In November, Yale University Press will publish
"Medicine's Ten Greatest Discoveries", as written by
Gerald W. Friedland and Meyer Friedman.
A little preview, in chronological order:
1543 - Andreas Vesalius presents "De
Humani Corporis Fabrica," or "The
Structure of the Human Body," which de-
tailed the anatomy of the human body. He
was the first to point out that without
bones, human beings would be mushy
blobs. "It presented medicine with the
precious gift of the scientific method with
which to approach an infinite number of
future medical problems."
1628 - William Harvey published "De
Motu Cordis" or "On the Motion of the
Heart," in which he described the func-
tions of the heart and the circulation of
blood. Introducing his discovery of circu-
lation, Harvey wrote that his findings
were "of so novel and unheard-of charac-
ter, that I not only fear injury to myself
from the envy of a few, but I tremble lest
I have mankind at large for my enemies."
1675 - Anton Leeuwenhoek, a haber-
dasher and part-time janitor, looking at a
drop of rainwater under a microscope,
discovered "little animals" - or bacte-
ria, a cause of myriad diseases.
1796 - By using cowpox, which causes
a mild disease in human beings, to pro-
tect a person from the deadlier smallpox,
Edward Jenner discovered vaccination.
His method of injecting dead bacteria or
their toxins helped eradicate smallpox,
and protects against bubonic plague,
chickenpox, cholera, diphtheria, influ-
enza, measles, mumps, rabies, typhoid fe-
ver, tetanus and other diseases.
1842 - Crawford Long, using ether to
prevent his patients from feeling pain, de-
veloped surgical anesthesia.
1895 - Wilhelm Roentgen discovered
the X-ray beam, and developed one of the
most important diagnostic tools.
1907 - Ross Harrison figured out how
to grow living cells outside the body.
"It made possible the study of living organ-
isms at the cellular and even the molecu-
lar level and the development of modern
vaccines ... and abetted the search for
the causes of cancer (and AIDS). Indeed,
because of tissue culture, more has been
learned about the basic mechanisms of
disease in the past 50 years than in the
previous 5,000."
1912 - Nikolai Anichkov discovered
that cholesterol was responsible for coro-
nary artery disease, currently the world at s
most deadly disease.
1928 - Alexander Fleming discovered
penicillin, which led the way for the devel-
opment of other antibiotics to treat infec-
tions.
1950-53 - Maurice Wilkins did the pio-
neering work of isolating a single fiber of
DNA and examining it, which James Wat-
son and Francis Crick used to develop
their own double helix model of DNA, the
heredity-bearing molecule. Wilkins
shared the Nobel Prize with them for the
discovery, which opened the door to ge-
netics research in 1962.
All great men, to be sure, but my own vote goes to Jenner for his
courage and the amazing intuitive leap involved... not to mention the
number of lives saved.
Mike
----
"I know what your problem is: you watch too much television."
