Journal of Medical Biography最新文献

Dr Florence Sabin is remembered for her research on cellular histology at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Rockefeller Institute. This paper highlights her first project while she was just an Intern at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1900-1901), when she undertook to make a wax model of an infant's brainstem, using a 'stacked wax plate' method. She then collaborated with artist Friedrich Ziegler to construct a set of larger wax brainstem models, designed to reveal the internal neuroanatomy. The use of wax embryo models for research and teaching embryology was popular during the late nineteenth century but quickly became obsolete during the twentieth century, overtaken by improved research techniques and audio-visual teaching aids. Examples of Ziegler's models can still be found in some medical museums; however the Sabin/Ziegler brainstem model is very rare.

Tikhon Efimovich Boldyrev was a prominent Soviet epidemiologist. During the Sino-Soviet collaboration of the 1950s, he played a key advisory role in shaping health policies in the newly established People's Republic of China. This article explores Boldyrev's life and his journey to China, where he served as Group Leader of the Soviet Experts and Chief Expert at the Chinese Ministry of Health from 1954 to 1956. During his tenure, Boldyrev authored twenty reports and proposals that influenced China's public health policy. His notable contributions included introducing and adapting the Soviet healthcare model to Chinese conditions; endorsing traditional Chinese medicine and advocating for its integration with modern medical science; and providing critical expertise in epidemic prevention, particularly in combating diseases such as schistosomiasis and plague. Drawing on Boldyrev's work completed in China, along with Chinese-language government reports, press coverage, and professional journals, this article brings renewed attention to his important yet often overlooked contributions to public health in 1950s China.

Charles Sumner was an outspoken abolitionist and Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1851 to 1874. In 1856, at the height of the national debate about slavery before the Civil War, Sumner was assaulted in the Senate chamber by a Democratic congressman from South Carolina. Preston Brooks attacked Sumner by striking him on the head and neck over 30 times using his walking cane as a weapon. After the attack, Sumner lost consciousness and was carried out of the Senate chamber. Though he recovered over the week following the attack, Sumner did not return full-time to his Senate seat until December 1859 due to the sequelae of his injuries. Historians have debated the cause of Sumner's prolonged disability, with several suggesting that he was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. Although diagnosis cannot be made definitively, the details of Brooks' assault and Sumner's subsequent medical history suggest that Sumner's documented symptoms during his three-year recovery were likely the result of a traumatic brain injury.

A slim 75-page 'book,' The Production of Antibodies: A Review and a Theoretical Discussion was published 84 years ago, in 1941. The authorship is normally attributed to Francis MacFarlane Burnet (1889-1985), 1960 Noble Laureate for his research on acquired immune tolerance and acknowledged as the most famous Australian scientist. A revised edition in 1949 was co-authored with Frank Fenner (1914-2010), another distinguished Australian virologist, best remembered for the elimination of smallpox in Australia and for control of the rabbit population. The curiosity and the topic of this paper is that three collaborators are listed on the title page of the 1941 book - Mavis Freeman, A. V. (Alan Vaughan) Jackson and Dora Lush. All three worked with Burnet at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne between 1936 and 1939/1940 during which time they were co-authors on 25 research papers. Who were these collaborators, what did they contribute to the book and why the confusion over authorship? This journey takes us into research on influenza, poliomyelitis, smallpox, myxomatosis, herpes, Q fever and scrub typhus undertaken by brilliant scientists who contributed to important advances in virology and immunology with one tragic consequence.

Alexander Blackrie (bap. 1702, d. 1772) was a Scottish Surgeon-Apothecary who attended Aberdeen's grammar school and Marischal College. He served as surgeon-general in India and practised at Bromley, Kent, England. In later life, he suffered from the 'gravel and stone' i.e., urological stones. This triggered an enquiry into the lucrative medication of Dr Chittick of Bath. Blackrie deduced it to be nothing more than soap-lye (Sodium hydroxide) and went on to formulate his own version ('Blackrie's lixivium'). Blackrie undertook comparative experiments on the efficacy of these two products at dissolving equally-sized fragments of the same urinary stone. In 1763, he published his proposal to compare the two products in patients. This called for: selection of patients 'afflicted in the same degree', randomisation by 'dividing them equally by lot', the 'experiment' to be 'repeated' and the number of participations to be 'large'. Although never implemented, Blackrie's proposal is an early model of a randomised controlled trial and may be the first description of a non-inferiority trial. His use of the term 'decisive' experiment and reference to James Jurin FRS may offer a link with Hauksbee the Younger's 1743 proposed 'experimentum crucis'. Blackrie's contribution to the development of fair comparisons of treatments deserves greater recognition.

In the early eighteenth century, Dominique Parennin, a French Jesuit missionary in China, wrote at the behest of the Emperor Kangxi a manuscript in the Manchu language which combined some of the theories of traditional Chinese medicine with Western medical concepts. One of the surviving manuscripts of this "Manchu Anatomy," sent by Parennin to the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1723, is now kept in the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. This work, "Ge ti ciowan lu bithe," has recently been translated into modern Mongolian, affording an opportunity to research Parennin, his life and work, and the significance of the "Manchu Anatomy."

Judson Chesterman (1903-1987) was a surgeon working in Sheffield, United Kingdom in the mid-20th century. Born in Bath, Somerset, he attended Bristol Medical School before completing junior doctor positions around England. He developed his skills in thoracic surgery during a Fellowship with Evarts Graham (1883-1957) at Barnes Hospital, St Louis, Missouri and by the mid-1950s was also performing a large number of closed cardiac procedures. In 1955, he performed the first mitral valve replacement in the world, using a prosthesis of his own design, but the patient only survived for around 18 hours. Recognising the limitations of off-pump surgery, he visited the University of Minneapolis before building his own bypass machine and used it in two patients, the first in February 1957, one of the earliest outside the United States of America to do so. In retirement he established an osteoarchaeology laboratory and made additional contributions to that field.

Vera Mikhailovna Danchakova (1877-1950), also written in English as Danchakoff and in German as Dantschakoff, was the first woman to graduate with a PhD in Russia. She was a person of many interests and a strong passion for teaching and social justice that may have interfered with her pioneering stem cell research and cell biology, which was far ahead of its time. Danchakova significantly contributed to the unitarian theory of haematopoiesis along with its founder Alexander A. Maximow. She studied the origin of blood cells, the differentiation of tissues and organs in the process of embryonic development of animals, the formation of germ cells and the effect of hormones on the development of organisms. She discovered the role of stem cells in the laying of new tissues, the proof of the extragonadal origin of primary germ cells in birds and the development of methods for transplanting tissues into live embryos. She has been named 'the mother of stem cells' for her investigations of progenitors of cells.

Professionalism and medical ethics, while similar, are often viewed in different contexts. An historical and social science analysis reveals that professionalism is a complex skill that can be developed over time. The key components of professionalism, as defined by the American Physical Therapy Association, include accountability, altruism, compassion, excellence, integrity, professional duty, and social responsibility. Throughout history, physicians have been concerned with medical ethics and professionalism. In the Golden Age of Islam, principles such as excellence, honour, integrity, accountability, and duty were important in shaping the professional behavior of physicians. Adab al-Tabib, an ancient work, by Ishāq bin Ali al-Ruhawi focuses on ethical guidelines and teachings related to medical ethics in the Islamic civilization. Many of the ethical issues in this book are of foremost importance as components of professionalism. However while the examples of medical ethics guidelines that pre-existed Adab al-Tabib such as the Hippocratic Oath, are not mentioned. As one of the first statutes of medical ethics in Islamic civilization, Ruhawi is a model for many doctors in the Golden Age of Islam, and over the years his principles have greatly influenced the professional view of physicians.