We've all heard of them--Johns Hopkins, Henry Gray, Walter Reed--but who were they, and why do their names have a place in the history of medicine? Robert Wood Johnson II Robert Wood Johnson II and one of the organizations that bears his name: the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey Today you can find Robert Wood Johnson II's name on a hospital; a medical school; and the nation's largest public health philanthropy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with an endowment exceeding $11 billion. Nicknamed "General" for his service as brigadier general during World War II, Johnson was primarily a businessman. At the age of 17, he joined the family business, Johnson & Johnson, which was founded by his father, Robert Wood Johnson, and his two brothers. The company initially made mustard plasters, wound dressings, and first aid kits. In 1932, Johnson became president of the company, leading its diversification into other health-related areas, including pharmaceuticals and research. He was known for being generous and socially conscious, advocating for higher wages for workers during the Depression, helping small businesses thrive, and emphasizing corporate responsibility.[1] At his death in 1968, Johnson left most of his estate to the foundation that bears his name, which has continued his legacy of support for healthcare professionals and the health of the public.[1,2] Charles Drew Charles Richard Drew How did Charles Richard Drew come to be known as "the father of the blood bank"? While pursuing a doctoral degree in medical science at Columbia University in 1938, Drew leveraged his interest in blood transfusions into an experimental blood bank. His process for blood preservation grew from the observation that plasma could be dried and stored for later clinical use. Drew and his colleagues developed methods for extracting plasma from whole blood using centrifuge and sedimentation techniques; protecting it against contamination; and packaging it for storage, transport, and use.[3] His experimental blood bank became a model for supplying lifesaving transfusion products to the battlefield during World War II. He even pioneered the blood donation drives for the American Red Cross using "bloodmobiles" to collect blood from volunteers.[3] Drew left his position with the American Red Cross in protest of their policy to segregate blood donated by white and African-American donors.[3] His name is memorialized with a Los Angeles medical school and a bridge in Washington, DC. Walter Reed Conquerors of Yellow Fever is the title of this painting by Dean Cornwell. It shows Reed's colleague, Dr Jesse Lazear, inoculating Dr James Carroll using an infected mosquito to confirm the method of transmission of yellow fever. Standing at the head of the table, in all white, is the leader of the Yellow Fever Commission, Walter Reed. In a sad footnote, Dr Lazear died after intentionally inoculating himself with yellow fever. Walter Reed received his medical degree at just 17 years of age. He later pursued a career as an Army surgeon, during which time he studied pathology and bacteriology under William Henry Welch at Johns Hopkins University.[4] During the Spanish-American War, Reed investigated the spread of typhoid fever in military camps, concluding that typhoid was transmitted by human contact under crowded conditions and via impure drinking water.[5] But the discovery for which Reed became famous was yet to come. Disease was killing more soldiers than the enemy. Yellow fever, in particular, continued its deadly rampage even after the war was over. At the time, it was blamed on unsanitary living conditions, but Reed pursued a theory proposed by Dr Carlos Juan Finlay and others—that mosquitoes were the vector of yellow fever.[6] In experiments that ultimately proved this theory to be correct, Reed was the first scientist to use informed written consent from research subjects. Yellow fever was then eradicated in occupied Cuba within a few short months.[7] Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins, and the original Johns Hopkins hospital that was built to his specifications after his death Johns Hopkins was neither a physician nor a medical researcher, but he is remembered for his large-scale philanthropy and endowments to healthcare institutions. Hopkins acquired his wealth initially as a grocer, and later as a banker, investor, and stockholder in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.[8] Upon his death in 1873, Hopkins bequeathed his fortune and stock holdings to fund the construction of a hospital, university, and medical school, stipulating that these would be linked—an unprecedented idea that served as a model for subsequent academic institutions.[9] The Johns Hopkins Medical School, which opened in 1893, was noted for being the first to admit women, and the hospital was unique for its time in having central heating, a ventilation system, and wiring for electricity and telephone. In his writings, Hopkins emphasized that the hospital would receive and care for all patients—regardless of sex, age, color, or race---without charge to those who couldn't afford to pay.[9] Henry Gray Henry Gray and the title page of a 1918 edition of Gray's opus, Anatomy of the Human Body Grey's Anatomy might currently be best known as a television drama, but it's also the title of one of the most well-known medical texts of all time. The author, British surgeon Henry Gray, was deeply interested in anatomy, and he investigated the development of the retina, thyroid, spleen, and other organs by observing the growth of a chick embryo.[10] Gray performed dissections for his anatomy text, but the illustrations in the first edition were the work of Henry Vandyke Carter.[11] The original edition of Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical (later renamed Gray's Anatomy), published in 1858, featured 750 pages and 363 illustrations.[12] In subsequent editions, Gray's dissections and the original illustrations were replaced. Gray died at age 34 years of smallpox. Virginia Apgar Virginia Apgar examining a newborn, 1958 In 1953, a landmark paper appeared in Current Researches in Anesthesia and Analgesia, titled "A Proposal for a New Method of Evaluation of the Newborn Infant."[13] The author was anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar, and the method is now known as the "Apgar score," an objective way of evaluating the newborn's physiologic transition from the intrauterine to extrauterine environment. The Apgar score involves an assessment of heart rate, respirations, movements, irritability, and color at 1 minute after birth. It is one of the most widely used clinical tools in medicine; to this day, it is performed on every baby born in a hospital at 1 and 5 minutes after birth. Virginia Apgar also began to relate Apgar scores to the effects of labor, delivery, and maternal anesthesia practices. She later developed an interest in teratology and served as head of the March of Dimes Congenital Malformations division.[14] She continued to work until the time of her death in 1974 from liver disease. George Papanicolaou George Papanicolaou and his microscope Even if you've never heard of the inventor, you know the invention: the "pap smear," George Papanicolaou's most famous contribution to medicine. A native of Greece, Papanicolaou began his medical career as an assistant surgeon in that country's Armed Forces.[15] He earned a PhD in zoology at the University of Munich before emigrating to the United States, where he studied sex chromosomes in guinea pigs at New York University and Cornell University. After shifting his focus to humans, Papanicolaou showed that it was possible to distinguish the cytology of normal from malignant cervical cells under a microscope. Thus, the "pap smear" became the gold standard for detecting cervical cancer.[15] Although tests for the causative agent—human papillomavirus—are now available, Papanicolaou's discovery led to a significant decline in cervical cancer rates.[15] Frank Netter Frank Netter and some of his anatomical illustrations Frank Netter was both a physician and an artist. Before enrolling at New York University's School of Medicine, he studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York.[16] Eventually, he found a way to combine his talents. After completing his surgical residency, he discovered that his brush was in higher demand than his scalpel, and he embarked on a career as a medical illustrator.[17] Over the course of his life, Netter completed more than 4000 accurate anatomical drawings, which have become the standard of medical reference drawings in medical education. He illustrated the first open heart surgeries, the first organ transplants, and the first human joint replacements.[17] He even illustrated his own aortic aneurysm surgery. Netter considered his book, Atlas of Human Anatomy, to be his greatest achievement, calling it "his Sistine Chapel." Quinnipiac University's medical school is named for him. Albert Mason Stevens and Frank Chambliss Johnson Albert Mason Stevens, one of two physicians who first described the serious drug-related adverse effect known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome In 1922, surgeon Albert Mason Stevens and pediatrician Frank Chambliss Johnson, at Bellevue Hospital in New York, saw two cases of an unusual generalized cutaneous eruption with fever, inflamed buccal mucosa, and severe purulent conjunctivitis.[18] The lesions of the boys, aged 7 and 8 years, erupted in a similar pattern, but didn't conform to any known skin condition.[18] Stevens and Johnson were unable to establish an etiology, and it's unknown when their names became attached to the syndrome.[19] In the 1950s, Stevens-Johnson syndrome was thought to be a form of erythema multiforme exudativum caused by a sensitivity to drugs or other agents.[20] It is now understood to be, like the more severe toxic epidermal necrolysis, a life-threatening immune hypersensitivity response triggered by exposure to certain drugs.[21] But Stevens and Johnson did not live to find out the cause of the eponymous syndrome. Stevens died in 1945, having retired to Hawaii in 1934, the same year that Johnson died after a fall in a quarry at age 40. William Worrall Mayo Dr William Worrall Mayo (center) with his sons, Dr Charles Mayo (left) and Dr William Mayo (right) Dr William Worrall Mayo was both a pioneer and a trailblazer in medicine. After studying medicine in the United Kingdom, Mayo emigrated to America in 1845. He took a post as a chemist at Bellevue Hospital, the first of many nonphysician roles he undertook over the course of his life: tailor, farmer, state senator, coroner, veterinarian, justice of the peace, ferry boatman, newspaper publisher, and columnist.[22] But at the end of the Civil War, he returned to medicine. Settling in Rochester, Minnesota, he started a medical practice that eventually included his two sons, also physicians, as partners. After a tornado destroyed everything on a large tract of land in north Rochester, he purchased the land and helped establish the hospital that became the not-for-profit Mayo Clinic in 1919. Mayo is remembered not only for his medical career and accomplishments, but also for being a community leader who championed workers' rights.[22] Source
