, though any proof was anecdotal and did
not factor in whether a person might have gotten better anyway.
Surgeons were particularly unlikely to be able to evaluate their
work. During the era of barber-surgeons, most who performed surgery came into town, treated patients, and moved on, so they never
knew the outcomes of their procedures. In addition, there were
many misunderstood elements in the surgical process. Surgery
might result in infection because of unsanitary tools, an unclean
environment, or a botched job, and few took the time to adequately
Archie Cochrane believed strongly that the only way to judge medical
effectiveness was to apply the scientific method to the process of
evaluating how to treat a disease. By looking for specific evidence of
whether or not a particular treatment worked, Cochrane believed that
physicians could make better decisions. He called this evidence-based
medicine.
assess what had happened. As a result, the lessons learned were

unclear.
In Michael Kennedys book A Brief History of Disease, Science,
and Medicine, he cites a 1973 study of surgical procedures in Vermont that clearly explains what happens. The researchers found a
vast variation in the rate of common surgical procedures. In some
communities, nearly 60 percent of children had tonsillectomies; in
other parts of the state, the number of tonsillectomies hovered at
7 percent. There seemed to be no particular guideline for deciding
which children got tonsillectomies, and amazingly, there seemed

to be no noticeable difference in the medium-term health of the
children. Those who had the procedure fared about as well as
those who did not.
The focus of evidence-based medicine is to apply the scientific
method to medical practice. A clear definition of it might read:
Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the
care of individual patients.
There is always some concern that by the book medicine discounts the feelings of patients or the best judgment of physicians.
Others criticize it because they worry that evidence-based medicine will be driven by insurance companies who only will pay for
the cheapest treatments. At present, local practitioners may order
tests and treatments that are not effective. Most administrators
point out that if properly practiced, evidence-based medicine will
identify and apply the most effective interventions to maximize
the quality and quantity of life for individual patients; this may
raise rather than lower the cost of patient care.
Medicine will always involve the art of evaluation and decision-making. The emphasis on evidence-based medicine involves
looking at the statistics. This information may reveal how best
health care dollars should be spent so that people dont waste their
timeand possibly sacrifice their healthby undergoing treatments that do not work well.
Archie Cochrane (19081988): Advocate for

Archie Cochrane is best known for Effectiveness and Efficiency:
Random Reflections on Health Services, his influential book that
was published in 1972. The principles he set out were straightforward: He suggested that because resources would always be
limited they should be used to provide equitably those forms of
health care that had been shown in properly designed evaluations
to be effective. In particular, he stressed the importance of using
evidence from clinical trials, because these were likely to provide
Archie Cochrane (Cardiff University Library, Cochrane Archive, University

Hospital Llandough)
much more reliable information than other sources of evidence.

Cochranes simple propositions were soon widely recognized as
very important.
Cochranes personal experiences had a great deal to do with his
recognition of the importance of new methodology. During World
War II, he was held as a prisoner of war for four years, but because
he was a physician he also served as the community doctor, which
gave him an opportunity to observe and consider patient care. He
noted that in taking care of patients with tuberculosis, he had no
real knowledge of what worked and what did not. I knew there
was no real evidence that anything we had to offer had any effect
on tuberculosis, and I was afraid that I shortened the lives of some
of my friends by unnecessary intervention.
In 1987, the year before Cochrane died, he wrote that he saw
signs of progress. He noted that a systematic review of clinical trials of care during pregnancy and childbirth was a real milestone
Todays medical professionals know that the three most important

elements in optimizing a patients care include a combination of the best
available clinical evidence, an understanding of a patients own values
and expectations, and the physicians clinical experience and expertise
guiding the process.
in the history of randomized trials and in the evaluation of care,

and suggested that other specialties should copy the methods used.
His encouragement, and the endorsement of his views by others,
led to the opening of the first Cochrane Centre (in Oxford, Britain)
in 1992 and the founding of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993.
Cochrane would be the first physician to readily acknowledge
that practicing medicine involves science and statisticsbut also
human kindness and consideration for the specific needs of the
patient. In his autobiography he wrote of a wartime experience
from which he drew an important lesson:
Another event at Elsterhorst had a marked effect on me. The
Germans dumped a young Soviet prisoner in my ward late one
night. The ward was full, so I put him in my room as he was
moribund and screaming and I did not want to wake the ward.
How Medical Schools Present

Evidence-based medicine is described as requiring new skills
from the clinician. He or she needs to be adept at searching
through relevant literature and applying formal rules of evidence. At the same time, the patients needs and the physicians experience must be factored in. Most schools stress
that any recommendations taken from evidence-based medicine must be applied by a physician to the unique situation of
an individual patient. Sometimes there is no reliable research
evidence to guide decision-making, and some conditions are
rare enough that there is no way to do large studies.
The Steps in the EBM Process

This method emphasizes the importance of the evidence, but
the process begins with the patient.
1. Start with the patienta clinical problem or question arises out of the care of the patient
2. Construct a well-built clinical question derived from
the case
3. Select the appropriate resource(s) and conduct a
search
4. Appraise that evidence for its validity (closeness to
the truth) and applicability (usefulness in clinical
practice)
5. Return to the patientintegrate that evidence with
clinical expertise, patient preferences, and apply it
to practice
6. Evaluate your own performance with this patient
Schools that employ this methodology in the medical profession intend to strive for the highest standards for patient care.

I examined him. He had obvious gross bilateral cavitation and
a severe pleural rub. I thought the latter was the cause of the
pain and the screaming. I had no morphia, just aspirin, which
had no effect. I felt desperate. I knew very little Russian then
and there was no one in the ward who did. I finally instinctively sat down on the bed and took him in my arms, and the
screaming stopped almost at once. He died peacefully in my
arms a few hours later. It was not the pleurisy that caused the
screaming but loneliness. It was a wonderful education about
the care of the dying. I was ashamed of my misdiagnosis and
kept the story secret.
While Archie Cochrane is not well known to laypeople today,

his contributions should not be underestimated. As governments
and medical administrators in the 21st century wrestle with
how to improve the quality of medical care, many of the principles outlined by Cochrane will be the underpinnings of these
discussions.
The Importance of Clinical Trials

Todays clinical trials are an important part of the medicine
approval process and are carried out using strict protocols that
adhere to accepted standards of safety, patient care, and data
interpretation.
Early history offered no systematic method for the study of
medicines or treatments. Any form of testing that was conducted
was totally unscientific and anecdotal. Someone may have been
recovering from smallpox and, if the physician performed bloodletting and the patient continued to improve, then bloodletting was
considered curative. Today, scientists know that medicines need
to be standardized, and different delivery methods (taken orally,
injected, etc.) can make a difference in the outcome. A herbal medication might have been reported to be helpful, but the next healer
had no way to duplicate the medicine or the delivery method so
they had no real way to test or guarantee results.
Clinical trials are a vital part of the medical system because they provide
an unbiased evaluation of whether a particular treatment or medication
is effective. To make certain that trials reflect accurate information, they
must be carefully supervised and all must abide by the same protocol so
that the results are valid.
Physicians today understand the importance of comparing

two treatments, though they readily acknowledge the difficulty
of reducing the variables. Early medical practitioners were hardpressed to take care of patients; the thought of comparing treatments would have been almost unthinkable. Occasionally an
opportunity occurred by accident. One of the first to be able to
compare two treatment methods was Ambroise Par, a surgeon
in the 16th century. Par was on a battlefield treating wounded
soldiers. The method at that time involved pouring hot oil over

the injury. When he ran out of oil, he created his own concoction
of turpentine, rose oil, and egg yolk. After a fitful sleep caused
by worry about his patients, Par rose early and went to check
on his patients. To his great surprise, he found that those who
had received his concoction fared better than those who had been
treated with hot oil. The opportunity for direct comparisons such
as this was rare.
James Lind is often considered the father of clinical trials, as he
was the first to introduce control groups into his experiments. Lind
was very interested in finding a way to help sailors avoid scurvy (a
debilitating illness that caused spongy gums, bleeding, and tooth
loss). Some sea captains had begun to note that when fresh fruits
and vegetables were brought on board, the men were less likely to
become ill and could remain active workers. In 1747, Lind set sail
on the Salisbury. He provided all of the men with the same general
diet but some received additional items, including cider, elixir vitriol, vinegar, seawater, nutmeg, oranges, and lemons. Those who
received the fruit and foods with vitamin C (including the cider
and vinegar) fared better. Because citrus products were expensive
and did not last well, the British navy resisted adding lemon juice
to the provisions for seagoing vessels. Later, they determined that
lime juice worked just as well as lemon juice. It was cheaper, so
lime juice eventually was added to the Navy supply lists. (This is
why British sailors, and later the British in general, were called
limeys by Americans.)
By the early 19th century, scientists and physicians began to
conduct clinical trials more frequently, and they started experimenting with the design of the trials. They realized the psychological effect of providing everyone with something and for the first
time placebos were used (1863). (Placebos have no pharmacological effect but by providing everyone with some type of substance
scientists are better able to evaluate whether simply giving the
patient something is curative in certain circumstances.)
Most clinical trials now involve the use of placebos, but patients
do not know what they are gettingan actual medication or a
substitute. In 1923, this process was further amended to random-

ize who received what so that there was no way to play favorites
with one group or another. Today, studies usually are also double
blind. In double-blind studies, the medical professionals as well as
the patients are not informed of who is getting what. This means
that medical professionals conduct themselves similarly with all
patients, and it helps avoid the problem of looking for particular
results.
Since 1945, government regulators in many countries have
struggled with how to structure clinical trials so that there is a
balance between a scientific need to know and patient safety. For
example, if physicians are relatively certain that a certain medication is helpful to cure or improve a disease, there are ethical implications to placing certain people in the control group receiving the
placebo. Today, clinical trials are part of standard procedure and
are required as part of the government review process, but there
are guidelines to safeguard patients. Informed consentexplaining
to patients the exact nature of the study and the risks involvedis
always required for clinical tests run in the United States.
Conclusion
Polio was a frightening illness that terrified the public. Jonas Salk
and Albert Sabin worked separately to create vaccines that could
be used effectively, and today in most of the world the threat of
polio is just a dim memory.
On the heels of the progress with polio, physicians began to
realize the importance of systematizing care. Archie Cochrane and
his work toward an evidence-based practice of medicine increased
the level of professionalism for practitioners, and today clinical trials and a better examination of treatment efficacy are important
aspects of the medical profession.
In 2009, there is renewed interest in evidence-based medicine and further pinning down what is effective and what is not.
President Barack Obama has indicated that part of the solution
to halting spiraling health care costs involves reexamining what
constitutes effective medicine. He has stated that he wants the
98
government to undertake comparisons of therapeutic data based

on a cross-section of the population. By employing better technology to study health care, President Obama hopes the country will
be better able to evaluate what treatments are effective for which
patients, taking into account their ages, genders, genetic profiles,
and even social habits. This is the 21st-century version of exactly
what Archie Cochrane had in mind.
6
More Changes
Brought about by War
he disastrous injuries that soldiers undergo during war always

present new challenges for medical professionals. Evolving
types of weaponry create new and different wounds; changes in
the locales of wars mean climates differ, which often introduces
new forms of bacteria or causes bacteria to behave differently. The
needs of the soldiers also change. Injuries sustained in wars fought
before antibiotics were more likely to result in death from infection (if soldiers survived they had shorter life spans so their needs
to become contributing members of society seemed less intense).
Today, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, have
resulted in relatively low fatalities, but more men and women are
returning home with injuries and wanting and expecting to join
the mainstream world again.
The period of medicine described in this book begins in 1840,
so before going forward to discuss the advances of the 20th century
it is important to step back to consider the circumstances of soldiers during the Civil War. Medical care at this time was extremely
primitive. Physicians had no access to anesthesia near the battlefield nor did they know of Joseph Listers work in understanding
the importance of a sterile environment for surgery. Physicians
99

would take over a home to create a temporary hospital, and they
did the best they could with the horrors that confronted them.
The problem of a wounded limb frequently had to be solved by
amputation, and luck dictated whether a soldiers wound became
infecteda medical condition for which physicians had no effective remedy.
By World War I, scientists knew that bacteria caused infections, but they did not yet have a cure available. The introduction
of sulfa drugs and penicillin (see chapter 5) had a great impact
on soldiers survival, and between 1919 and 1939 the expanding
use of technology and improved scientific techniques created a
higher level of medical care in general. There were better forms
In an underground surgery room, behind the front lines on Bougainville

Island in the Pacific, an American army doctor operates on a U.S. soldier
wounded by a Japanese sniper, December 13, 1943. (National Archives
and Records Administration)
More Changes Brought about by War 101

of treatment, blood could be transported to most battlefields, and
the medical professionals on the
ground were constantly working
to improve the methods of patient
triage. Since that time, soldiers
have benefited from the computerization of diagnostic processes
and much more rapid processing
of data.
Perhaps there is no more significant change for soldiers in the
last 150 years than in the different
options given soldiers today who
lose a limb. During the Civil War,
a solider was lucky to be given a
stump of some sort to replace a
missing body part. Today, medical
and bioengineering professionals
are opening new possibilities in
the world of prosthetics.
Social acceptance has been part Civil War prosthetic (Tys
of this change. In the aftermath Journey)
of World War I, the injured who
returned missing a limb or with a decided limp were referred
to as cripples, but a heightened awareness brought about by
social activists who fought on behalf of these seriously wounded
soldiers has now created an environment where it is not even
noticeable that someone has a prosthetic leg. Also, federal law
dictates that buildings must be accessible to the handicapped,
and it is not unusual to see people with prosthetics entering races
or other competitions of physical prowess.
War has also brought about improved methods in other areas
of treatment. Blood management, emergency room procedures, the
use of vaccines, and better pain management all benefited from
ideas that were born on battlefields.
Advances in Prosthetics
The American Civil War brought about the need for a field of
prosthetic medicine. It is reported that there were at least 30,000
amputations on the Union side alone, but at the time the best doctors could do was provide a very primitive limb substitute.
An advance in another area, the development of anesthesia,
created an opportunity for better surgical procedures. Later in
the 19th century, with the introduction of anesthesia, doctors
could perform surgeries that were more detailed and took longer, because the patient could be adequately anesthetized. As
a result, physicians began to develop ways to operate on the
patients stump in such a way that a prosthetic device could more
easily and more comfortably be fitted on to the persons limb. As
surgeons improved their techniques and learned successful ways
to prevent infections, their success rate improved. In addition to
better prosthetics, another important development that occurred
in the early 20th century was
a social movement inspired
by two efficiency experts
who encouraged acceptance
of people with disabilities in
the workplace. (See the sidebar Pioneers in Helping the
Handicapped on page 107.)
World War II was the next
occasion that encouraged the
improvement of prosthetics.
In 1945, the National Academy of Sciences, an American
People have always wanted to look government agency, estabas normal as possible. A person lished the artificial limb prowho lost an eye preferred to have a gram in response to the influx
prosthetic. Glass eyes were created
of World War II amputees and
so that a thin thread could hold the
piece in; todays acrylic materials are for the purpose of advancing
scientific progress in artifimuch lighter and easier to wear.

cial limb development. Since
then, advances in areas such
as materials, computer design
methods, and surgical techniques have helped prosthetic
limbs to become increasingly
lifelike and functional.
As technology has progressed, lighter, stronger
materials have been developed
for use in prosthetics, and
scientists have increased the
comfort and usefulness of the
devices. Today, electronics can
be added so that an amputee
can make the limb function in a
relatively normal way. Innovation has also led to making the
prosthetics look more natural.
Todays amputee may actually
have more than one prosthetic Prosthetic leg (UAF Engineering)
limb, with some better-suited
for certain activities.
Unlike the Civil War era when any stump would do for any
patient, amputees today are carefully measured and their devices
are custom built and fitted for maximum comfort and usability.
Advanced lower extremity prostheses are equipped with a variety
of mechanisms that help them to move naturally as a patient walks
or runs. A prosthetic knee is particularly difficult to engineer, as
it must constantly adjust to allow for normal walking, standing,
and sitting. If the person requires a full artificial leg, then modern
ones are created with a computer-controlled knee that automatically adapts to adjust to the patients walking style.
The current advances in prosthetics involve using a patients
muscles to command the prosthetic limb. Because muscles generate
Playing football with prosthetic arms (U.S. Army)
small electrical signals when they contract, electrodes placed on

the surface of the skin can measure muscle movements. Although
no buttons are physically pressed by the muscles, their contractions are detected by the electrodes and then used to control the
prosthetic limb. These prosthetics are called myoelectric.
Another type of surgery that benefited from the lessons learned
by surgical amputation and the creation of prosthetics had to do with
another area where there is a great wish for advancementthat of
limb replantation. The first successful case of a limb being reattached
occurred in 1962 when an accident severed the arm of a 12-yearold boy. The child and his arm, which had been cut off just below
the shoulder, were rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital where
surgeons grafted the arm to the boys body. Some months later the
nerves were reconnected, and two years later the boy had regained
almost full use of his arm and hand. Since that time, replant operations are attempted when the right conditions are present.

Physical therapy is critical after an amputation surgery.
Whether a person is trying to learn to use a new arm or whether
they are retraining themselves to walk with a prosthetic limb, it
is a difficult undertaking, requiring several months of rehabilitation and training. Additional adjustments to the device may also
be necessary. For a leg prostheses, the person fitting the prosthetic
carefully monitors the walking gait of the patient and makes
adjustments as necessary. In addition, therapy to keep the patients
body strong enough to manipulate the prosthesis is an important
part of the process.
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation has been used to revitalize

purposeful movement to muscles crippled by spinal cord injuries.
Learning to live with a prosthetic requires building up ones muscles

and learning a new way of controlling ones body. Exercise and physical
therapy are important steps in the process.
The Use of Vaccines

Wartime has proven to be a time when vaccines are tested and
their use extended, often to the benefit of the general population. Before the outbreak of World War I, the U.S. Army had
begun requiring certain vaccinations. Typhoid inoculations
were given regularly, and the military wished for a way to vaccinate against tetanus. Protection against tetanus relied on an
antitoxin serum that had to be obtained by immunizing horses.
There had been no time for much clinical testing on humans, so
this initially slowed the use of the antitoxin tetanus serum, and
it was primarily reserved for use only on the injured. Progress
by Emil Behring for the Germans eventually led to the use of a
serum for all soldiers. By World War II, the antitoxin to tetanus
had been transformed into a vaccine that could be used before
the men entered battle. Today, children are always vaccinated
against tetanus, and people are vaccinated against typhoid on an
as-needed basis.
Pioneers in Helping the Handicapped

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth are best known for their motion
study methods that involved helping American industry.
However, they became very concerned about the disabled
veterans returning from World War I. The Gilbreths demonstrated how handicapped workers could become productive
members of society. Their book Motion Study for the Handicapped (1917) was the first to deal in depth with occupational
rehabilitation. (Lillian Gilbreth is perhaps best known as the
mother of 12 from Cheaper by the Dozen, written by two of
her children, Frank Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey,
published in 1948 and released as a film in 1952, which documented Gilbreth family life.)
While the majority of their work was done for major corporations looking to maximize the efforts of their workforces,
Frank and Lillian advocated that disabled workers should be
included in corporate workplaces. They felt strongly about
the importance of matching the job to the workers, and
they conducted studies to identify the types of tasks that
handicapped workers could best perform. They also realized the importance of rehabilitating injured soldiers, and
they advocated the disabled be given special training. The
results of their studies were impressive enough to attract
the attention of the government, and their work was incorporated in the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1918 passed
by Congress to meet the needs of disabled veterans.
After Franks untimely death in 1924 from a heart attack,
Lillian continued on with their work, and she incorporated
the needs of the handicapped in much of what she did.
When she was asked to write a book about homemaking (as
an efficient mother of 12), she added a chapter on the needs
(continues)
(continued)
of disabled homemakers. She also worked with General

Electric to redesign home appliances with the handicapped
in mind. In addition, Gilbreth was active with the Girl Scouts
on the national level, and she encouraged leaders to take
into account the needs of the handicappeda very new
thought for the time.
Frank and Lillian were unique in recognizing that the problems of the disabled were more than physical. They saw that
by providing ways for the handicapped to help themselves,
they helped build self-esteemsomething vital to every
human being.
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth with 11 of their 12 children, ca. 1920s (Purdue
Libraries Archives and Special Collections)

Troops today are vaccinated against many diseases, partially dictated by the part of the world where they are to serve. Some of the
vaccines themselves are controversial, such as the vaccine against
anthrax that sometimes has serious side effects. Nonetheless, by
necessity, the military frequently has served as the testing ground for
vaccines that are eventually introduced to the general population.
The Better Management of Blood

War creates an unprecedented demand for blood. The Spanish civil
war was the first time that blood could be transported to the front
lines. By the time the war had spread through Europe, becoming
World War II, blood management was improving, and the Allied
forces were backed by a well-organized blood supply. Two AmericansEdwin Cohn and Dr. Charles Drewhad revolutionized
the storage and distribution of blood by creating ways that the
blood plasma could be dried for transport and then prepared for
transfusion with distilled water.
No matter where the war, it is difficult and costly to transport
great quantities of blood to the front lines, and efforts to develop
a blood substitute were intensified by the military in 1985. The
surgeon Gerald Klebanoff, who served in the Vietnam War, introduced a device for autotransfusion (receiving a transfusion of
ones own blood) in the military hospitals, and the Israeli army
has used a product that was primarily created for hemophiliacs
that stops life-threatening hemorrhaging, a major help in the
treatment of injured victims.
In the 21st century, the emphasis has been on looking for ways
to conserve blood. A war in a remote country like Afghanistan
creates a very high cost of transfusing blood; up to $9,000 must
be estimated for one unit of red blood cells because of the logistical difficulties of blood storage and transport. Today, physicians
and the U.S. military are working together to find better ways of
blood management. What they learn will affect soldiers as well as
people at home.
MASH Units and Even More Advances in Triage

A physician who will long be remembered as a cardiac pioneer
can also claim special credit when it comes to changes in the management of military medicine. Michael DeBakey (whose contributions to heart research and surgery are described in chapter 7)
was assigned to the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General during
World War II. He saw the need for a method to improve treatment of soldiers during wartime and developed a plan for what
are now known as mobile army surgical hospitals. These MASH
units were established as field hospitals for a mobile staff (at least
one surgeon, an assistant surgeon, an anesthesiologist, an operating room nurse, and a technician) to go into the field to treat the
wounded, operating similarlybut with more advanced medical
techniquesto the flying ambulance corps created in the late 18th
century by Dominique-Jean Larrey (17661842), the French military surgeon. In the 20th century, soldiers benefited from speedier
treatment as well as improved medical knowledge, and as a result
the statistics on survival improved. (Many people associate these
units with M*A*S*H, the long-running 1970s television show
about a hospital field unit in the Korean War.)
Changes in emergency medicine are one of the positive outcomes of what

has been learned from war. (St. Louis Retirement Living)
MEDEVAC Triage Today

On the battlefield, triage methods today continue to change
and improve. The most recent Iraqi War gave rise to a system
where a first-responder team does what they can and makes
an initial evaluation before passing the patient on to a secondstage team that is also on the battlefield. This permits medical
professionals to see the greatest number of patients as quickly
as possible.
Triage as outlined by MEDEVAC (Medical Evacuation) is constantly being reexamined to meet current needs. The basic triage
categories (with corresponding color codes), in precedence, are
as follows:
Immediate: The person in this category must be seen
right away or he or she may not survive.
Delayed: Those categorized as delayed may have lifethreatening injuries but as long as they are dealt with in
six hours, they are expected to survive.
Minimal: The term walking wounded is used for these
casualties. They require medical attention but only after
those in the immediate or delayed category have been
stabilized or evacuated.
Expectant: These patients are in very poor condition.
Care should not be abandoned, but those with greater
survival potential should be treated first.
The need for improved civilian emergency care is further highlighted in the sidebar John Wiegenstein (19302004): Father of
Emergency Medicine on page 112.
Improvements in Pain Management

Another vital area that has profited from battlefield experience
is the war on pain. More than 90 percent of wounded soldiers
have made it off the battlefield from Iraq and Afghanistan, the
highest survival rate in American history. As a result, American
John Wiegenstein (19302004):

Father of Emergency Medicine
When John Wiegenstein graduated from medical school in
1960, hospital emergency rooms were very different from
what they are today. They were primarily staffed by interns,
with a rotating group of doctors on call if needed. This meant
that a dermatologist might be the physician in charge when
a patient was admitted in cardiac arrest. There was no formal method of emergency training, and because the hours in
the emergency rooms were round-the-clock those who were
actually hired by larger hospitals to staff emergency rooms
tended to be those who could not get a job elsewhere. Alcoholism in these doctors was common.
When Wiegenstein was a young doctor and took his
assigned rotation in the emergency room at St. Lawrence
Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, he was appalled by how illprepared he was. During his first year, a child came in blueblack from lack of oxygen, and Wiegenstein had to perform
a tracheotomy, a surgery he had never done before. The
child survived, but this and other similar experiences energized Wiegenstein into thinking about how things might
be changed. He began attending seminars on orthopedics,
hysicians have been seeing more cases of chronic pain than

p
ever before. This has increased the interest in spending on pain
research. Since 2003, the U.S. military has been conducting a
study of soldiers who are being given high-tech nerve-blocking
devices that are not addictive. Early results indicate that those
who get these devices early and can control their pain soon after
an injury are having less chronic pain later.
Scientists are also studying the brains involvement in pain.
Physicians now know that the brain and spinal cord rewire them-
classes on surgery, and emergency medical training classes

with firefighters. He saw that if done properly, emergency
medicine could be a specialty for which physicians were formally trained.
In 1968, Wiegenstein organized a meeting with other
physicians, and he presented them with the idea of creating an official organization of emergency room physicians,
what was to become the American College of Emergency
Physicians. The group started by Wiegenstein has worked
at building national awareness of the need for qualified
emergency care and training. At the start, they met with
resistance from many professionals who felt they were
invading their turf, but over time Wiegensteins point of
view that emergency physicians needed to be specifically
trained for the assignment has been widely and popularly
accepted. Todays emergency rooms are staffed with carefully trained specialists in the field of emergency medicine,
and they have established specific agreed-upon guidelines
for screening and treating patients who come in with any
type of emergency.
selves in response to injuries and form pain pathways that can

reactivate in later years. They are trying to develop ways ranging
from pain patches to alternative medicine treatments that help
rewire the painful mind-body connection.
These steps forward could also be a major boon for the general
population. Chronic pain is one of the most pervasive medical
problems in the United States, with one in five Americans suffering from it. This is costly both in terms of medical expenses and
in lost productivity.
11
ConClusion
While it is hard to think of war having a silver lining, the medical profession and citizens alike would probably reluctantly agree
that some good does come out of the horror of war. Scientists and
physicians and emergency responders all rise to the occasion and
provide the best care possible to soldiers. The lessons they learn
are brought back home and employed in civilian facilities.
7
the science of the heart
hysicians today know that blood is the key to life. They can
withdraw small amounts to analyze a patients health; they
can safely give a transfusion to a person who has lost too much
blood; and they can separate blood to extract blood plasma or platelets or various other components in ways they could not have previously imagined. All these elements can be used in a myriad of
ways for both different types of diagnoses as well as treatment.
Well into the 19th century, physicians continued to perform
bloodletting, but they were beginning to note that there were
times when it might be valuable to be able to add blood, not take
it away. When the first human-to-human blood transfusions were
performed, the failure rate was high, and progress moved in fits
and starts before the Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner came
up with an answer for successful transfusions.
As scientists grasped that the heart was actually a very
mechanical organ, they began to think about whether it could be
replaced with anything else if it became weakened or diseased. In
the process, many scientists investigated the creation of artificial
pumps that could mimic the hearts action and eventually began
to experiment with the possibility of transplanting a good heart
into a person whose heart was giving out.
115

This chapter highlights the progress that has been made in
learning about blood and circulation and the heart in what has
been a relatively short period of time. The progress made in blood
transfusions and heart surgery has been remarkable, and the use
of heart transplants and artificial hearts is becoming more common. Today, medical professionals stress that the best approach to
heart disease is to avoid it and preach heart healthy foods, weight
control, and physical exercise. This chapter also examines what
scientists are currently learning about new ways to use a patients
own blood to encourage self-healing.
Early Knowledge of the Blood

In the early 19th century, body imbalances were still seen as the
cause of most diseases, and physicians used various ways to rebalance all aspects of the body. Cathartic substances were used to
empty the bowels; diuretics were given to cleanse the system by
increasing urinary output, and tonics were used to stimulate a
depressed nervous system. To balance the blood, bloodletting was
still used for certain purposes. A patient with a fever or some
type of swelling was viewed as a perfect candidate for this remedy
because withdrawing blood slowed the pulse, reduced body fluids,
and decreased the patients temperature. Physicians determined
that sufficient bleeding had occurred when the fever subsided, the
pulse slowed, or pus developed. (Some physicians viewed pus as
laudable.)
In the interests of maintaining bodily balance, physicians
realized that losing too much blood could be a bad thing, and as
early as the 17th century physicians began experimenting with
blood transfusions. At first, progress was nonexistent. William
Harvey (15781657), who was the first to accurately describe
the circulation of the blood, also experimented with transfusing blood from animals to humans, but he learned nothing that
could be passed on to others who followed him. Then in 1818, an
obstetrician named James Blundell determined that transfusions
needed to be within the same species, and he had some occa-
The Science of the Heart 117

sional successes with transfusing blood from person to person.
In 1840, Blundell served as an adviser to the British physician
Samuel Armstrong Lane as he performed the first whole blood
transfusion to treat hemophilia. The transfusion was a success,
but neither Blundell or Lane had enough knowledge about the
circulatory process to tease apart the transfusion in such a way
that they could analyze why it went well. Their single success
was followed by many failures.
The Importance of Blood Types

In order to transfer blood from one person to another, physicians
and scientists began to realize that they were missing some necessary piece of knowledge that could help them make it work.
They saw that even when transfusions were limited to the same
species, human to human, there was no guarantee that it would
work. Karl Landsteiner (18681943), a well-respected immunologist, was the person who found the key that permitted successful
transfusions.
Landsteiner was familiar with the work of the German
physiologist Leonard Landois (18371902) who reported that
when red blood cells were taken from one species of animal and
were mixed with serum taken from an animal of a different
species, the red cells typically clumped and sometimes burst.
Landsteiner noted Landoiss observation, and by 1903 he had
determined that a similar reaction occurs in some, but not all,
human-to-human transfusions. When a transfused patient went
into shock, became jaundiced, and often suffered hemoglobinuria (a condition with blood in the urine because hemoglobin
levels are too high), it generally was preceded by this clumping
problem.
By 1909, Landsteiner had found his answer: Human blood
might all look the same when a person got a cut or suffered a
wound, but it actually had variable characteristics that he referred
to as blood types. He developed a way to classify human blood into
The A blood allele is somewhat more common around the world than B. The A allele apparently was absent among
Central and South American Indians so there are few people with that blood type in South and Central America.
The B blood type is highest in Central Asia, and it is less prevalent in the Americas and Australia. However, there are relatively
high-frequency pockets in Africa as well. Overall in the world, B is the rarest blood allele. Only 16 percent of people have it.
The O blood type (usually resulting from the absence of both A and B alleles) is very common around the world. About
63 percent of humans share it.

the now well-known A, B, and O groups (three groups were identified initially). He went on to demonstrate that if transfusions were
restricted to people of the same blood type, then all went smoothly;
catastrophe occurred only when a person was transfused with the
blood of a person belonging to a different group.
In 1902, two other scientists identified a fourth main blood
type, AB. Shortly after this, Reuben Ottenberg performed the first
blood transfusion using blood typing and cross-matching. Ottenberg also recognized that blood group types seemed to be dictated
by inheritance.
Twenty years later, physicians were still encountering occasional difficulties performing transfusions. In 193940, Karl
Landsteiner and three other scientistsAlex Wiener, Philip
Levine, and R. E. Stetsonidentified the Rh factor as the cause of
the majority of transfusion reactions. The Rh factor is a protein
substance found in the red blood cells of 85 percent of the population (they are referred to as Rh positive). Fifteen percent of people
lack this factor (termed Rh negative). If Rh negative is transfused
into someone who is Rh positive, the outcome may be a serious,
even a fatal, reaction. Once a reliable way to test for Rh negative or
Rh positive was identified, another important piece of knowledge
had been acquired.
The Establishment of Blood Banks

Need always stimulates progress, and when it came to blood transfusions physicians faced a new dilemma. Now that they could successfully categorize blood and perform transfusions successfully,
they needed to devise a way to be able to get the right type of blood
to the location where it was needed, and the need generally was
created under emergency circumstances. During World War I, an
increasing number of soldiers were being injured but surviving.
This increased the need for available blood (and its availability
in several types) so scientists began working hard to find ways to
preserve and transport blood.

A physician in Chicago, Illinois, was one of the first to report
notable progress. Dr. Bernard Fantus had read of a Russian doctor who saved cadaver blood to be reused, and he came up with
a way for donated blood to be classified, labeled, and stored until
needed. Dr. Fantus was the first to use the very appropriate term
blood bank, and he used it to describe the facility he instituted at
Cook County Hospital in Chicago. By the end of 1947, blood banks
became more common in major cities throughout the United
States, and hospitals and organizations such as the Red Cross
began to encourage the public to donate blood as a helpful act of
goodwill.
During the 1980s and 1990s, medical facilities had not yet
fully mastered the ability to screen donated blood for diseases like
Hepatitis C and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), but today
the testing of donated blood is greatly improved, and the federal
government strictly enforces blood-screening tests to lessen the
likelihood of disease transmission through transfusion.
The blood bag was a significant development because it provides a safe

and convenient way for blood to be transported. By replacing breakable
glass bottles with rugged plastic bags, it was much safer and easier to
transport blood. (Red Cross)
Drawing blood (Master Corporal Dan Noiseux, Canadian Blood Services)
Cardiac Surgery Advances

During the 19th century, a few surgeons experimented with performing repairs to the sac that surrounds the heart, but the first
successful surgery to the heart was performed in 1896 when a
German surgeon successfully repaired a stab wound to a patients
right ventricle. As time went on, surgeons continued to contemplate how to conduct repairs to the heart, but they were well aware
of the risks. As a result, not much progress was made until the
situation was desperate during World War II. The U.S. Army surgeon Dr. Dwight Harken (191093) was stationed near the front
lines in Europe. The patients who were coming into his hospital
had shell fragments and bullets inside their hearts, and Harken
was alarmed by what he saw. If these foreign elements were not
removed from the heart, a cardiac infection or other damage was
almost guaranteed, yet the patients would almost certainly die if
surgery to remove the shrapnel from the heart was undertaken.
Harken wanted to develop a surgical process that might work, so
he began experimenting on animals, working to create a technique
CT scan of heart (Diagnostic and Wellness Center, Division of Cardiology

at Harbor-UCLA)
where he could open a small hole in the cardiac wall and insert
his finger to remove the foreign element. His early results were
poor, but he began to see some successes with practice; animals
were surviving the surgery. By the time he felt confident enough to
try the surgery on soldiers, most procedures went quite well. The
significance of this surgery exceeded the lives saved, because for
the first time, a surgeon had proven that it was possible to operate
on the heart.
Despite Harkens success, both physicians and surgeons were
aware that the variety of problems that could affect the heart were
numerous, and they still lacked a blueprint for other types of heart
surgery. They did not know what to do about children born with
congenital heart defects or victims whose heart valves were narrowed or stuck, so they knew that additional experimentation was
necessary. Surgeons needed to be able to work inside the heart without their patients bleeding to death. They had learned that a patients
circulation could be stopped temporarily permitting some surgery,
but they found that this technique provided surgeons with only
about four minutes before the brain became damaged from oxygen

deprivation. Over time, scientists and physicians developed increasingly sophisticated ways to perform heart surgery, as follows:
Cooling the body. As medical professionals looked for
ways to effectively operate on the heart, a Canadian
surgeon named Dr. Bill Bigelow who worked at the University of Minnesota was developing a theory. He had
noted that when animals hibernated, their hearts beat
more slowly, which permitted them to survive for months
without food. Bigelow began animal experiments and
found that when dogs bodies were cooled, it provided
a surgeon with a longer time span in which to operate,
and the dogs didnt die. Bigelow showed that at lower
temperatures, the tissues of the body and brain did not
need as much oxygen and could survive without oxygenated blood for longer. In 1952, Bigelow was encouraged
to test his method on a child who was desperate for heart
surgery. Two surgeons at the University of Minnesota
were able to operate successfully on a five-year-old with
a heart defect by creating a state of hypothermia. The
patients body temperature was brought down by covering her with a cooling blanket. This permitted the surgeons to clamp off the inflow to the heart so they could
make the repair. They estimated they had only 10 minutes in which to work, so they operated quickly and then
immersed the patient in warm water. The surgery was
deemed a success. Though this process became useful for
treating relatively minor problems, surgeons continued
to look for ways that would extend their operating time.
Maintaining circulation by perfecting open heart surgery. Surgeons needed a way in which the heart could be
worked on while maintaining circulation. After experimenting with artificial pumps outside the body, in 1954
Dr. C. Walton Lillehei (191899), one of the physicians
who had mastered the 10-minute technique, established
a technique in which the patients mother or father was

used as a heart-lung machine. The first patient was an 11year-old boy with a ventricular septal defect. The boys
father was anesthetized next to his son, and the boys
blood was routed through the fathers system where it
could be oxygenated before returning to the boys body
via the carotid artery. In this particular case, the method
provided the surgeons with 19 minutes to make the
repair. Lillehei is often referred to as the father of open
heart surgery, since he led the way.
In 1931, a physician named John Gibbon (190373) was
greatly affected by the loss of a young patient to heart disease. He determined that there had to be a way to create a
heart-lung bypass machine, and he began experimenting
with various devices, using animals for the test cases. In
1935, Gibbon created a machine that successfully kept a
cat alive for 26 minutes. His work was interrupted by the
necessity of military service. After World War II, Gibbon
returned to work on his device, and he experimented with
his method on a dozen dogs; some he kept alive for up to
an hour. In 1953, Cecelia Bavolek was the first human on
which the heart-lung bypass device was used. The surgery was a success, and by 1960 use of the device was
common. Since the 1990s, surgeons have begun to perform coronary artery bypass surgery without the exterior
cardiopulmonary bypass. In these operations, the heart
is beating during surgery, but it is stabilized to provide
an almost still work area. Some researchers believe this
approach results in fewer postoperative complications.
Minimally invasive surgery. A new form of heart surgery that has grown in popularity is robot-assisted heart
surgery. The surgery is performed by a robotic machine
controlled by the heart surgeon and, because the robotic
hands can be quite delicate, procedures can be performed
with much smaller incisions. This makes the surgical
process easier for the patient, and the recovery time is
greatly reduced.
The da Vinci robotic system is intended to be minimally invasive. (Global

Robotics Institute, Florida Hospital)
Progress continues, and during the 21st century there will undoubtedly be even more advanced ways of performing heart surgery.
Artificial Hearts and Transplants

As scientists came to understand that the primary job of the heart
is purely mechanicalthat it works as a pump to keep blood circulating through the bodythey began to explore whether there
could be a way to replace it. They contemplated using an artificial
heart or even another human heart, and they experimented with
both. As early as 1935, a French surgeon named Alexis Carrel
(18731944) working with American aviator Charles Lindbergh
(190274) designed a heat pump that was intended to work outside the body to keep blood circulating through the organs while
a surgeon worked to repair the persons heart.
As with other transplant experiments, an animal was the first
recipient of a fully functional artificial heart (called a TAH). In
1957 at a clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, two surgeons Willem Kolff

and T. Akutsu implanted an artificial heart in a dog. Kolff dedicated his career to working to perfect the artificial heart, and
he was rewarded by others taking his work seriously. The government took serious interest in these advances, and in 1964
the National Institutes of Health established an artificial heart
program to encourage more research on these devices.
One of the pioneers of cardiac surgery Michael DeBakey
(19082008) advanced medical science by his work on heart surgery, and in 1966 he also designed and implanted a left ventricular
assist device (LVAD). This mechanism worked via air pressure
and could be used to help pump blood out of the heart and into
the arteries. (DeBakey is also mentioned in chapter 6 for developing a plan for MASH units to provide better medical care on the
battlefield.) Serious heart disease generally involves failure of the
left ventricle, so DeBakeys invention moved the field forward in
The U.S. military initiated research on operating robots as a method

of allowing experienced trauma surgeons to operate on battlefield
casualties from a remote location. Recent technological advances have
allowed incorporation of robotics into routine clinical care. (Loma Linda
University Medical Center)

an important way. (See the sidebar Michael DeBakey, Doctor
and Patient on page 131.)
Human Heart Transplants Advance

The next step forward in heart replacement was made by a surgeon
in South Africa, Christiaan Barnard (19222001), who had been
experimenting with heart transplants using dogs as subjects. By the
end of 1967, Barnard felt prepared to try his techniques on a human
subject and was continuing to practice his methods until the right
circumstances presented themselves. Among the possible candidates for a heart transplant was 55-year-old Louis Washkansky,
a former athlete suffering from bad health. He was diabetic, had
experienced three heart attacks, and was suffering from congestive
heart failure. When Dr. Barnard was made aware that a young
woman with a functional heart had died from injuries sustained in
an auto accident, Barnard decided it was the right opportunity to
attempt a heart transplant and he placed her heart in Washkansky.
Louis Washkansky did quite well immediately after surgery, but he
died of pneumonia 18 days later. His immune system was so weakened from the drugs and radiation to prevent the bodys rejection
of the new organ that he could not fight off infection.
Barnards heart transplant surgery was initially celebrated
when the patient seemed to be doing well, and then after Washkansky died the questions poured in. Scientists, physicians, and
the public all voiced their opinions about whether or not this type
of surgery should be done. Christiaan Barnard was seemingly
unmoved by the concern, and he kept on practicing the procedure
whenever circumstances presented themselves. By 1983, more
than 63 heart transplants had been done under Barnards direction at the hospital in Cape Town.
One of the problems with any type of transplant, including
heart transplants, has to do with the bodys natural instinct to
reject the new organ. The American surgeon Dr. Norman Shumway (19232006) created a team of scientists and physicians to
puzzle through the complex biological problem of organ rejection.
The team devised a way to monitor the heart (via a catheter) for
The concept of using robots in surgery is attractive because it combines

the precision and accuracy of a machine with the judgment of an
experienced surgeon.
signs of rejection so that the higher doses of the immunosuppressive drugs were increased only as needed. In the meantime, scientists in Norway identified a fungus that revolutionized transplant
surgery. The substance was cyclosporin, and it appeared to have
the perfect immunosuppressant propertiescontrolling organ
rejection without knocking out all resistance to infection. In 1980,
Dr. Shumways team was the first to embrace the new medicine,
and it transformed the picture for heart transplant recipients.
Transplant surgeons today face a new problem: finding enough
healthy hearts. In the United States alone, 2 million people suffer
from congestive heart failure. When drug treatments fail, transplants are the best hope. But fewer than 2,500 donor hearts are
available each year.
Later Progress in Artificial Hearts

Artificial hearts were originally intended as a temporary solution. A mechanical heart would be introduced to keep a person

living until an available heart was found. The method was first
attempted in 1969, and a dozen years later doctors were beginning
to wonder how much time could be bought by the use of an artificial heart. In 1982, the dentist Barney Clark became famous for
having received an artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, the first heart that
Michael DeBakey, Doctor and Patient

Michael Ellis DeBakey was a noted physician and surgeon
whose work in cardiovascular surgery will long be remembered. He created numerous procedures and devices that
were very helpful to the field of heart health. At the age of 97
(in 2005), Dr. DeBakey suffered a tear in the wall of his aorta.
Ironically, DeBakey had created a procedure to treat exactly
this type of condition. He still was a member of a cardiovascular medical practice in Houston, Texas, and his partners
wanted to perform the DeBakey procedure, as it is known,
on patient DeBakey. DeBakey was alert enough to be aware
of the surgeons desires, but he asked that they not do ithe
felt he was too old for the surgery.
DeBakeys condition deteriorated, and when he became
unresponsive the surgical team opted to proceed. Because
they did not have his consent, the Houston Methodist Hospital ethics committee had to be consulted. Though the
decision was far from unanimous, the surgeons were given
permission to proceed. In a seven-hour surgery, DeBakey
became the oldest patient ever to undergo the surgery he
had created. His postoperative recovery was difficult, and
DeBakey remained in the hospital for the next eight months
at a cost of more than $1 million. In September 2006, Dr.
DeBakey was released from the hospital, his health returned,
and he went back to a limited schedule at work. He died of
natural causes in 2008 at the age of 99.
Scientists were taken with the idea that it might be possible to create an
artificial heart that could do the job of the human heart. Robert Jarvik
created one of the first.
was intended to be a permanent solution. In addition to difficult

surgery, there were still technological problems to overcome. The
Jarvik-7 was powered by compressed air, and at that time the only
way to provide the air was via an air compressor outside the body,
so the patient had to be surgically connected to an external unit at
all times. Clark survived for 112 days.
The surgery team had been led by William DeVries who went
on to implant other Jarvik-7 devices. One of his next patients, William Schroeder, survived 620 days, but he suffered many setbacks.
Physicians as well as the public realized there was still a lot to
learn about this process.
As science has progressed, smaller has been deemed better,
and in late 2008, French researchers developed an artificial heart
made of biosynthetic tissues that are chemically treated to prevent human immune systems from rejecting the heart. The heart
itself reproduces the physiology of a normal heart, and its beat
is powered by batteries that are intended to last five years. The
device has not yet gone through clinical trials, but scientists are
hoping that it will be available as an alternative to a transplant
by 2013.
Plasma Therapy:
A Possible New Sports Treatment
In a giant step away from bloodletting, the latest form of
therapy being used for some sports injuries involves reinjecting a patient with his or her own blood that has been
processed to enrich its platelets. (Platelets are involved in
releasing proteins and other particles that encourage the
bodys self-healing.)
The method involves injecting portions of a patients
blood directly into the injured area. This seems to encourage the bodys natural effort to repair muscle, bone, and tissue. The process is not considered difficult by physicians
and has been tested on professional athletes whose injuries
keep them off the field, the court, or the baseball diamond.
According to the New York Times (February 16, 2009), the
method was used on Takashi Saito, a pitcher for the Los
Angeles Dodgers who suffered a partially torn ligament in
his throwing arm. By injecting Saitos elbow with his own
platelet-enriched blood, he was able to return to pitching
within a couple of months. Surgery would have sidelined
him for about a year. While the team doctor noted that 25
percent of these injuries heal on their own (and certainly
there is no way to know if Saitos would have), medical professionals are encouraged by what they are seeing, and clinical trials are underway.
The process of creating blood plasma with a higher
platelet count involves withdrawing a small amount of the
patients blood and putting it in a filtration system that separates the platelets from red blood cells. The physician then
injects a very small quantity (a teaspoon or two) of the substance into the area where the person has been injured. The
platelet-rich plasma seems to enhance the bodys ability to
(continues)
(continued)
grow new tissue or bone cells without causing problems

with clotting.
While those who manage or invest in professional sports
teams are very excited about healing their players quickly,
other people speculate that there will also be a market for
this procedure among weekend warriorsrecreational athletes who love sports and hate missing a weekend of tennis,
golf, or handball. The procedure could be done in much less
time and at a lower cost than surgery, which is often required
with chronic sports injuries.
Current Thinking on Heart Health

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), about 60
million Americans currently suffer one cardiovascular condition
or another, and almost 1 million deaths in the United States are
attributed to cardiovascular disease each year. Heart disease is
the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United
States. With explosive increases in obesity and type 2 diabetes and
with the baby-boom generation aging, the problem of cardiovascular disease shows no signs of going away.
Today, doctors know that lifestyle can make a big difference
in controlling the risk factors of heart disease, which are usually
signaled by high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or both. Rather
than having patients reach a critical point where they need an artificial heart or a heart transplant, doctors todayalong with the
federal governmentare trying to reduce the deaths from heart
disease by encouraging healthy lifestyles. To improve heart health,
todays medical practitioners encourage people to eat a healthy
diet, maintain a recommended weight for their build, exercise

regularly, quit smoking (or not start), and minimize stressall
factors that can lead to heart disease.
Conclusion
People living only 150 years ago might well have undergone
bloodletting as part of a medical treatment, so the fact that today
blood transfusions, open heart surgery, and heart transplants are
conducted with frequency is all the more amazing. While physicians would prefer to teach people to live healthy lifestyles so that
heart transplants and heart surgery are unnecessary, the reality is
that these medical treatments are going to continue to be needed.
Advances in fixing a patients own heart will be a top priority,
but with the difficulty in finding hearts available to transplant,
the most promising frontier may be in the creation of miniature
artificial hearts.
8
dna Changes the
Medical Knowledge Base
ncreasingly, the press is writing about amazing progress in

science and in medicine because of the relatively newfound
ability to identify a persons DNA. Since the late 1950s and early
1960s, molecular biologists have learned to characterize, isolate,
and manipulate the molecular components of cells and organisms.
These components include DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the
repository of genetic information; RNA, a close relative of DNA,
whose functions range from serving as a temporary working copy
of DNA to actual structural and enzymatic functions; and proteins, the major structural and enzymatic molecules in cells. In
molecular biology, scientists study how various cell systems interact as well as the interrelationships involved in DNA, RNA, and
protein synthesis. It is a field where the study of biology, chemistry,
genetics, and biochemistry overlap.
DNA has to do with the molecular makeup of every living
thing, and scientists believe that the future of medicine lies in
individually tailoring cures for each person or each disease, or
even both. Every cell (except red blood cells) within each human
or living thing contains a copy of the same DNA. The DNA
sequence is the particular side-by-side arrangements of bases
136
dnA changes the Medical Knowledge Base
13
along the DNA strand, and this order spells out the exact instructions required to provide unique traits for each particular organism as well as how it develops and functions. As scientists come
to better understand the DNA of each human being as well as the
DNA of various illnesses, they feel there will be notable medical
breakthroughs.
Before DNA could even be conceived of, advances in understanding genetics and inherited traits were necessary. Ancient
people understood some basics about breeding and inheritance
in animals: Certain animals, when bred together, begat animals
with the same strengths as the parent animal. While some cultures worked to refine these planned breedings, it was mostly a
hit-or-miss process, and no one had any idea about the mechanics
of how this worked scientifically.
When the structure of DNA was discovered by James Watson
and Francis Crick, it was referred to as the secret of life, but today
scientists know DNA is not really the secret to life. It is more
like a special keywith it, they have only just begun to unlock
some of the mysteries of human development, which in turn, may
make possible a new form of personalized medicine. This chapter
explains how DNA was discovered and how it may affect medical
developments of the future. Most people know of DNAs application in crime cases, and the chapter also explains how DNA helps
solve crimes. (See the sidebar DNA and the Criminal Justice System on page 142.)
the BasiCs oF dna and hoW genetiCs

Were vieWed in the Past
Before genetics could become a science, the world needed to discover how life began scientifically, and they needed to know that
there were mechanismsgenesin the human body that somewhat reliably determined inheritance. The work of the Austrian
monk Gregor Mendel (182284) in the mid-19th century would
eventually be very helpful to scientists, but it was a long time
before anyone knew what he had learned.
Crick and Watson with their DNA model (A. Barrington Brown/Science
Photo Library)
Mendel was an amateur gardener who enjoyed crossbreeding

pea plants. Mendel kept careful records of his crossbreeding of tall
or short plants that had smooth or wrinkled peas and began to see
that something within the plant-breeding process operated with an
orderly, dominant/recessive plan. (When he bred tall plants with
short ones, he did not get medium-sized ones; he always got tall
ones.) There was not much of a way to communicate for a monk
with an interesting hobby, so no one knew of his contributions
during his lifetime. But he left behind meticulous records and eventually his work was found by others, and it prepared the way for
some very significant discoveries. Finally in 1900, two scientists
DNA Changes the Medical Knowledge Base 139

working separately on the study of genetic traits came upon the
work of the then-deceased Gregor Mendel. When Hugo de Vries
and Carl Correns released to the world Mendels 1865 research, it
marked the beginning of the study of modern genetics.
The next pertinent discovery was made in 1944 when Oswald
Avery (18771955), an American scientist and early molecular
biologist, proved that DNA carries genetic information. While this
discovery fascinated scientists, there was still little they could do
with the information because they did not yet know the molecular structure of DNA. Only by decoding it could they begin to
understand itand understand how to use that information to
help humankind.
Scientists and Serendipity

While almost all scientific discoveries rely heavily on the scientific
work that preceded it, the discovery of the structure of DNA relied
not only on the work of others, but also a great deal on serendipity. In addition, there were several scientists (including teams of
scientists) working competitively to successfully be the first to
identify the structure of DNA. Watson and Cricks victory was
due to a little luck and a lot of careful attention paid to their own
work as well as what they were hearing from others. Added to
this mix was the fact that one of the front-runner scientists (Rosalind Franklin) was abrasive and therefore not well liked, which
encouraged members of her department to go against protocol and
share with others some of her findings.
The British biophysicist Maurice Wilkins (19162004) was
among the first who were working to determine the structure
of the DNA molecule. Wilkins, who was based at Kings College in London, needed an image of it, so he turned to Rosalind
Franklin (192058), who was only a graduate student but was
acknowledged to be the best person at performing X-ray crystallography. Franklin prepared the necessary images and in 1951
agreed to give a departmental talk about her X-rays of a dry and
a wet form of DNA, which were beginning to provide evidence

of the helical structure of DNA. As it happened, James Dewey
Watson (1928 ), a 23-year-old American zoology graduate who
had studied ornithology and then viruses, visited the department
that day and sat in on Franklins lecture, which gave him some
important clues about Franklins early findings.
Watson had only recently arrived at Cavendish Laboratory,
where he hoped to study DNA. He had just become interested in
the subject, but he had already decided that it was his goal to be
the one who decoded the structure. At Cavendish, he encountered
his future partner Francis Crick (19162004), a physicist who had
become fascinated by the application of physics to biology and who
was also intent on investigating how genetic information might be
stored in molecular form.
Though an odd pair, Watson and Crick were united by their
determination to better understand DNA. Crick brought knowledge of X-ray diffraction, and Watson brought knowledge of viruses
and bacterial genetics. Watson and Crick were actually assigned
to work on another type of project, but they secretly kept working
on the unraveling of DNA. They respected Franklins work and
invited her to come meet with them but she turned them down.
On another continent, the American Nobel Prizewinning
chemist Linus Pauling (190194) was working with X-ray crystallography and molecular model building. In 1952, he hoped to travel
to England to a conference he knew Franklin would be attending,
but he was denied a passport because of allegations that he was a
Communist sympathizer.
In the meantime, Francis Crick was annoyed that he and Watson
were not officially permitted to work on DNA. Crick made another
appeal to their superior, and permission was finally granted.
Franklin continued to make good progress with her work.
She had successfully developed a good photograph of the B (wet)
form of DNA, which showed a double helix. However, she was not
ready to release her information until she had further explored
something that was bothering her about the A (dry) form. Her
reluctance annoyed her partner, Wilkins, who decided to move
on without her. In 1953, Watson dropped in to visit Wilkins, and

during the course of their meeting Wilkins happened to show
Watson a copy of Franklins photograph of the wet form of DNA,
revealing the helical form that Watson suspected. The photograph
led Watson to suspect that DNA could reproduce because it was
structured as a double helix.
Later on, without Franklins permission, a departmental report of
Franklins was passed to Watson and Crick. It offered conclusive evidence that DNA was a multiple helix, and Watson and Crick learned
that the phosphate backbones of
DNA should be on the outside of
the molecule. This finding was
key to figuring out the structure.
(It will long be debated whether
Watson and Crick should have
had access to Franklins results
before she formally published
them herself.)
Watson and Crick had not
found the answer, but they
knew they were close. They
turned to work done by the
biochemist Erwin Chargaff in
1950. Once again, Franklin was
the scientist who really had a
full understanding of Chargaffs work, which involved the
base pairings of DNA. She had
completed a draft of a paper,
dated March 17, 1953, that identified the double-helix structure
of DNA as well as the specific
base pairings that permit the
unzipping of the double helix
during cell division so that the
Watson and Crick were able to
gene, and eventually the chro- decode DNA to determine how the
mosome, can replicate.
genetic code is carried.

Despite Franklins overall understanding of the process, it was
Watson and Crick who got to press first with their paper. Without
much of a fuss, Watson and Cricks paper on the structure of DNA
appeared in the British journal Nature, and it described the DNA
molecule as a long, two-stranded chain coiled into a double helix
and resembling a twisted ladder. Their paper summed up the contribution of Wilkins and Franklin by simply mentioning that their
thoughts were stimulated by the unpublished results of Wilkins,
Franklin, and their coworkers at Kings College.
In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were given the
Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their work. Franklin had
died in 1958 from cancer, possibly related to her extensive expo-
DNA and the Criminal Justice System

Though the sequencing of DNA has now been around since
the 1950s, its use by the criminal justice system is a relatively new development despite how common it is as a part
of todays television crime shows. The National Academy of
Sciences approved the use of DNA for court cases in 1992.
The first attempt to use DNA in a criminal case was in
Britain in 1986 when Professor Alec Jeffreys assisted in
solving a pair of rape-murders of two teenagers. When two
15-year-old girls were murdered in 1983 and 1986, police
originally arrested a young man with a history of mental illness. Professor Jeffreys was not convinced that the police
had the right man. After analyzing semen collected from
both bodies, Jeffreys asked everyone in the small town of
Narborough to voluntarily submit to DNA testing. At first, no
guilty party emerged. Eventually, police found that a baker
by the name of Colin Pitchfork had paid someone else to
give a blood sample for him. Police reinterviewed Pitchfork,
and he confessed to both crimes. When he provided his own
DNA, the police had a match and their man.

sure to radiation in her work with the X-ray diffraction that was
so vital to better understanding the structure of DNA. Because
the Nobel cannot be given posthumously, she was never honored
for her work.
The Human Genome Project

By the 1980s, James Watson had another passion to pursue,
and this too has been absolutely key to medical and scientific
advances. Watson helped lobby Congress to create the U.S.
Human Genome Project, the multimillion-dollar effort to map
out the exact nucleotide sequence contained in each of the 24
An early test of DNA in the courtroom in the United States

occurred in what has become known as the trial of the centurythe 1995 criminal murder trial of sports star O. J. Simpson. Though Simpsons DNA was found at the crime scene,
the prosecution was unable to convince the jury of Simpsons
guilt. The use of DNA in court was still very new, and though
scientists and lawyers faced off on the issue, the defense
successfully convinced the jury that the evidence may have
been contaminated. This case brought to light the importance
of careful training of criminal investigators in the collection
of evidence, and as a result crime laboratories realized the
importance of being certified for this type of testing.
By the late 1990s, forensics labs started to adopt a new
method of analysis called STR (short tandem repeats) that
cuts analysis time from weeks to days and uses patterns that
repeat just a few times, between five and 30 in most cases.
And it also improves accuracyearly on in DNA forensics the
chance of error was one in 100,000. The STR method makes
it more like one in 1 trillion.

human chromosomesthe so-called book of life (consisting of
approximately 3 billion letters).
Ironically, the Human Genome Project grew out of the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) (albeit, it did originate in its health
and environmental program). Since 1947, the DOE and its predecessor agencies have been charged by Congress with developing new
energy sources and pursuing a deeper understanding of potential
health and environmental risks posed by their production and use.
In 1986, Charles DeLisi, who was then director of DOEs healthrelated research programs, became convinced that if they were going
to be able to effectively study the biological effects of radiation (along
with information on whether these effects were passed on genetically, such as in the cases of survivors of Hiroshima), he needed a
way to do so quickly. By 1990, DOE and the National Institutes of
Health, who understood that knowledge of the human genome was
necessary to the continuing progress of medicine and other health
sciences, had agreed to devote $3 billion to the project, and they
established a 15-year time line. They were joined by the Wellcome
Trust, a private charitable organization in Britain. There were also
contributions from Japan, France, Germany, and China.
In 1998, a private firm named Celera Genomics, run by
researcher Craig Venter, became involved in this type of research.
Venter was using a newer technique (shotgun sequencing, a process which breaks the DNA into shorter segments that permits
faster readings; the segments are rejoined for a complete reading
at the end) and hoped to finish before the government and patent
some of what he found. Though his contributions were notable,
in March 2000 President Clinton announced that the genome
sequence should not be patented, sending biotech stocksincluding Celerasplummeting.
The competition proved healthy, however, and by 2000, due to
widespread cooperation, both public and private, a rough draft of
the genome was actually finished early and was jointly announced
by then-president Clinton and British prime minister Tony Blair.
In February 2001, both Celera and the government scientists
published details of their discoveriesNature published the gov-

ernments version, and Science published Celeras. Together, the
sequence they had identified made up about 90 percent of the
genome. By 2003, a joint release announced that 99 percent of
the genome has been sequenced with 99.99 percent accuracy. For
all ostensible purposes, the project was completed in April 2003,
bringing it in two years ahead of schedule. This happened to be
the 50th anniversary of Watson and Cricks publication of DNAs
structure that launched the era of molecular biology.
What has surprised everyonescientists includedis that
humans are a great deal simpler than what was originally imagined. They have found that the human genome has only about
30,000 genes; the original estimate had been three times that number. This finding suggests that a great deal more has to be learned
about how genes function and how their instructions are carried
out as well as how they produce diseases and other anomalies. But
in the meantime, the gains have been incredible.
The Human Genome: What It Is

The human genome is a persons complete set of DNA, arranged
into 23 distinct chromosome pairs (the 24th pair is the set that
determines gender)physically separate molecules that range in
length from about 50 million to 250 million base pairs. Each chromosome contains many genes, the basic physical and functional
units of heredity.
Genes make up only about 2 percent of the human genome; the
remainder consists of noncoding regions, whose functions may
include providing chromosomal structural integrity and regulating
where, when, and in what quantity proteins are made. Although
genes get a lot of attention, it is the proteins they make that perform most life functions and even make up the majority of cellular
structure.
DNA and the Future

Knowledge about DNA may lead to understanding about how all
the parts of cellsgenes, proteins, and many other molecules

work together to create complex living organisms. DNA underlies
almost every aspect of human health, and understanding about
what DNA has to do with health will have a profound impact
Genetic counseling has traditionally been most useful for single gene
disorders like Huntingtons disease or Tay-Sachs disease, for which there
are genetic diagnostic tests. For such diseases, affected patients may
wonder about the risks of passing on an illness to their children, while
children of affected patients will want to know their statistical risk of
developing the disease.

on the ways disorders are diagnosed, treated, and prevented. For
example, scientists have discovered a variant gene carried by more
than one-third of Americans that leads to a sizable increase in the
risk of type 2 diabetes. This should lead to an improvement in
diagnostic testing as well as in treatment.
In December 2005, a new project, the Cancer Genome Atlas,
was announced. The Cancer Genome Atlas Pilot Project is designed
to identify and unlock the genetic abnormalities that contribute
to canceran effort that could lead to new diagnostic tests and
treatments for the disease. Scientists have long known that genetic
mutations accumulate in a persons normal cells over a lifetime
and can make those cells cancerous. About 300 genes involved in
cancer are already known, and there are a handful of drugs that
work by interfering with specific genetic abnormalities.
All this information about the human genome is now available
to researchers worldwide, and a brand-new future is opening for
the human genome reference sequence. Among the changes that
may occur are these:
Exploration of the evolutionary process. Scientists are
comparing the lineage of chromosomes in various species
to better understand what changes there have been in
various organisms and why they occurred.
Gene testing. Companies now offer inexpensive and easyto-administer genetic tests that can show a predisposition
to a variety of illnesses such as breast cancer, blood clotting, cystic fibrosis, liver diseases, and so on. Experts
are greeting these tests with mixed reactions. A predisposition to an illness does not guarantee an illness, and
society must be careful where this information is stored
and how it is used.
Gene therapy enhancement. One day ones own tissues
could help replace cells damaged by injury or disease.
DNA could be withdrawn and used to prime embryonic
cells that are ready to serve as replacement cells to bolster
normal function or to create immunity.

Pharmacogenomics. This type of medicine will lead away
from one-size-fits-all medicine. In the future, both treatments and vaccines will be made to order for each individual. This will offer direct lifesaving benefits, as today
more than 100,000 people die each year from bad reactions to medications. DNA will help predict what will
work and for whom.
Improved vaccines. In 2009, the government announced
a new swine flu vaccine, and scientists think they will
be able to identify the exact flu strain and manufacture
it quickly with the help of genetic engineering.
Genetically modified foods. Scientists are already beginning to create healthier crops based on understanding the
genetics of different plants.
As scientists continue to pursue these leads, this list of undertakings will certainly change and grow.
Ethical Issues Require Solutions

Right alongside the scientists making all the genetic advances,
scientific committees will need to wrestle with the ethical issues
that these advances raise. These can range from the seemingly
simple (what happens if genetically altered corn cross-pollinates
with regular corn?) to issues that will affect people in larger ways.
For example, if someone undergoes genetic testing that shows a
predisposition to some type of chronic illness, scientists have to be
certain that this can never be used to discriminate against someone. Predisposition to a disease does not mean a person will get
the disease. It means that if the correct influences occur, a person
might possibly develop the disease. For example, the person who
has a predisposition to lung cancer might be more likely to develop
it than someone else after exposure to secondhand smoke. This
would spark the nature versus nurture debate.
Questions about privacy, fairness in use, and access to genetic
information all need to be answered as advances continue.
National Institutes of Health:

Undiagnosed Cases
In late 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced
a new clinical research program that aims to provide answers to
patients with mysterious conditions that have long eluded diagnosis. The effort of this special unit will be to use biomedical
research to make molecular diagnoses and examine the disease
through the genes involved. The goal will be to unravel these cases
both to advise the individual but also to advance medical knowledge in general.
To evaluate each patient enrolled in the new program, the NIH
will enlist the expertise of more than 25 of its senior attending
physicians, whose specialties include endocrinology, immunology,
oncology, dermatology, dentistry, cardiology, and genetics. Though
the patients accepted into the program will spend a week on site
being evaluated by the various experts, the work will continue
long after the patient goes home. Blood and tissue samples for the
various conditions will be carefully scrutinized to piece together
genetic information with the intent that some helpful answers
will be available to the patient and to future patients who exhibit
similar symptoms.
Conclusion
When scientists and physicians contemplate the personalized
medicine that will eventually be made possible because of research
into DNA, medical science is only at the beginning of the journey.
Over the course of the next few years, scientists will be devising
more and better ways to treat each person based on the persons
own genetics as well as the genetics of their particular illness.
Chronology
180s
Dorothea Dix begins campaign to improve

care of the insane.
182
First surgical operation is performed using

anesthesia.
18
Ignaz Semmelweis discovers how to prevent

puerperal fever.
189
Elizabeth Blackwell is first woman to gain a

medical degree.
185
Florence Nightingale and 38 other nurses go

to the Crimea.
1855
The nurse Mary Seacole establishes a British

hotel in Crimea.
1858
Rudolf Virchow proposes cell theory.
1862
Pasteur refines what becomes known as

pasteurization.
186
Pasteur is recognized for experiments that

debunk spontaneous generation.
186
Joseph Lister publishes Antiseptic Principle

of the Practice of Surgery, partially based on
Pasteurs work.
180
Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish germ

theory of disease.
183
Linda Richards becomes Americas first

trained nurse after graduating from the New
England Hospital Training School.
1881
Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross.
188182
Pasteur develops anthrax and rabies vaccines.
1883
Robert Koch issues his three postulates that

explain the causes of disease.
1888
The Pasteur Institute is founded.
150
chronology
151
1890
Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and

uses them to develop tetanus and diphtheria
vaccines.
1890s
Viruses are identified (but not seen until electron microscope invented in 1930).
189
The first known polio epidemic in the United

States occurs in Vermont.
1895
The German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen discovers X-rays.
18991901
Walter Reed heads a commission that finally

determines that yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes; this provides a way to diminish the
contagion.
1901
Karl Landsteiner discovers different human

blood types.
1903
Marie and Pierre Curie and Antoine Becquerel

are awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for
their work on radioactivity.
1906
The United States passes the Pure Food and

Drug Act.
1911
Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize in

chemistry for discovering radium and polonium and isolating radium.
Harvard creates department of industrial
medicine for Alice Hamilton, the first woman
to be hired as a faculty member.
The German researcher Paul Ehrlich tests Salvarsan, first treatment effective against syphilis; regarded as birth of modern chemotherapy.
1915
Bayer introduces aspirin in tablet form.
1920s
Vaccines created for diphtheria, pertussis,

tuberculosis, tetanus.
1921
Franklin D. Roosevelt is diagnosed with polio.
1928
Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
152
193
The first blood bank is established in the

United States.
19
The molecular biologist Oswald Avery proves

that DNA carries genetic information.
1952
Worst U.S. polio epidemic with almost 58,000

cases; Jonas Salk develops first polio vaccine
and starts trials.
1953
Watson and Crick identify the structure of

DNA.
195
First artificial heart tested in a dog
1960
Oral birth control pill approved by Food and

Drug Administration
1961
Albert Sabin develops oral vaccine with live

virus.
196
First heart transplant
1969
First artificial heart implanted in a human
1981
First outbreak of what is later realized to be

AIDS
2003
99.99 percent of the human genome sequenced
2008
National Institutes of Health announce an

undiagnosed diseases program to take on
unsolved cases of illness that might be solved
by unraveling its genetics.
glossary
a branch of morphology that deals with the structure of
organisms
antibiotic a substance produced by or semisynthetic substance
derived from a microorganism and able to dilute solution to inhibit
or kill another microorganism
antiseptic opposing sepsis, putrefaction, or decay; preventing or
arresting the growth of microorganisms
antitoxin an antibody that is capable of neutralizing the specific
toxin (as a specific causative agent of disease) that stimulated its
production in the body and is produced in animals for medical
purpose by injection of a toxin or toxoid with the resulting serum
being used to counteract the toxin in other individuals
aseptic preventing infection
bacteriophage a virus that infects bacteria
chemotherapy the use of chemical agents in the treatment or control
of disease
dormant marked by a suspension of activity; temporarily devoid of
external activity
hemoglobinuria the presence of free hemoglobin in the urine
microbe microorganism, germ
nitrous oxide (n2 o) a colorless gas that when inhaled produces loss of
sensibility to pain preceded by exhilaration and sometimes laughter, that is used especially as an anesthetic in dentistry and as
a fuel, and that is an atmospheric pollutant and greenhouse gas
produced by combustion; known as laughing gas
nucleotide any of several compounds that consist of a ribose or deoxyribose sugar joined to a purine or pyrimidine base and to a phosphate group and that are the basic structural units of nucleic acids
pasteurization partial sterilization of a substance, especially a liquid, at a temperature and for a period of exposure that destroys
objectionable organisms without major chemical alteration of the
substance
anatomy
153

physiology a branch of biology that deals with the functions and
activities of life or of living matter and of the physical and chemical phenomena involved
pitchblende a brown to black material that consists of massive uraninite, has a distinctive luster, contains radium, and is the chief
ore-mineral source of uranium
poliomyelitis an acute infectious disease caused by poliovirus and
characterized by fever, motor paralysis, and atrophy of skeletal
muscles often with permanent disability and deformity and
marked by inflammation of nerve cells in the anterior gray matter in each lateral half of the spinal cord
postulate a hypothesis advanced as an essential presupposition, condition, or premise of a train of reasoning
prion a protein particle that lacks nucleic acid and has been implicated as a source of various neurodegenerative diseases (i.e.,
bovine spongiform encephalopathy)
proprietary possessing, owning, or holding exclusive rights to
something
septicemia invasion of the bloodstream by virulent microorganisms
and especially bacteria; blood poisoning
serum a watery portion of an animal fluid remaining after
coagulation
spirochete any of an order of slender spirally undulating bacteria
suffragette a woman who advocates voting rights for women
synthetic something resulting from synthesis rather than occurring
naturally
tomography a method of producing a three-dimensional image of the
internal structures of a solid object by the observation and recording of the differences in the effects on the passage of waves of
energy impinging on those structures
vector an organism that transmits a pathogen
viroid any of two families (Pospiviroidae and Avsunviroidae) of subviral particles that consist of a small single-stranded RNA arranged
in a closed loop without a protein shell and that replicate in their
host plants where they may or may not be pathogenic
virus the causative agent of an infectious disease; also any of a large
group of submicroscopic infective agents that are regarded as
Glossary 155
either as extremely simple microorganisms or as extremely complex molecules, that typically contain a protein coat surrounding
an RNA or DNA core of genetic material but no semipermeable
membrane, that are capable of growth and multiplication only in
living cells, and that cause various important diseases in humans,
lower animals, or plants
X-ray any of the electromagnetic radiations that have an extremely
short wavelength of less than 100 angstroms and have the properties of penetrating various thicknesses of all solids, of producing
secondary radiations by impinging on material bodies, and of acting on photographic films and plates as light does
Further resourCes
aBout sCienCe and history
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Diamond places the development
of human society in context, which is vital to understanding the
development of medicine.
Hazen, Robert M., and James Trefil. Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy. New York: Doubleday, 1991. A clear and readable
overview of scientific principles and how they apply in todays
world, including the world of medicine.
Internet History of Science Sourcebook. Available online. URL: http://
www.fordham.edu/halsall/science/sciencsbook.html. Accessed
July 9, 2008. A rich resource of links related to every era of science
history, broken down by disciplines, and exploring philosophical
and ethical issues relevant to science and science history.
Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. A helpful explanation
of the beginning of science and scientific thought. Though the
emphasis is on science in general, there is a chapter on Greek and
Roman medicine as well as medicine in medieval times.
Roberts, J. M. A Short History of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. This helps place medical developments in context
with world events.
Silver, Brian L. The Ascent of Science. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998. A sweeping overview of the history of science from
the Renaissance to the present.
Spangenburg, Ray, and Diane Kit Moser. Science Frontiers: 1946 to the
Present, rev. ed. New York: Facts On File, 2004. A highly readable
book with key chapters on some of the most significant developments in medicine.
aBout the history oF MediCine

Ackerknecht, Erwin H., M.D. A Short History of Medicine, rev. ed.
Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University, 1968. While there
156
Further Resources
15
have been many new discoveries since Ackerknecht last updated

this book, his contributions are still important as they help the
modern researcher better understand when certain discoveries
were made and how viewpoints have changed over time.
American Red Cross. The Web site of the American Red Cross has a
very good history of Clara Barton. Available online. URL: http://
www.redcross.org. Accessed February 10, 2009.
Andermann, Anne Adina Judith. Physicians, Fads, and Pharmaceuticals: a History of Aspirin. McGill Journal of Medicine vol.
2 (1996): pp. 115120. This journal article provides a fascinating
background on how aspirin developed and was used.
Buchan, William. Domestic Medicine, 2nd ed. London: Royal
Society, 1785. Available online. URL: http://www.american
revolution.org/medicine.html. Accessed January 10, 2009. This
book provides a contemporary account of the medical beliefs of
the late 1700s.
Clendening, Logan, ed. Source Book of Medical History. New York:
Dover Publications, 1942. Clendening has collected excerpts from
medical writings from as early as the time of the Egyptian papyri,
making this a very valuable reference work.
Cochrane, A. L. One Mans Medicine: The Autobiography of Archie
Cochrane. London: Wiley Blackwell (Memoir Club), 1989. This
is Cochranes story of how and why he came up with the idea of
evidence-based medicine.
Dary, David. Frontier Medicine: From the Atlantic to the Pacific 1492
1941. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. This is a new book that
has been very well reviewed. Dary outlines the medical practices
in the United States from 1492 forward.
Davies, Gill, ed. Timetables of Medicine. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2000. An easy-to-assess chart/time line of medicine with
overviews of each period and sidebars on key people and developments in medicine.
Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western Reserve. Available online. URL: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/dittrick/site2/
Accessed January 10, 2009. This site provides helpful links to
medical museum Web sites.
Duffin, Jacalyn. History of Medicine. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1999. Though the book is written by only one author, each

chapter focuses on the history of a single aspect of medicine, such
as surgery or pharmacology. It is a helpful reference book.
Gotcher, J. Michael. Assisting the Handicapped: The Pioneering
Efforts of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Journal of Management
18, 5 (1992). Available online. URL: http://jom.sagepub.com/
cgi/content/abstract/18/1/5. Accessed January 21, 2009. The
Gilbreths have generally been ignored for their work on behalf of
the handicapped; this article does a great deal to remedy that by
explaining their very considerable contributions.
Kennedy, Michael T., M.D., FACS. A Brief History of Disease, Science, and Medicine. Mission Viejo, Calif.: Asklepiad Press, 2004.
Michael Kennedy was a vascular surgeon and now teaches firstand second-year medical students an introduction to clinical medicine at the University of Southern California. The book started
as a series of his lectures, but he has woven the material together
to offer a cohesive overview of medicine.
Loudon, Irvine, ed. Western Medicine: An Illustrated History. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997. A variety of experts contribute
chapters to this book that covers medicine from Hippocrates
through the 20th century.
Magner, Lois N. A History of Medicine. Boca Raton, Fla.: Taylor &
Francis Group, 2005. An excellent overview of the world of medicine from paleopathology to microbiology.
Medical Discoveries. This Web site provides an alphabetical resource
with biographies and other information about important medical milestones. Available online. URL: http://www.discoveries
inmedicine.com. Accessed February 26, 2009.
National Human Genome Research Institute. This is a National Institutes of Health government-sponsored site to provide the public
with information about all aspects of research concerning the
human genome. Available online. URL: http://www.genome.gov.
Accessed February 1, 2009.
Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of
Humanity. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Over his lifetime, Porter wrote a great amount about the history of medicine, and this
book is a valuable and readable detailed description of the history
of medicine.
Further Resources 159

, ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine. Cambridge,
Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. In essays written by
experts in the field, this illustrated history traces the evolution of
medicine from the contributions made by early Greek physicians
through the Renaissance, scientific revolution, and 19th and 20th
centuries up to current advances. Sidebars cover parallel social or
political events and certain diseases.
Red Gold: The Epic Story of Blood. This is a PBS Web site to accompany a series with this title, and the Web site is one of the most
extensive and interesting about how and when scientists learned
about blood. Available online. URL: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/
redgold/history/index.html. Accessed February 20, 2009.
Rosen, George. A History of Public Health, Expanded Edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. While serious public
health programs did not get underway until the 19th century,
Rosen begins with some of the successes and failures of much
earlier times.
Sherrow, Victoria. Jonas Salk: Beyond the Microscope, Revised Edition.
New York: Chelsea Publishers, 2008. This book is an excellent
reference for reading about polio, about Salk, and about how he
and Sabin interfaced in their efforts to combat polio.
Simmons, John Galbraith. Doctors & Discoveries. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2002. This book focuses on the personalities
behind the discoveries and adds a human dimension to the history of medicine.
Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New
York: Perseus, 1982. The book puts in perspective the changes in
the American medical system and how they came about.
Toledo-Pereyra, Luis H. A History of American Medicine from the
Colonial Period to the Early Twentieth Century. Lewiston, N.Y.:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. This is an academic book that provides very valuable information about medicine in the 19th
century.
United States National Library, National Institutes of Health. Available online. URL: Available online. URL: http://www.nlm.nih.
gov/hmd/. Accessed July 10, 2008. A reliable resource for online
information pertaining to the history of medicine.
160
other resourCes
Collins, Gail. Americas Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York: William Morrow, 2003. Collinss
book contains some very interesting stories about women and
their roles in health care during the early days of America.
iindex
ndex
Note: Page numbers in italic refer
to illustrations; m indicates a map; t
indicates a table.
A
AB blood type 121
A blood type 118m, 121
abortive polio 82
Academy of Sciences (Paris) 3
acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) 61
agar 13, 13
AHA (American Heart Association)
134
Akutsu, T. 128
alcohol 40
American College of Emergency
Physicians 113
American Heart Association (AHA)
134
American Red Cross 21, 2933
amoxicillin 71
amputations
limb replacement 104
physical therapy 105, 106
prosthetics 101104, 101104
anatomy 38
anesthesia 38, 39, 4044
anesthesiology 44
angiograms 50
anthrax 38, 6, 1012
antibiotics
amoxicillin 71
nystatin 7071
penicillin 59, 6670, 69
Salvarsan/Neosalvarsan 59,
7174
sulfonamide drugs (sulfa drugs)
58
super bugs and resistance to

7273
tetracycline 70
antiseptic methods and antiseptics
1416, 66
antitoxins 56
applied science 5
Aquilion 320 52
artificial hearts 127129, 130132
ASA (acetylsalicylic acid) 61
aspirin 5966
how it works 6465
introduction of 5961
production and marketing 62,
6263
side effects 60, 63, 64
uses 6366
autopsies 1718, 18, 19
Avery, Oswald 139
b
bacteria, identification of 12, 6,
39, 58. See also antibiotics; germ
theory
bacteriophages 54
balloon angioplasty 52
Barnard, Christiaan 129
Barton, Clara 21, 2933, 32
battlefield medicine 99114
blood management 109
MASH units 110
nursing 26, 2728, 29, 3031,
34
pain management 111113
rehabilitation 107108
vaccines 106, 109
Bavolek, Cecelia 126
161

Bayer Company 60, 6063
B blood type 119m, 121
BDS (BioDetection Systems) 12
Becquerel, Antoine-Henri 48
Behring, Emil 5657, 71, 106
Beijerinck, Martinus 54
Bellevue Hospital 31
Bigelow, Bill 125
BioDetection Systems (BDS) 12
biological warfare 1012
bioterrorism 1012
birth control 59, 7478
Blackwell, Elizabeth 20, 2124, 22
Blackwell, Emily 23, 24
blood bags 122
blood banks 121122, 123
blood cells 2
bloodletting 115, 116
blood management 109
blood transfusions 115, 116117, 121
blood types 117, 118120m, 121
Blundell, James 116117
A Brief History of Disease, Science
and Medicine (Kennedy) 8990
British Journal of Experimental
Pathology 67
Brown, Rachel Fuller 71
C
cancer
and aspirin 65
chemotherapy drugs 59, 72
genetics and 147
therapeutic radiology 51
Cancer Genome Atlas 147
carbolic acid 15
cardiac surgery 123127
Carrel, Alexis 127
CAT or CT (computed tomography)
scans 50
Cavendish Laboratory 140
Celera Genomics 144145
cells 1617
cellular pathology 16
Centers for Disease Control 73

Chain, Ernst B. 66, 6770
Chargaff, Erwin 141
chemo-embolization 52
chemotherapy drugs 59, 72
childbirth fever (puerperal fever)
1314, 14
chloroform 43, 4344
chromosomes 145
Civil War 30, 3435, 99100, 101,
101, 102
Clark, Barney 131132
clinical trials 9497, 95
Cochrane, Archie 81, 88, 89, 9092,
91, 94
Cohn, Edwin 109
computed tomography (CT or CAT)
scans 50, 124
Conover, Lloyd 70
contrast media 50
control groups 8, 9697
Cook County Hospital (Chicago) 122
Correns, Carl 139
COX-2 (cyclooxygenase 2) 65
Crick, Francis 138, 139143
Crimean War 26, 2728, 29
criminal investigations 18, 18,
142143
CT or CAT (computed tomography)
scans 50, 124
Curie, Marie and Pierre 39, 4849,
49, 53
cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) 65
cyclosporin 130
D
Dally, Clarence 47
Da Vinci robotic system 127
Davy, Humphry 40
DeBakey, Michael 110, 128129, 131
DeLisi, Charles 144
dentistry 4142, 44
deoxyribonucleic acid. See DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid)
Index 163
DeVries, William 132
diagnostics
Curie, Marie and Pierre 4849,
49, 53
DNA and 149
radiology 5051
X-rays and X-ray devices 44
47, 45
diphtheria 56
Dix, Dorothea 21, 33, 3335
Djerassi, Carl 77
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) 136
149
in court cases 142143
Crick, Francis 138, 139143
discovery of structure of 139
143, 141
ethical issues 148
function of 136137
future of 145148
genes and genetics 137139
genetic counseling 146
human genome project 143
145
and undiagnosed cases 149
Watson, James 138, 139143
dormancy 10
double-blind studies 97
Dreser, Heinrich 61
Drew, Charles 109
Duggar, Benjamin Minge 70
Dunant, Henry 32
E
Ebers papyrus 59
Edison, Thomas 46
Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random
Reflections on Health Services
(Cochrane) 91
Ehrlich, Paul 56, 59, 7174
Eichengrn, Arthur 61
emergency medicine 110, 111, 112
113
Enovid 7778
ether 39, 4041, 4243

evidence-based medicine 8897
clinical trials 9497, 95
Cochrane, Archie 81, 9092,
91, 94
difficulties of evaluating
medical care 8890
in medical schools 91
F
fallopian tube catheterization 52
Family Limitation (Sanger) 76
Fantus, Bernard 122
Faraday, Michael 40
fermentation 5
fevers 63
Finlay, Carlos 55
Fleming, Alexander 6670, 67
Fletcher, Charles 68
Florence Nightingale School of
Nursing and Midwifery 27
Florey, Howard 66, 6770
flu (influenza) 84
fluoroscopy 4647, 47, 5051
Food and Drug Administration 77
Fracastoro, Giralamo 2
Francis, Thomas 84, 85
Franklin, Rosalind 139143
Friedman, Cindy 73
G
genes and genetics 137139, 145
gene testing 147
gene therapy 147
genetically modified foods 148
genetic counseling 146
Geneva College (Hobart and William
Smith Colleges) 2223
Geneva Conventions 32
Gerhardt, Charles-Frdric 60
germ theory
concept of xiiixiv
identification of bacteria 12

Kochs postulates 9, 1213
Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van 12
Lister, Joseph 1416
Pasteur, Louis 39
Semmelweis, Ignaz 1314
Virchow, Rudolf 1618
Gibbon, John 126
Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian 107
108, 108
Glasgow Royal Infirmary 15
glass eyes 102
H
Hamilton, Alice 3537
Hamilton, Edith 35
handicapped people 107108
Harken, Dwight 123124
Harvard University 36, 7677
Harvey, William 116
Hata, Sahachiro 74
Hazen, Elizabeth Lee 71
heart health 134135
heart-lung bypass machines 126
heart scan 124
heart surgery 123127
heart transplants 115, 127132
Heatley, Norman 68
Herbert, Sidney 27
heroin 60
HIV (human immunodeficiency
virus) 56
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
(Geneva College) 2223
Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot 70
Hoffmann, Felix 6061
Hooke, Robert 12
human genome project 143145
human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV) 56
I
Illinois Commission on
Occupational Diseases 36
immunization. See vaccines and

vaccination
immunosuppressive drugs 130
industrial toxicology 21, 3537
infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis)
8088
change in virulence of 8284
current polio-endemic areas
87m
forms of 8283
iron lungs 83
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
80
Sabin, Albert 81, 8688
Salk, Jonas 81, 81, 8486,
8788
influenza (flu) 84
informed consent 97
Institut du Radium (Institut Curie)
48, 49
Institute for Infectious Diseases 56
International Red Cross 32, 49. See
also American Red Cross
interventional radiology 52
iron lungs 83
Ivanovsky, Dmitri 5354
Ivins, Bruce Edwards 1112
J
Jackson, Charles 4243, 44
Jarvik-7 131132, 132
Journal of the American Medical
Association 72
K
Kaiserwerth 26
Kennedy, Michael 8990
Kings College 15, 27
Kitasato, Shibasaburo 56
Klebanoff, Gerald 109
Koch, Robert xiii, 2, 59, 9, 1213
Kochs postulates 9, 1213
Kolff, Willem 127128
Index 165
L
La Maternit de Paris 23
Lancet 66
Landsteiner, Karl 115, 117, 121
Lane, Samuel Armstrong 117
Larrey, Dominique-Jean 110
laughing gas (nitrous oxide) 39,
4041, 4142, 44
Lectures on the Laws of Life
(Blackwell) 24
Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van 12
left ventricular assist device (LVAD)
128129
Levine, Philip 121
Liebig, Justin von 15
Lillehei, C. Walton 125126
limb replacement 104
Lind, James 96
Lindbergh, Charles 127
Lister, Joseph 1416
London School of Medicine 24
Long, Crawford 41, 44
lunacy reform movement 3334
LVAD (left ventricular assist device)
128129
M
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
51
male contraceptive pills 78
Marker, Russell 77
MASH units 110
Massachusetts General Hospital
4243
Mayer, Adolf 53
McCormick, Katherine Dexter 76
MEDEVAC (Medical Evacuation)
111
Medicine as a Profession for Women
(Blackwell) 24
Mendel, Gregor 137139
mental illness 3335
miasmas 1
microbes 34
Microscopic investigations on the

Accordance in the Structure and
Growth of Plants and Animals
(Schwann) 16
minimally invasive surgery 126
morning-after pill (RU-486) 78
Morton, William 4243, 44
Motion Study for the Handicapped
(Gilbreth) 107
Moyer, Andrew J. 6970
MRSA (Staphylococcus) 72
muscle stimulator system 105
N
National Academy of Sciences 102
National Foundation for Infantile
Paralysis 85
National Institutes of Health 128,
144, 149
Nature 142, 144145
nematodes 2
neuromuscular electrical
stimulation 105
New England Hospital for Women
and Children 31
New York Infirmary for Indigent
Women and Children 23
New York State Department of
Health 71
New York Times, The 12, 133
Nightingale, Florence 20, 2628,
27
nitrous oxide (laughing gas) 39,
4041, 4142, 44
nonparalytic polio 82
Notes on Nursing (Nightingale) 27
nucleotide sequences 143144
nursing 2021, 2433
Barton, Clara 2933, 32
Dix, Dorothea 33, 3335
Nightingale, Florence 2628,
27
Richards, Linda 3031
role of nurses 25

Seacole, Mary 2829
specialties and degrees 25
nystatin 7071
O blood type 120m, 121

occupational diseases 3537
On a New Kind of Ray: Preliminary
Communication (Rntgen) 46
open heart surgery 125126
opium 40
oral contraceptive pill 7478
organ rejection 129130
Ottenberg, Reuben 121
forms of 8283
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 80
Salk, Jonas 81, 81, 8486, 8788
polonium 48
positron emission tomography (PET)
scans 51
Priestley, Joseph 40
prions 55
progesterone 77
proprietary products 43, 4344
prostaglandins 6465
puerperal fever (childbirth fever)
1314, 14
pain management 6366, 111113

paralytic polio 8283
Par, Ambroise 9596
Pasteur, Louis xiii, 2, 39, 4, 15
pasteurization 5
Pauling, Linus 140
penicillin 59, 6670, 69
Penicillium notatum 67
Petri, Julius Richard 13
PET (positron emission tomography)
scans 51
pharmacogenomics 148
physical therapy 105, 106
physiology 38
Pincus, Gregory 7677
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical
Profession to Women (Blackwell) 24
pitchblende 48
placebos 9697
Plan B 78
Planned Parenthood Federation 76
plasma therapy 133134
pneumonia 72
poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis)
8088
change in virulence of 8284
current polio-endemic areas 87m
rabies 89, 53
radiation exposure 47, 49
radioactivity 4849, 53
radiology 5051
radium 48
Red Cross 21, 2933, 49
Redi, Francesco 3
Reed, Walter 55
Rh factor 121
Richards, Linda 3031
RNA 136
robot-assisted surgery 126, 127, 130
Rock, John 77
Rntgen, Wilhelm 39, 4446
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 80
Royal Society 2
Royal Statistical Society 26
RU-486 (morning-after pill) 78
S
Saito, Takashi 133
salicin 60
Salk, Jonas 81, 81, 8486, 8788
Salvarsan/Neosalvarsan 59, 7174
Sanger, Margaret 7478
Index 167
SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome) 56
Schleiden, Matthias Jakob 16
Schroeder, William 132
Schwann, Theodor 16
Science 145
scientific method 89, 90
scurvy 96
Seacole, Mary 2021, 2829
Semmelweis, Ignaz 3, 1314
sepsis 1416
septicemia 66
serum therapies 39
settlement houses 3536
severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) 56
shoe-fitting fluoroscopes 4647, 47
short tandem repeats (STR) 143
Shumway, Norman 129, 130
silk industry 5
Simpson, O. J. 143
SmithKline Beecham 71
Southern Medical and Surgical
Journal 41
spinal cord injuries 105
spontaneous generation 35
spores 10
sports injuries 133134
Staphylococcus (MRSA) 72
Staphylococcus aureus 7273
Stetson, R. E. 121
Stone, Edmund 59
STR (short tandem repeats) 143
Streptomyces noursei 71
suffragettes 22
sulfonamide drugs (sulfa drugs) 58
super bugs 7273
surgery
anesthesia 38, 39, 4044
antiseptic methods 1416
evidence-based medicine and
8890
heart surgery 123132
Swammerdam, Jan 2
syphilis 59, 7374
T
TB (tuberculosis) 12
tetanus 56, 106
tetracycline 70
therapeutic radiology 51
thorium 48
thrombolysis 52
tobacco industry 5354
tobacco mosaic virus 54
tonsillectomies 8990
toxic shock syndrome 72
triage 111
tuberculosis (TB) 12
typhoid fever 36, 106
typhus 17
U
ultrasound 51
United States Department of Energy
144
United States Office of the Surgeon
General 110
United States Post Office 12
United States Sanitary Commission
2324, 3031
V
vaccines and vaccination
anthrax 78
battlefield medicine 106, 109
DNA and 148
polio 8488
process of 7
rabies 89
viruses 5556
Vane, John 64
vectors 55
Venable, James 41
Venter, Craig 144
Virchow, Rudolf 2, 1618
viroids 55
virology 53
viruses 38, 39, 5356, 73

vitamin C 96
Vocational Rehabilitation Act (1918)
107
Voluntary Parenthood (Rock) 77
Vries, Hugo de 139
W
war. See battlefield medicine
Warren, John Collins 4243
Washkansky, Louis 129
Watson, James 138, 139143
Wellcome Trust 144
Wells, Horace 4142, 44
Wiegenstein, John 112113
Wiener, Alex 121
Wilkins, Maurice 139140, 140
141
willow tree bark 5960
wine industry 5
Woman Rebel, The 75
Womans Central Association of
Relief 21, 2324
Womans Medical College 24

Worcester Foundation for
Experimental Biology 77
workplace health hazards 3537
World War I 100101, 106, 107, 121
World War II 100, 102103, 106,
110, 123124
wound treatment 15
Wright, Almroth 66
X
X-ray crystallography 139140
X-rays and X-ray devices 38, 39,
4447, 45
Y
yellow fever 55
Z
Zakrzewska, Marie 23, 31

Medicine Becomes A Science 1840-1999

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tHe

MEDICINE BECOMES A SCIENCE: 18401999

1 MediCal sCienCe Finally advanCes

2 WoMen and Modern MediCine

3 Science Moves Forward in Diagnosis

5 An Answer to Polio and Other

6 More Changes Brought about by War

The Use of Vaccines

7 The Science of the Heart

8 DNA Changes the Medical

The Basics of DNA and How Genetics Were Viewed

he history of medicine offers a fascinating lens through which

 Medicine Becomes A Science

xiv Medicine Becomes A Science

Medicine BecoMes A science

ell into the 1800s, physicians continued to believe that

 Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances 

Louis Pasteur (18221895): Major Advances

Debunking Spontaneous Generation

 Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances 

Using Science to Address Practical Problems

Pasteur and the Microbiologist

 Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances 

 Medicine Becomes A Science

Pasteur Extends Work on Immunization

Medical Science Finally Advances 

10 Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances 11

expected to be used in biological warfare when Scandinavia

12 Medicine Becomes A Science

to avoid the consequences. In a January 3, 2009, article in

(continued from page 9)

Using Pasteurs theory and Kochs postulates, scientists began

Medical Science Finally Advances 13

A colony of Bacillus anthracis on a selective agar plate after 42 hours at

cultures of bacteria using a gelatinous medium called agar, which

Ignaz Semmelweis (18181865): Identifies the

14 Medicine Becomes A Science

Dr. Semmelweis thought lack of cleanliness might be to blame

Antiseptic Methods Adopted

Medical Science Finally Advances 15

16 Medicine Becomes A Science

Rudolf Virchows Cellular Discoveries

Medical Science Finally Advances 17

Virchows Earlier Life and Other Contributions

18 Medicine Becomes A Science

Physicians were beginning to accept autopsies as a tool in understanding

of it was meaningless at the time, it provided vital information for

Medical Science Finally Advances 19

omen have always played an important role in health

Women and Modern Medicine

gale, but Seacoles contributions were not acknowledged for a long

elizaBeth BlaCKWell (18211910):

22 Medicine Becomes A Science

Women and Modern Medicine 23

24 Medicine Becomes A Science

3 Science Moves Forward in Diagnosis

5 An Answer to Polio and Other

8 DNA Changes the Medical

Medicine Becomes A Science

Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances

Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances

Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances

Medicine Becomes A Science

Medical Science Finally Advances