A Selected
Chronological Bibliography of Biology and Medicine
Part 1B
Compiled by
James Southworth Steen, Ph.D.
Delta State
University
Dedicated to
my loving family
This document celebrates those secondary authors and laboratory technicians
without whom most of this great labor of discovery would have proved
impossible.
Please
forward any editorial comments to: James S. Steen, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus,
jsteen08@bellsouth.net
1637
René Descartes
(FR) within his Discourse on Method,
Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology explained his principles of
investigation: "The first of these was to accept nothing as true which I
did not clearly recognize to be so: that is to say, carefully to avoid
precipitation and prejudice in judgments and to accept in them nothing more
than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I could have
no occasion to doubt it. The second was to divide up each of the difficulties
which I examined into as many parts as possible, and as seemed requisite in
order that it might be resolved in the best manner possible. The third was to
carry on my reflections into order, commencing with objects that were the more
simple and easy to understand, in order to rise little by little, or by
degrees, to knowledge of the most complex assuming order, even it be a
fictitious one, among those which do not follow a natural sequence relatively
to one another. The last was in all cases to make enumerations so complete and
reviews so general that I should be certain of having omitted nothing."
Included within one of the Essays
is La Dioptrique, the first
publication of the “Law of Refraction”, in which he demonstrates the
rectilinear transmission of light and compares the human eye to a camera. Rene Descartes (454; 456;
458).
Thomas Morton (GB) wrote New English Canaan (1637) with
treatments of 26 species of mammals, 32 birds, 20 fishes and 8 marine
invertebrates (1098).
Plague epidemic in Spain (875)
1638
Galileo Galilei (IT) worked out the isochronism of the pendulum in
the Cathedral of Pisa using his pulse (591; 592).
The Countess of Chinchon (ES), wife of the Viceroy of Peru, was
cured of a fever (malaria; the ague)
by powdered quinquina (cinchona) bark, a native remedy. She returned to Spain
in 1641 with a supply of quinquina bark, which became known in Europe as the Countess’s powder. Later it was
imported in large quantities by the Jesuits and became known as Jesuit’s bark. The tree was described in
1738 and given the genus name Chinchona
in honor of the Countess.
Juan del Vego (ES), physician to the countess, in 1641, was the
first European to employ the tincture of the cinchona bark, containing
quinidine, for treating malaria (the
ague). The aborigines of Peru and Ecuador had been using it for treating fevers
since before recorded time (120; 937).
Hermann van der Heyden (BE) authored Discours et Advis sur les Flus de Ventre Doloureux. It contains the
first European medical reference to cinchona bark (Peruvian bark) for treating malaria (the ague) (1625). This
remedy was also known as quina bark (contains quinine) and later as the
Countesse’s powder and Jesuit’s bark.
Nicolas de Blégny (FR) and John Talbor (GB) popularized a
treatment for malaria, (the ague) in
England and France. Tabor became wealthy and famous yet refused to divulge his
formula for financial and religious/political reasons. At that time anything
associated with the Catholic Church was out of favor in England. Talbor’s
treatment was nothing more than the hated Jesuit’s
Powder (ground cinchona bark containing quinine) which the catholic church
had been shipping from South America and Cardinal John de Lugo had tried in
vain to persuade Europe to accept (397; 1571).
Richard Morton (GB), in 1696, presented the first detailed
description of the clinical picture of malaria
(the ague) and its treatment with cinchona (1097).
Francisci Torti (IT), in 1732, established the specific nature of
cinchona bark (contains quinine). His demonstration of its effectiveness in
treating periodic over continuous fevers finally overthrew the doctrine of the
common origin of all fevers. He is also credited with the introduction of the
term malaria (bad air) (1591).
Hipólito Ruiz (ES), in 1792, described seven species of cinchona
and praised the medicinal qualities of a quina extract that he had developed
(contains quinine) (1347).
Bernardino Antonio Gomes (PT) reported that the bark of grey
quinquina (Cinchona condaminea) from
Loxa (Loja, Ecuador) contained a crystalline principle that he named cinchonine
but did not notice its main property, alkalinity (630).
Pierre-Joseph Pelletier (FR) and Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou (FR)
isolated the alkaloid quinine (1192; 1193).
Peter Muehlens (DE) synthesized plasmochin (plasmoquine), the first
drug to be synthesized with a marked
activity against human malaria (ague)
parasites (1100).
Ernest Francois Auguste Fourneau (FR), Jacques Gustave Marie
Tréfouel (FR), G. Stefanopuolo (FR), Yvonne de Lestrange (FR), K.L. Melville
(FR), Thérèse Tréfouel (FR), Daniel Bovet (FR), Melle Germaine Benoit (FR),
Onisim Yul'yevich Magidson (RU), and I.Th. Strukow (RU) produced plasmocid (Fourneau 710) and
8-aminoquinoline, active antimalarial drugs (571; 572; 988).
Hans Mauss (DE) and Fritz Mietzch (DE), in 1931, synthesized the
antimalarial drug mepacrine hydrochloride
(quinacrine hydrochloride, Atabrine quinacrine, mepacrine, atebrin, chinacrin, erion, acriquine, acrichine, palacrin, metoquin, halchin) (1026). It was
marketed in 1932.
Hans Andersag (DE), in 1934, synthesized resochin (chloroquine) (37).
Frank Henry Swinton Curd (GB), D. Garnet Davey (GB), and Francis
Leslie Rose (GB) synthesized proguanil
(paludrine) in 1944. This drug has
low toxicity and high activity against falciparum
malaria. They
first tested proguanil against avian malaria in 1945 (352; 1338).
M.B. Braude (RU) and V.I. Stavrovskaya (RU) synthesized quinocide
in 1945 (206).
Neil Hamilton Fairley (AU) proved that
one tablet of Atabrine (100 mg.) a
day would prevent overt attacks of malaria (the ague),
curing those cases due to Plasmodium
falciparum and postponing clinical manifestations of P. vivax infections until the drug was withheld (521).
1640
Guillaume de Baillou; William of Ballion; Wilhelm Ballonius (FR)
wrote, Epidemiorum et Ephemeridum Libri
Duo, the first modern book on epidemiology and the first since Hippocrates.
It contains the first detailed description of whooping cough
as a distinct entity (396).
1641
Nicolaas Tulp; Nicholas Tulpius; Nicolaes Tulp; Claes Pieters; Nicolaus
Petrejus; Nicholaus Petrus (NL) wrote, Observationes
Medicae, one of the best medical books of the period. It contained many
pathological findings and records of post-mortem examinations. It described and
pictured the ileocecal valve, still known as Tulp’s valve, and discussed kidney
stones, tapeworms, diphtheria (Boulogne
sore throat), bronchial casts, pulsation of the spleen, and beri-beri
(1602). Tulp
described the first of the great apes (a chimpanzee) brought alive to Europe in
1641. Rembrandt van Rijn (NL) immortalized him in his painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp.
Francois de Le Boë; Franciscus Sylvius (DE-NL) described a fissure
on the lateral surface of the brain (920). Caspar
Bartholin (DK) commemorated him by naming it the Sylvian fissure (82).
Moritz Hoffmann (DE), in 1641, claimed to have described the ductus pancreaticus (duct of Wirsüng,
Hoffmann’s duct), the main excretory duct of the
pancreas in the turkey. This work was not published.
Johann Georg Wirsüng (DE) discovered the pancreatic duct in man
yet incorrectly thought it was a chyliferous vessel originating in the
intestine and entering the pancreas (1823).
1643
Charles Bouvard (FR), the king's physician, had probably
prescribed 47 bloodlettings during the last 10 years of Louis XIII of France who
died of Crohn’s disease at the age of 42 years (282).
Typhus (camp fever) epidemic in Oxford and Reading, England (875)
1644
René Descartes (FR) proposed the idea for the Nebular Hypothesis.
It stated that the solar system formed because "God sent adrift a number
of 'vortices' of swirling gas, and these eventually made the stars, which later
changed themselves into comets, which in turn still later formed themselves
into planets" (457).
Evangelista Torricelli (IT) sent a letter to Michelangelo Ricci in
Rome describing his invention, the barometer (1590).
Jean Claude de la Courvée (FR), in 1644, performed the first
symphysiotomy (division of the fibrocartilage of the symphysis pubis, to facilitate delivery). The operation was
performed to save the life of the child after the death of the mother.
Jean-Réne Sigault; Joseph Aignan Sigaud de Lafond (FR) and
Alphonse Louis Vincent Leroy (FR) performed the first division of the symphysis pubis to enlarge the pelvic outlet and thus facilitate
childbirth by a women deformed by rachitis; the mother and child survived (1467; 1468).
James Vaughan (GB) wrote a paper on symphysiotomy (1684).
Typhus (camp fever) epidemic in Tiverton, England (875)
1644-1648
Plague epidemic in Scotland (875)
1645
Marco Aurelio Severino (IT) published his Zootomia Democritaea, the culmination of forty years of
anatomical research, in which he discusses his research on the similarities
that unify the living beings. It is widely considered the first work of
comparative anatomy (1460).
1646
Athanasius Kircher (DE-IT), following his early work with the
microscope, speculated that disease and decay might be brought about by the
activities of tiny living creatures. He says that with the aid of two convex
lenses, held together in a tube, he observed ‘minute ”worms” in all decaying
substances’ —in milk, in the blood of persons stricken with fever, and in the
spittle ‘of an old man who had lived soberly’ (862; 863). He
observed microorganisms in the blood of patients
(864).
Wilhelm Fabry; Wilhelm Fabricius Hildanus (DE) was the first
well-educated barber-surgeon in Germany. He pioneered amputation above the
diseased part in gangrene, invented many surgical instruments, was the first to
recognize congenital pyloric stenosis, and the first Western European to use
the magnet for removal of iron splinters in the eye (519).
1646-1652
Plague epidemic in Spain (875)
1647-1648
Yellow
fever
is epidemic in the West Indies.
1647
Yellow
fever
killed more than 5,000 people in Barbados, and spread from there to Mexico,
Cuba, and elsewhere. A second outbreak in 1691 killed many of the British
settlers in Barbados, who had arrived since the earlier outbreak, whereas older
natives were by this time immune (875).
1648
Jan Baptiste van Helmont; Joannes Baptiste van Helmont; Joan
Baptiste van Helmont; Johannes Baptiste van Helmont (NL) determined
that the gas given off by burning charcoal is the same as that given off by
fermenting grape juice. He called it spiritus silvestre
(“wild spirit”). Today we recognize this as the discovery of carbon
dioxide. He speculated that the process of digestion supplies heat to the body (1628).
Joseph Black (GB) rediscovered carbon dioxide, which he called fixed air, by showing that it is
released when magnesium carbonate or calcium carbonate are heated. He
identified the carbon dioxide thus prepared with that formed in combustion and
fermentation by showing that when the gas was passed into limewater the
carbonate of lime was generated. He was the first to breath into limewater and
observe the formation of a precipitate of calcium carbonate. This experiment
was to influence Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s (FR) conclusion that respiration
involves combustion within the body. Black is also credited with discovery of
the specific heats of substances (147-150).
Georgius Marcgravus (DE), Willem Piso (NL), Johannes de Laet (BE-NL),
and Franciscus Hackius (NL) described among other animals 100 species of fish
indigenous to the Brazilian coastline (1221).
Another smallpox (red
plague) outbreak spread to many towns in the Massachusetts colony. By this time
there had been many children born in the colony who were susceptible. A
simultaneous epidemic of whooping cough
added to the severity of the epidemic, and to the overall death toll (875).
1648-1649
In response to epidemics of yellow fever in Barbados, Cuba, and
the Yucatan, a strict quarantine was established in Boston, Massachusetts, for
all ships arriving from the West Indies because of “ye plague or like
in[fectious] disease.” (1050)
1649
René Descartes (FR), in 1649, postulated that impulses originating
in the sensory receptors of the body were carried to the central nervous system
where they activated muscles by what he called reflection (455).
Jean Astruc (FR) compared the transformation of an impression or
sensation into a motor discharge to a ray of light reflected on a surface; he
called it a reflex (58).
Gerard Blasius; Gerhard Bläes; Gerardus Leonardus Blasius (NL) was
the first to provide a demonstration of the origin of the anterior and posterior
spinal nerve roots and a differentiation between the gray and white matter of
the spinal cord. He was the first to illustrate clearly the H shape of gray
matter in a cross-section of the spinal cord (157; 158).
Domenico Mistichelli (IT) identified
the crossing of motor fibers at the ventral surface of the medulla oblongata (1072).
Francois
Pourfour du Petit (FR) gave a brief account of the internal structure of the
spinal cord, one of the first descriptions having significant merit, and
presented his theory of contralateral innervation (1239).
Francois
Pourfour du Petit (FR), in 1712, showed that the origin of the
sympathetic nerves is not the cranium. He later cut the cervical sympathetic
nerves in the dog and noted that this affected pupil size, the nictitating
membrane, and secretions from the eye. He
described the decussation of the pyramids more accurately and in greater detail
than his predecessors and was among the first to deduce that the right side of
the brain must control the left side of the body, whereas the left side of the
brain must control the right side of the body (1240).
Johann Jakob
Huber (CH) gave the first detailed and accurate descriptions of the spinal
cord, spinal roots, and denticulate ligaments (793).
Robert Whytt (GB) removed known regions of the central nervous
system and studied how animals reacted thereafter to various stimuli. He
established that the spinal cord is essential for reflex action, described the
pupillary response to light, Whytt’s reflex,
noting that destruction of the anterior corpora
quadrigemina abolished the reaction. He reasoned that the reception of
sensory input was distributed throughout the brain and spinal cord (1802).
Felix Vicq-d'Azyr (FR) established
the arrangement of the fiber bundles of the spinal cord into a posterior and
two lateral columns and a white anterior commissure (1692).
Karl Friedrich Burdach (DE) described the fasciculus cuneatus (253).
Marshall Hall (GB) introduced the concept that the spinal cord is
a chain of segments whose functional units are separate reflex arcs. He
demonstrated tonic closure of the sphincters by reflex action, cessation of
strychnine convulsions after destruction of the spinal cord, and that most
reflexes are more readily elicited by stimulating appropriate end-organs than
through their bared nerve trunks. He coined the use of the phrase reflex action to describe these
functions (675; 1756).
Benedict Stilling (DE) and Joseph Wallach (DE) devised a microtome
which enabled him to cut frozen or alcohol hardened, thin sections and
examine them, unstained, with the microscope. They were the first to study the
spinal cord in serial sections (1529).
Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (FR) found that the posterior
columns of the spinal cord convey some sensory impressions. The most important
sensory pathways were found to cross in the cord and, if anything, damage will
cause hypersensitivity on the ipsilateral side of the spinal cord. Paralysis,
loss of muscle sense, hyperasthesia to touch and painful stimuli, and
conservation of sensation to cold and warmth, all appeared on the same side as
spinal cord lesions. On the opposite side voluntary movement and an intact
muscle sense were conserved, however there was a loss or diminution of pain,
warmth, cold, and touch (230-232; 236-239).
Ludwig Türck
(AT) described the ventral corticospinal
tract (1603),
and divided the cord into six pathways or tracts: two anterior, two lateral,
and two posterior (1604).
Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (FR) is associated as a clinician
with the description of the syndrome following spinal cord hemi-section, the
so-called Brown-Séquard paralysis,
characterized by the loss of motor power and position sense on the side of the
lesion, with loss of pain and thermal sensibility on the side opposite the
lesion. His experiments showed that the principal conduction of sensation
in the cord is in the central grey matter and anterior columns, rather than in
the conventionally accepted posterior columns (233-235).
Jacob Augustus Lockhart Clarke (GB) described the dorsal nucleus
of the spinal cord. A column of large neurons located in the base of the posterior
grey column (columna dorsalis) of the
spinal cord, extending from the first thoracic through the second lumbar
segment. The neurites reach out into the side-chord to form tractus spinecerebellaris posterior (301). These are
called Clarke’s columns.
Friedrich
Goll (CH) described the fasciculus
gracilis (carries proprioception from the lower limbs
and lower trunk) within the spinal cord (column or tract of Goll) (628).
Paul Emil
Flechsig (DE) demonstrated the dorsal
spinocerebellar tract within the spinal cord
(538).
William
Richard Gowers (GB) delineated the ventral
spinocerebellar tract within the spinal cord
(633).
Heinrich
Lissauer (DE) demonstrated the tractus
dorsolateralis - the poorly myelinated fibers capping the apex of the
posterior horn in the spinal cord (950).
Henry Charlton Bastian (GB) provided the
basis for what became Bastian's law:
a transverse lesion of the spinal cord above the lumbar enlargement results in
abolition of the tendon reflexes of the lower extremities (94).
Constantin von Monakow (RU-CH) described the
rubrospinal tract within the spinal
cord (1739).
Joseph Jules Déjérine (CH-FR) described
radicular myotomes and dermatomes, the somatotopy and connections of the
pyramidal tracts, as well as the lateral
and ventral spinothalamic tracts. He demonstrated the lateral and anterior spinothalamic tracts (the faisceau en croissant de Dejerine) (448).
Bror Rexed (SE) divided the grey matter of the
spinal cord of the cat into 10 (I-X) laminae
based on groupings of neuronal size and distribution. Each contained
functionally distinct neurons and axonal projections (1312).
See, Herophilus, c. 300 B.C.E.;
Galen, c. 175; Fernel, 1526; Ridley, 1695; Descartes, 1649.
William Harvey (GB) became convinced that systole, rather than diastole,
is the active part of the cardiac cycle that begins first in the atria (696; 701).
A smallpox (red plague)
epidemic passes through London. ref
c.
1650
The specific expression, "Above all, do no harm" or
"First, do no harm" and its even more distinctive associated Latin
phrase, Primum est ut non nocere, has
been traced back to an attribution to Thomas Sydenham (GB), c. 1650 (835; 1473).
Hippocrates (GR), in 400 B.C.E. wrote,
"The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and
foretell the future. Must mediate these things, and have two special objects in
view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm" (758).
1650
Jean Bauhin (FR-CH), Johann Heinrich Cherler (CH) in their Historia Plantarum Universalis, dealt
with approximately 5,000 plants. They were among the first, after Aristotle, to
distinguish the species from the genus (98). Bauhin is
commemorated with the genus Bauhina.
Joannus Jonstonus; Jan Jonston (PL) replaced Mollia with the term
Mollusca (847).
Francis Glisson (GB) wrote the first authoritative monograph
published in England dealing with a single disease, rickets (Old English, wrikken, to bend or twist) (615; 617).
Henry R. Viets (GB) had earlier written a less authoritative
treatise on rickets (1797; 1798).
1650-1651
Plague is epidemic in Ireland (875)
1651
"Almost all animals, even those which bring forth their young
alive, and man himself, are produced from eggs.” Often quoted as “omne vivum ex ovo." William Harvey (698)
Note: The
mammalian ovum was discovered nearly two centuries later. See, von Baer, 1827.
"The blood is the first engendered part, whence the living
principle in the first instance gleams forth, and from which the first animated
particle of the embryo is formed; that it is the source and origin of all other
parts, both similar and dissimilar, which thence obtain their vital heat and become
subservient to it in its duties." William Harvey (697).
Nathaniel Highmore (GB) and William Harvey (GB) were among the
first people to carefully study the embryonic development of chickens,
concluding that all life comes from eggs. Harvey described in detail the
anatomical changes occurring in the uterus of the deer during pregnancy and
gave evidence that the ancient doctrine stating that the male semen functioned
to organize matter contained within the uterus was incorrect (697; 698; 700; 750). Note:
This work is viewed as original because it brought embryology out of the Dark
Ages. Highmore's account of the development of the chick is the first
embryological study based on microscopical examination predating Marcello
Malpighi by more than twenty years. It was published within weeks of William
Harvey's book. Harvey and Highmore had collaborated on embryological research
at Oxford since the 1640's.
William Harvey (GB) described the air sacs of birds in detail (698). See, Frederick II, c. 1240.
Jean Pecquet (FR) and Johannes van Horne (DK) discovered that in
dogs the cisterna chyli (receptaculum chyli) flow into the
thoracic duct (ductus thoracius)
which in turn opens into the veins at the union of the jugular and subclavian (1189; 1190; 1631). See, Bartolomeo Eustachi, 1552.
Olof Rudbeck the elder (SE) discovered that the lacteals of Aselli
drain into the receptaculum chyli,
thence into the thoracic duct and thence into the great veins of the neck, and
that on opening the duct’s milky chyle flows out in profusion if, before the
experiment, the animal has been well fed (1143; 1345; 1513).
Thomas Bartholin; Bartholinus (DK) and his assistant Michael Lyser
(DK) reached a very similar conclusion in man: that the lymphatics formed a
hitherto unrecognized physiological system which eventually collects into the
thoracic duct which enters the circulation at the left subclavian vein. They
were the first to find the thoracic duct in man and to realize that lymph is
carried away from the liver to the thoracic duct
(83; 84; 87; 88).
William Hunter (GB) rediscovered lymphatic vessels in man when he
reported, "that they are the same as the lacteals, and that these together
constitute one great general system dispersed through the whole body for
absorption; that this system only does absorb, and not the veins; that it
serves to take up and convey whatever is to make or to be mixed with the blood,
from the skin, from the intestinal canal, and from all the internal cavities or
surfaces whatever" (811). See, Hewson, 1771.
Alexander Monro, secundus
(GB) showed that the lymphatics are absorbents and distinct from the
circulatory system (1080).
Nathaniel Highmore (GB) discovered the maxillary sinus and the
mediastinal testis (749).
Leopoldina was founded in the Holy Roman Empire in what is now
Italy. It is the oldest continuously existing learned society in the world.
1652
Jan Baptiste van Helmont; Joannes Baptiste van Helmont; Joan
Baptiste van Helmont; Johannes Baptiste van Helmont (NL) wrote Ortis Medicinae in which he described
how he performed a famous experiment. He grew a willow tree in a weighed
quantity of soil and showed that after five years, during which time he only
added water; the tree had gained 164 pounds while the soil had lost only two
ounces. Although he incorrectly concluded that the tree converted the water
into its own tissues, this is possibly the first application of a quantitative
method to a biological problem.
He made gravimetric studies of urine and is credited with the
discovery of carbon dioxide and emphasizing the use of the balance in chemistry
and coining the word gas. He described gastric digestion in the terms of
fermentation and states that there is an acid ferment in the stomach but the
acid itself is not the ferment. The acid chyme of the stomach passes into the
duodenum where it becomes alkaline and a second ferment is supplied by the
bile. He is considered the founder of the iatro-chemical
school of medicine (1629; 1630).
John Hunter (GB) later said, "These appearances throw
considerable light on the principle of digestion, and show that it is neither a
mechanical power, nor contractions of the stomach, nor heat, but something
secreted in the coats of the stomach, and thrown into its cavity, which there
animalizes the food or assimilates it to the nature of the blood. The power of
this juice is confined or limited to certain substances, especially of the
vegetable and animal kingdoms; and although this menstruum is capable of acting
independently of the stomach, yet it is indebted to that viscus for its
continuance." (799)
Edward Stevens (GB) had a human subject swallow large silver
containers with perforations “capable of admitting a needle.” The containers
were recovered some thirty-six to forty-eight hours later, after they had
passed through the digestive tract. He tested beef, pork, cheese, pheasant,
vegetables of different sorts, and cereal grains. Usually the foods were found
to have been completely dissolved, but unbroken cereal grains appeared not to
have been altered. Ivory balls were dissolved and disappeared (1492; 1494; 1528).
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT) swallowed linen bags containing various
foodstuffs to study the action of digestion upon the contents. He studied the
action of saliva on foodstuffs and was among the first to isolate human gastric
juice for study (1491; 1493).
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT) obtained stomach juice from people with a
little sponge on a thread, which people swallowed, and which was removed. The
experiment showed that the stomach juice dissolves meat but does not dissolve a
flower. This work discovered that the gastric juice is acidic and contains
hydrochloric acid (1492).
Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli (IT) studied the gastric juice from
sheep, cats, fish, and birds. He determined that it is acidic in carnivores
while in herbivores it is alkaline and putrescent. He ascertained that the
gastric juice of carnivorous animals had great curative powers when applied to
foul ulcers or wounds, but that of herbivorous animals was destitute of this
property. He succeeded in determining the solvent powers of the gastric juice
from birds on metals, calcareous stones, rock crystal, and agate (241-243).
Bassiano Carminati (IT) found that gastric
juice is not acidic in carnivorous animals when fasting, but quite acidic in
those that had eaten. He discovered that gastric juice of carnivores could be used
successfully to treat foul ulcers or wounds (273).
"an unknown
affection occurred at Leipzig in 1652 and returned again in 1665. It attacked
puerperal women and was so deadly that but one in ten escaped". (256;
1167; 1442) Note: very
likely what was later called puerperal fever
The Academia Naturae Curiosorum was founded. It later became
Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch Carolinische Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher
[Royal Leopold and Caroline German Academy of Natural Sciences].
1653
Pierre Borel; Petri Borelli () and Isaac Cattier;
Isaaci Cattieri () were the first to observe and describe a free-living
nematode, which was dubbed the "vinegar eel" (183).
William Harvey (GB) was the first to describe the communication of
the avian pulmonary air-passages with air sacs in the abdominal cavity (699).
John Hunter (GB), in 1758, demonstrated that the air sacs of some
birds extend into their bones. He proved that birds' bones are hollow and contain air sacs by
blocking the windpipes of chickens and hawks then cutting through their wings.
The birds could yet fill their lungs with air, though with great difficulty, by
taking in air through their severed wing bones (800; 804).
1654
Francis Glisson (GB) described the passage of blood from the
portal vein to the vena cava, and proved that lymph flows not to the liver, as
was then believed, but from it, passing to the recently discovered capsula communis. He is remembered for
his description of the fibrous sheath enveloping the portal vein, hepatic
artery and duct, still known as Glisson’s
capsule. He believed
that bile is excrement derived from the portal blood with blood purified by the
liver returning to circulation by way of the vena cava (616).
Francis Glisson (GB) carried out the most detailed investigation
of the liver anatomy up to this point in history
(616).
Francis
Glisson (GB) described the sphincteric fibers around the terminus of the common
bile duct (616).
Ruggero Oddi
(IT) later described these same fibers (1148).
They became known as Oddi’s sphincter.
1655
Thomas Willis (GB) wrote a book on the epidemic of “Camp Fever”
(typhus) in the winter of 1655 (1815).
John Huxham (GB) distinguished between slow nervous (typhoid) and putrid malignant (typhus) fevers (828).
James Lind (GB) studied typhus
(camp fever) then recommended delousing, viz., bathing, clean apparel, and
baking of lice-ridden clothing in ovens (941).
Francesco Enrico Acerbi (IT) postulated that typhus (camp fever) is caused by parasites capable of entering the
body and multiplying there to produce disease (10).
William Wood Gerhard (US) presented a differential diagnosis of
typhus (camp fever) and typhoid fevers (607).
Charles
Murchison (GB) stated that to prevent endemic
typhus (camp fever)one must protect the
individual from lice (1117).
Osip
Moczutkowski (RU) proved that the etiological agent of endemic typhus (camp fever) is present in the blood during the
febrile period by inoculating himself with
such blood (1073).
Charles Jules Henri Nicolle (FR), Charles Compte (FR) and Ernest
Conseil (FR) reported that the body louse, Pediculus
vestimenti, transmits typhus fever (camp fever) from person to person (1139; 1141).
Howard Taylor Ricketts (US) and Russell M. Wilder (US) described a
bacterium, later named Rickettsia prowazekii,
found in the gut of lice feeding on typhus (camp fever) patients (1313; 1314).
Harry Plotz (US), Peter K. Olitsky (US), and Geoege Baehr (US)
isolated and identified the etiological agent of typhus fever (camp fever)
as Rickettsia prowazekii (1225; 1226).
Harry Plotz (US), Peter K. Olitsky (US), and George Baehr (US)
developed a vaccine that proved effective against typhus fever (camp fever) (1227).
Henrique da Rocha-Lima (BR) showed that the bacterium which
Ricketts and Wilder found in the gut of lice feeding on typhus (camp fever) patients, is an intracellular parasite and very
likely the cause of typhus (camp fever). He named the organism Rickettsia prowazekii in honor of Howard
Taylor Ricketts (US), who had died in 1910 of typhus fever (camp fever) during an investigation of that disease,
and Stanislas Josef Matthias von Prowázek (CZ) who also died of typhus (camp fever) while studying it (365).
Edmund Weil (AT) and Arthur Felix (PL-GB) reported that the sera
of patients suffering from typhus (camp fever) agglutinate certain strains of
the bacterium Proteus, originally
isolated from the urine of a typhus fever 9camp fever) victim. The OX-2 and
OX-19 strains of Proteus are commonly
used. Serum from normal persons did not produce a similar result (1774-1776). Later
studies showed that Proteus spp. are
not the cause of typhus fever (camp
fever) and that antibodies against Proteus
spp. normally occur quite commonly in humans. Today this procedure is called the
Weil-Felix Test.
Mather H.
Neill (US) discovered that scrotal reactions of guinea pigs with Mexican typhus (later known as murine typhus) could be used as a
differential test with European, or
epidemic, typhus (camp fever).
It was first known as the Neill phenomenon; later called the Neill-Mooser
phenomenon after Neill and Herman Mooser, a Swiss pathologist working in Mexico (1085; 1129).
William Fletcher (MY) and J.E. Lesslar (MY) found that the Proteus OX-K strain appears specifically
to agglutinate with antibodies to Rickettsia
tsutsugamushi (539).
M. Ruiz Castañeda (MX) and Samuel J. Zia (MX) found
that there is a common antigenic factor in Rickettsia and Proteus X-19 which explains the
Well-Felix reaction (277).
Hans Zinsser (US) demonstrated that Brill's disease is identical to Old World typhus (camp fever) caused by Rickettsia
prowazeki da Rocha Lima (1228; 1851-1853). The
disease was renamed Brill-Zinsser’s
disease.
Isaac de La Peyrère (FR) wrote one of the first books to challenge
the biblical account of creation. Based on human artifacts he asserted that
Adam and Eve were the founding couple only of the Jews. The Gentiles were
older—pre-Adam. His book became very popular—translated into several
languages—and thus earned him the ire of both the Catholics and the Calvinists.
His book was burned in Paris, he was forced to recant his ideas, then forced to
live out his life in a convent (891).
Conrad Victor Schneider (DE) argued that the nasal mucosa, and not
the ventricles or the brain, is the source of nasal secretions (1423). He did not
know that the racemose glands produce the nasal secretion.
Yellow fever is epidemic in Jamaica (875)
During the invasion of Jamaica, Cromwell's troops suffered from dysentery
(bloody flux), with the loss of 1,000 men to both conflict and disease (303).
1656
Thomas Wharton (GB) discovered the duct of the submaxillary
salivary gland (Wharton’s duct) and a gelatinous intercellular substance that
is the primitive mucoid connective tissue of the umbilical cord (Wharton’s
jelly). He is responsible for naming the thyroid gland “thyreoidea”, meaning
oblong shield in Greek. He also deserves credit for being
the first to associate the adrenal glands with a function of the nervous
system. His description of the adrenals taking a substance from nerves and
transferring it to veins preceded the neuroendocrine concept of the adrenal
medulla that we have only appreciated in the 20th century (1796).
Rudolf Albert von Kölliker (CH) confirmed Wharton’s work on the
adrenal glands (1733).
Dominici de Marchettis; Domenico De Marchetti; Dominicus de
Marchettis (IT) shows anastomosis of arterioles and veins by injection (428).
Étienne Blankaard; Steven Blankaart; Stephano
Blancardo; Stephen Blancard; Blancardus (NL) demonstrated by injection, in
1675, the continuity of arterial and venous capillaries (156). See, Marello Malpighi (IT), 1661. Leonardo da Vinci (IT),
in his dissections (1489–1515), injected the blood vessels with wax for
preservation and thereby discovered and named the capillaries.
Felix Platter (CH) gave the first more detailed description of cretinism
in 1602: “it is usual that many infants suffer from innate folly. Besides, the
head is sometimes misshapen: the tongue is huge and swollen; they are dumb; the
throat is often goitrous. Thus they present an ugly sight; and sitting in the
streets and looking into the sun, and putting little sticks in between their
fingers, twisting their bodies in various ways, with their mouths agape they
provoke passersby to laughter and astonishment. Note: Cretinism
is congenital hypothyroidism deficiency syndrome. ref
Thomas Blizard Curling (GB) described two clinical cases of myxedema
(hypothyroidism) associated with cretinism (353).
William M. Ord (GB) published a paper in which he coined the term myxoedema
and published the first photography of a patient (1153; 1154).
1656-1657
Plague is epidemic in Italy (875)
1657-1669
A pandemic of malarial fever (the ague) takes place. ref
1657-1659
England experiences epidemic catarrhal fever (probably influenza).
ref
1657
Boston, MA experienced a measles (rubeola) epidemic (1050).
Christopher Wren (GB) is credited with the creation of the first
syringe for intravenous injections by fastening a dog’s bladder to a sharpened
goose quill (611). Wren was
preceded in 1652 in the use of this device by Francis Potter, a British rector,
whose choice of pullets as an experimental animal doomed his experiments to
failure (762; 858).
Johann Daniel Major (DE) and Johann S. Elsholtz (DE) wrote the
first books on intravenous infusions in humans (505; 993).
Dominique
Anel (FR), a surgeon to the seventeenth-century French army, is usually
credited with the invention, in 1714, of the kind of syringe used today. He
devised this instrument for the surgical treatment of fistula lacrymalis (1250).
Francis Rynd (IE) invented the hollow metal needle. He first used
it in 1844 to administer morphine by gravity through the needle into a patient
suffering from neuralgia (1365).
Charles-Gabriel
Pravaz (FR) and Alexander Wood (GB) are independently credited with the
invention of the hypodermic syringe in 1853. Pravaz, a veterinarian, made
intra-arterial injections into animals to treat
aneurysm (1243). Wood, a
physician, first made subcutaneous injections of opiates to relieve pain (1830). The
first recorded fatality from a hypodermic syringe induced overdose was Dr.
Wood's wife. The tragedy arose because she was injecting morphine to excess.
The Academia del Cimento
was founded at Florence, Italy. Its purpose was scientific investigation.
1658-1665
Thomas Willis (GB) tells of typhus (camp fever) and influenza
(grippe) being present in England. ref An outbreak of influenza in April
1658 led him to treat almost 1000 patients a week for a short period (1817).
1658
James Ussher (GB) calculated the date of creation, based on the
ages of biblical prophets. Using his calculations, future theologians
identified the date of creation as October 26, 4004 B.C.E. (1614).
Jan Swammerdam (NL) discovered the erythrocyte in the frog (1658)
then in man (1662), described lymphatic valves and the alteration in the shape
of muscles during contraction. In his study of the insects he produced outstanding
drawings, classified them, and described their transformations, i.e., he
started modern entomology. Swammerdam’s work was unpublished until Herman
Boerhaave (NL) published it at his own expense (1549; 1550). He is
commemorated by Atylus swammerdami
Milne-Edwards, 1830. Note: The 1737-1738 book is considered the finest
one-man collection of microscopic observations.
Francois de la Boë Sylvius; Franciscus Sylvius (DE-NL) promoted
the Iatro-chemical school of
medicine, whose followers used medicines and did not accept the humoral pathology. While professor of
medicine at Leyden he convinced the authorities to build a Laboratorium, probably the first chemical laboratory in a
university. Sylvius introduced bedside teaching and stressed the importance of
pathological studies. He pointed out that the formation of tubercles in the
lungs represents the essential pathological finding in phthsis (tuberculosis) (1561; 1562).
Johann Jakob Wepfer (CH) described the autopsy of a case with
subarachnoid hemorrhage and theorized that a broken blood vessel in the brain
may cause apoplexy (stroke) (1789).
1659
“In December 1659 the (until then unknown) Malady of Bladders in the
Windpipe, invaded and removed many Children; by Opening of one of them the
Malady and Remedy (too late for very many) were discovered.” (1024) Cotton Mather (US), minister in Boston, MA. Note:
most likely a reference to diphtheria (Boulogne sore throat).
Thomas Willis (GB) proposed the idea that fermentation is an
internal motion of particles. He pointed to the similarity between fermentation
and putrefaction. Early chemists were interested in putrefaction or rotting of
various infusions because it was known that industrially useful substances such
as lactic acid, butyric acid, or ethanol could be obtained from these infusions
as they putrefied (1810).
1660
The Royal Society of London took as its motto the phrase Nullius in verba [No man’s word shall be
final].
Robert Boyle (GB) was convinced of the particulate nature of air.
He explored not only the physical properties of air, but also its fundamental
role in combustion and respiration, through the use of physiological
experiments (192; 197).
Nicolas Le Febvre (FR), Thomas Jolly (FR), and Abbaye Saint-Denis
(FR) wrote Traicte de la Chymie in
which they held that the function of air in respiration was to purify the blood (921).
Konrad Victor Schneider (DE) demonstrated that nasal mucus is a
product of mucous glands lining the nasal cavity
(1424).
Smallpox (red Plague) is epidemic in Brazil (875)
1661
Robert Boyle (GB) is credited with being the first to produce pure
methyl alcohol (methanol, wood alcohol) despite the fact of its production in
antiquity (193).
Robert Boyle (GB), in his book The
Sceptical Chemist, is given credit for defining an element as it is
currently used in chemistry. He also emphasized the importance of the Baconian
method of experimental science as opposed to blind acceptance of previous authority (193).
Marcello Malpighi (IT), anatomist, general histologist, and
professor of medicine, discovered fine hair-like blood vessels in the lungs of
frogs connecting arterial and venous blood; they were later called capillaries. He offered proof that the
windpipe terminates in many small, dilated air vessels; they were later called alveoli. Malpighi thus presented the
correct anatomy for respiratory exchange. He described lymph nodes and
discussed the glands (glomeruli) of the kidney. He wrote the first treatise to
deal with an invertebrate—the silkworm. He was among the first to describe the
embryonic development of the chick, using the microscope. (See, Highmore 1651b) He described the respiratory vessels in
insects, spiral looking cells in plant stems, and openings on the underside of
leaves; later to be called stomata,
and gave the first account of the development of the seed (18; 995; 1000; 1001; 1004; 1007). He was
commemorated with the plant genus Malpighia
and the family, Malpighiaceae.
John Ray (GB) discovered hermaphroditism among pulmonate snails.
In his book, Catalogus Plantarum Circa
Cantabrigiam Nascentium he says, "Not even this lethal plant [the deadly
nightshade (Atropa belladonna)] escapes
the teeth of snails and slugs for its leaves are freely eaten in spring by
these creatures. In passing one may mention that they are hermaphrodite. That
they alternately function as male and female by impregnating and receiving at
the same time will be clear to anyone who separates them as they are having
intercourse in Spring, although neither Aristotle nor any other writer on
Natural History has recorded this fact" (517; 1277).
Jan Swammerdam (NL), in his 1669 book, Historia Insectorum Generalis mentioned "Snails discharge
their excrements by the neck, and are each of them, both Male and Female" (1546).
Johann Jacob Harder (CH)
discovered hermaphroditism among the pulmonate mollusks (687).
Thomas Willis (GB) suggested the nervous origins of convulsive
disorders such as epilepsy, asthma, apoplexy, narcolepsy, and convulsive
coughs. He gave an account of whooping cough, described the role of bronchial
innervation, and the late-stage effects of syphilis on the brain. He describes
a typhoid epidemic of 1661, in England (1811).
Thomas Willis (GB) in a section titled ‘Of the Phrensy’, offered
‘meningitis’ as the modern diagnosis of phrensy/phrenitis. Moreover, Willis
clearly described the pathology of compression of the brain as a consequence of
meningeal inflammation and also mentions an epidemic of meningitis, reigning An.
1661, which chiefly infested the brain and the genus nervosum (1816).
Scarlet fever appears in England. ref
1661-1665
Typhus (camp fever) is epidemic in London (875)
1662
The Royal Society of London
was formally incorporated in 1662. It had begun in 1645 when a group of doctors
and scientists in London formed a society they called The Invisible College. It briefly moved to Oxford then returned to
London. Charles II approved their organization in 1660 (1498).
Robert Boyle (GB) formulated what became known as Boyle’s law—at a
stated temperature, a given mass of gas varies in volume inversely as the
pressure (194).
Niels Stensen; Nicholas Stenonis; Nicholas Steno; Nicolaus Steno;
Niels Steensen; Nicolaus Steensen (DK) described the excretory duct of the parotid
gland (parotis or (Stensen’s duct) while dissecting the
head of a sheep. He also described the lacrymeal gland and ducts used to bath
the eye (1514; 1519; 1524).
Smallpox (red
plague) killed more than a thousand Iroquois in Central New York State (875).
1663
Jan Swammerdam (NL) performed laboratory experiments on the
contraction of frog muscle (1549; 1550).
Marcello Malpighi (IT) posthumously described tubular sense organs
he found in some fish in 1663. These became known as "ampullae of
Lorenzini" (1003). See, Stefano Lorenzini, 1678.
Lorenzo Bellini (IT) described renal tubules for the first time, Bellini’s ducts, and proposed how urine
might be formed (118).
Hendrick van Roonhuyse (NL) gave the first
deliberate and detailed account of the repair of a vesicovaginal fistula. His
book is regarded as the first work on operative gynecology in the modern sense.
He successfully performed caesarean section several times, and he used
retractors for the repair of vesico-vaginal fistulae (1677).
Girolamo Cardano; Jerome Cardan (IT) used raised letters to
communicate with the blind and described a formal method for teaching deaf
mutes to communicate with signs (269).
North American colonists established their first hospital. It was
on Long Island in what would become New York State (994).
1663-1668
The plague is epidemic
in England, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. (875)
1664
"They have considered the heart as the seat of vital heat,
the throne of the spirit or the soul itself. They have revered the organ as sun
or king, but if one looks at the heart with more care, only its muscular nature
can be found" Niels Stensen; Nicholas Stenonis; Nicholas Steno; Nicolaus
Steno; Niels Steensen; Nicolaus Steensen (1515)
Robert Boyle (GB), in 1664, was the first to distinguish between
acids, bases, and neutral substances, and in his 1664 Experiments he codified the analysis of solutions by use of colored
vegetable extracts serving as "indicators" of the presence of acids
or bases or neutral substances (196). He is
credited with the introduction of litmus paper.
William Croone; William Croune (GB) suggested that within muscle
cells the globules (sarcomeres), delineated by cross-striations, may serve as
units of contraction. He also assumed that contraction occurs without a change
in muscle volume and proposed that nerves play a role in conducting the
stimulus from the brain to the muscle fibers (343; 344). See, Stensen, 1664 and 1667.
Reijnier de Graaf (NL) performed the first cannulization. He
introduced a temporary cannula, made of the quill of a wild duck, into the
pancreatic duct of a living dog, and studied the properties of the liquid
obtained. He noted its color, what he thought was an acid reaction, and its
bitter taste (410; 414).
Gerard Blasius; Gerhard Bläes; Gerardus Leonardus Blasius (NL)
discovered and named the arachnoid
membrane, one of the three meninges covering the brain; presenting his
finding to the Anatomical Society of Amsterdam in 1664 (157; 531).
Humphrey Ridley (GB) described the arachnoid membrane and observed
that it invests various cerebral vessels and intracranial nerves. He disproved
the idea that some cerebral arteries terminated directly into the major venous
sinuses of the brain (1315).
Frederik Ruysch (NL) described the arachnoid membrane as a
complete layer surrounding the brain (515).
Thomas Willis (GB) gave one of the earliest descriptions of the
arterial supply of the brain, the Circle
of Willis, and a precise account of the cranial nerves, Nerves of Willis. He was certain about
the location of the thought process. He wrote, "in truth within the womb
of the brain all the conceptions, ideas, forces and powers whatsoever both of
the rational and sensitive soul are formed, and having there gotten a species
are transformed into acts." Regarding the function of the cerebral cortex
he said, "Then if the same fluctuation of the spirits is struck against
the cortex of the brain, as its utmost banks, it impresses on it the image or
character of the sensible object, which when it is afterwards reflected or bent
back, raises up the memory of the same thing…And sometimes a certain sensible
impression…striking against the cortex of the brain itself…and so induces
memory with phantasie." For him the cerebellum and the pons were
responsible for the involuntary motions of various organs, such as the heartbeat,
breathing and gastrointestinal peristalsis. He was the first to describe the
ganglions of the sympathetic nerves and recognized the vagus nerve, erroneously
assuming it had its origin in the cerebellum. Domenico de Marchetti (IT) coined
the name vagus for this cranial nerve.
Willis attempted to correlate the organization of the brain’s
convolutions with intelligence and stressed that the brain's workings are
mediated by the brain parenchyma and not, as previously held, by the
ventricles.
He stressed that the nerves do not contain cavities like arteries
and veins but are firm and compacted. Willis described the eleventh cranial
nerve. In the 1664 work he coined the word neurology
(neurologie) and named the pyramidal
system in the brain (believing it to be a reservoir for the animal
spirits). He anticipated what would later be called dementia praecox when in 1664 he wrote, "young persons who,
lively and spirited, and at times even brilliant in their childhood, passed
into obtuseness and hebetude during adolescence" (1814; 1818).
Emanuel Swedenborg (SE) deduced that the cerebrum of the brain is
the source of understanding, thinking, judging, and willing. He inferred the
intellectual functions of the frontal lobes. He described what is the first
known anticipation of the neuron (a nerve cell with its processes) (14; 1554).
Niels Stensen; Nicholas Stenonis; Nicholas Steno; Nicolaus Steno;
Niels Steensen; Nicolaus Steensen (DK) made a careful investigation of the ox
heart musculature. After a thorough examination he stated: "As to the
substance of the heart, I think I am able to prove that there exists nothing in
the heart that is not found also in a muscle, and that there is nothing missing
in the heart which one finds in a muscle." He also described the anatomy
and function of the respiratory muscles including the diaphragm (1515; 1518; 1523).
1665-1666
Smallpox (red plague) is epidemic in Brazil and Boston, Massachusetts
(875).
1665
Robert Hooke (GB) published a theory of combustion. He stated that
ordinary air contains a small amount of matter identical with a substance found
in nitre (potassium nitrate). This substance has the property of rapidly
dissolving combustibles, with combustion being the result of their rapid motion (779). In this
same publication Hooke described and illustrated a parasitic rose rust (Phragmidium
mucronatum) and a saprophytic Mucor.
Robert Hooke (GB) used a compound microscope to describe small
pores in sections of cork that he called cells.
" . . . I could exceedingly plainly perceive it to be all perforated and
porous. . . these pores, or cells, . . . were indeed the first microscopical
pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that were ever seen, for I had not met with any
Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this." In his
book, Micrographia, he also described
and made beautiful drawings of insects, feathers, Foraminifera, and fish
scales, as well as, hair and wool both in their natural condition and after
dying. He may be the first to have stained objects for viewing. He specifically
mentions using logwood (hematoxylin) to stain fluids (779).
Robert Boyle (GB) presented his method of fixing and preserving
soft-bodied animal specimens in wine spirits (195).
Adolph Hannover (DK) introduced the technique of fixing tissue in
chromic acid to improve its contrast during microscopic observation (685).
Heinrich Müller (DE) introduced potassium dichromate as a tissue
fixative (1103).
Frederik Ruysch (NL) provided the first description of the valves
of the lymphatics (1362).
Marcello Malpighi (IT), and Carlo Fracassati (IT) distinguished
the outer layer of the tongue and the reticular mucous layer and isolated the
taste buds. They demonstrated that the white matter of the nervous system was
made of bundles of fibers, which connected the brain with the spinal cord {Malpighi,
1665 #22975}.
Johann Sigismund Elsholtz (DE) made the first attempt at
intravenous anesthesia (505).
The Great Plague (Yersinia
pestis) of London killed at least 20 percent of the city's population,
perhaps as many as 100,000 people (875). It is
likely that the rhyme Ring a Ring o’
Roses originated at this time although it did not appear in print until
1881. Ring a ring o’ roses refers to
the circular rosy rash that is an early symptom of the plague. A pocketful of posies
refers to herbs people carried in their pockets, believing they offered
protection. A-tishoo! A-tishoo!/ We all
fall down, tells of the plague’s fatal sneeze, which preceded physical
collapse; literally the victim fell down dead (640). Note:
While escaping the Great Plague, Isaac Newton’s enormously productive time at
Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth, England is often called the Annus Mirabilis
or the 'Year of Wonders'.
Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London,
the oldest scientific journal printed in the English-speaking world, was first
published in England on 6 March 1665. Henry Oldenburg (DE) was founder and
editor.
Le
Journal des Savants was first published in France. This is the oldest scientific
journal, first issue, 5 January 1665.
1666-1675
Smallpox (red
plague) was reported in Europe.
1666
Robert Hooke (GB), on 9 November, wrote the Fellows of the Royal
Society in London that, "I did heretofore give this Illustrious Society
[the Royal Society] an account of an Experiment I formerly tryed of keeping a
Dog alive…by the Reciprocal blowing up of his Lungs with Bellowes, and they
suffered to subside, for the space of an hour or more, after his Thorax had
been so display'd [cut open], and his Aspera
arteria [bronchus had been] cut off just below the Epiglottis, and bound upon the nose of the Bellows." (145; 780).
Richard Lower (GB) discovered that venous blood is converted from
dark red to a bright red by contact with something in the air that he called
the nitrous spirit. He injected
venous blood into inflated lungs and noted that it became bright red. He
suggested that the blood absorbed from the air a definite chemical substance
necessary for life, and that this was, in fact, the chief function of the
pulmonary circulation. When he ligated the heart’s nerve connections, it
palpitated, quivered, and after a few days stopped beating. He guessed that the
nerves carried a spirit from the storeroom
of the cerebellum to the heart. He observed that ligation of the inferior vena
cava gives rise to ascites. Lower followed the flow of digested nutriment from
intestine to lacteals to lymphatics to blood and so to various parts of the
body and demonstrated that phlegm originates in the nasal membranes and not in
the brain as was thought. He noted that excess pressure from the pericardial
fluid could cause the heart to stop beating (661; 964-966). Note:
Richard Lower may have been the first to describe congestive heart failure.
See, Konrad Victor Schneider, 1660.
Thomas Sydenham (GB) studied predisposing causes of diseases using
a rational approach to treatment of
disease. He contended that healing would better be promoted when the root cause
of a disease could be found along with the laws governing the course of the
disease and that the patient was best served when the physician tried to assist
nature. He encouraged students to learn about disease at the bedside. Sydenham
supported the Hippocratic idea of humoral pathology. He treated anemic patients
with what he called steel tonic, made
by steeping steel filings in cold Rhenish wine (this process resulted in the
formation of ferrous potassium tartrate). He is to be given credit for
demonstrating that iron is essential in the diet. He popularized the use of laudanum (alcoholic tincture of opium)
in English medicine and advocated the use of Peruvian bark or Jesuit’s
powder (quinine) as an antimalarial. Sydenham wrote outstanding
descriptions of many diseases such as scarlet fever, measles, influenza
(grippe), and gout; being one of the first to describe in detail the so-called Bell’s palsy, however he will be
remembered for reporting the definite clinical entity known as St. Vitus Dance or chorea minor in 1686. " This is a kind of convulsion, which
attacks boys and girls from the tenth year to the time of puberty. It first
shows itself by limping or unsteadiness in one of the legs, which the patient
drags. The hand cannot be steady for a moment. It passes from one position to
another by a convulsive movement, however, much the patient may strive to the
contrary." His description of measles is excellent, "The measles
generally attacks children. On the first day they have chills and fever…On the
second…cough…The nose and eyes run continually; and this is the surest sign of
measles…[on] the fourth day…there appear on the face and forehead small red
spots, very like the bites of fleas" (1556; 1558; 1559). Note: St. Vitus Dance or chorea
minor is an infectious disease of the central nervous system, appearing
after a streptococcal infection, with subsequent rheumatic fever, characterized
by involuntary purposeless contractions of the muscles of the trunk and
extremities.
Albert Delcourt (FR) and René Sand (FR) discovered that the
pathophysiology of Sydenham’s chorea
involves inflammation of both the cortex and the basal ganglia of the brain (449).
Frederick John Poynton (GB) and Alexander Paine (GB) determined
that the causal agent of Sydenham’s chorea is a bacterium they named Diplococcus rheumaticus (1242).
Heinrich Meibom (DE) described and rediscovered the tarsal glands
of the eyelid first noted by Julius Cesare Casserius (IT) in 1609 (276; 1048).
Marcello Malpighi (IT) described the glomeruli of the kidney, Malpighian bodies, as attached to the
tips of arteries within the kidney. "The glands [i.e., the glomeruli] that
have been discovered in the kidney…contribute a special service in the
excretion of the urine…. They appear…spherical, precisely like fish eggs: and
when a dark fluid is perfused through the arteries they grow dark." In
this paper he also gives the first recorded description of Hodgkin’s lymphoma (996).
Marcello Malpighi (IT) noted in animals and humans the lobular
structure of the liver, distinguishing the venous and biliary system. He
suggested that bile was produced by the liver and not by gallbladder as thought
previously (996).
Thomas Bartholin (DK) gave the first scholarly account of peasant
immunization practices in Europe. He described how parents fearful for their
children’s health, would seek out someone with a case of smallpox (red plague), preferably a mild one. The smallpox victim and the child would then
make contact in such a way as to infect the child. After an incubation period
of about a week the child, if it was lucky, would develop a mild case of smallpox and would emerge virtually
unscarred and immune to the disease thereafter; the mild induced case gave the
same protection that was provided by a severe one. Educated people came to call
this practice of folk medicine inoculation
(L. inoculare, to graft) or variolation (L. varus, pimple), Variola
being the scholarly name for smallpox (85; 86).
A smallpox (red plague)
outbreak struck Boston, but was relatively mild, and only about 40 people died (875).
The Académie des Sciences
was founded in Paris.
1667-1669
Thomas Sydenham (GB) reports that smallpox (red plague) is present in England.
1667-1679
London experiences a smallpox
(red plague) epidemic.
1667-1681
A pandemic of malarial fever
(the ague) effects Europe.
1667
Adrien Auzout (FR) and Jean Picard (FR) invented the type of
micrometer that survived and is in use today (64).
Christopher Merrett (GB) publishes the first fauna of Great
Britain, followed two years later by that of Walter Charleton (GB) (1057).
Niels Stensen; Nicholas Stenonis; Nicholas Steno; Nicolaus Steno;
Niels Steensen; Nicolaus Steensen (DK) developed a mathematical description of
muscular contraction, and attempted to show that muscles do not increase in
volume during contraction. He dissected the head of a giant white shark and for
the first time correctly identified the serpent tongues or tongue stones (glossopetrae) from the island of Malta
as fossilized shark teeth. This was a significant event in early paleontology (1516; 1522; 1525).
Walter Needham (GB) gave the first thorough description of the
placenta and the fetal membranes. He claimed, but did not prove, that the fetus
in utero is nourished by blood from
the placenta (1127).
Jan Swammerdam (NL) described docimasia
of fetal lungs. This is a determination of whether air had entered the lungs of
a dead infant, as an indication whether it was born dead or alive. He found
that fetal lungs would float in water following respiration (1545).
An epidemic of plague at
Nottingham marks a cessation of the disease in England.
1668-1672
Epidemic dysentery
(bloody flux) is present in England (described by Sydenham and Morton).
1668-1669
A fatal aphthous fever
(resembling thrush) is present in Leyden and other Dutch towns.
1668
“We have no right to deny the entrance of air into the blood
because, on account of the bluntness of our senses we cannot actually see the
vessels by which it makes its entrance. . . . For in order that the aerea particles
should mix with the mass of blood in a state of fine division and in a most
intimate manner, it is necessary that they should enter the blood through
channels or rather orifices, almost infinite in number, distributed here and
there over the whole mass of the lungs.” John Mayow (GB) (1032).
Francesco Redi (IT) made many experiments to test the concept of
spontaneous generation. He placed various kinds of flesh in open boxes and left
them to decay. Maggots appeared, and he watched them become converted into
adult insects. He also found ova which he considered had been dropped on the
flesh by flies. He put a snake, some fish, some eels, and a slice of milk-fed
veal into four wide-mouthed vessels, and sealed them with paper. He then
prepared similar vessels in the same way except that they were left open. In
the latter the flesh rapidly teemed with maggots but he could find none in the
closed series, although here and there on the paper cover he saw maggots
eagerly seeking any crevice through which they could penetrate to obtain food.
He performed other experiments in which the paper was replaced by the finest
gauze to allow airflow. He placed the gauze-covered vessels in a frame also
covered by gauze. Maggots and flies were seen on the gauze but none appeared on
the meat. He observed flies deposit their ova on the gauze. This was the first
clear-cut case of using controls in a scientific experiment. By these
experiments Redi destroyed the myth that maggots appear spontaneously on meat (252; 1285; 1288). It was
Redi who introduced into the scientific method the serial procedure and comparison
between research experiments and control experiments.
Reijnier de Graaf (NL) described the fine structure of the human
testis and later the fine structure of the human ovary (whose name he
suggested). He described the ovarian follicles (folliculus oophorus vesiculosus), which he
mistakenly took to be the egg or ovum (411-413). In his
honor, Albrecht von Haller (CH) was later to name the follicles on the surface Graafian follicles.
Karl Ernst von Baer (EE-DE-RU) discovered (in the dog) that the
egg is a smaller body within the follicle and traced it to the uterus by way of
the oviduct (1704-1707).
Niels Stensen; Nicholas Stenonis; Nicholas Steno; Nicolaus Steno;
Niels Steensen; Nicolaus Steensen (DK), in 1668, discovered the fibrous nature
of the nervous system’s white matter. This white matter he showed to consist of
tracts of fibers in continuity with the nerves. He proposed that thought and
movement depended on the arrangement and co-ordination of nerve fibers within
the brain. This shattered the Greek theory that the ventricles were the
principal functional elements of the brain and Descartes’ theory that the
pineal gland was central to the thought process (1527).
L’Abbe Edmé Mariotte (FR) related his discovery of the blind spot
of the eye in a letter to Christiaan Huygens (NL) then sent them to the Royal
Society in London (1017; 1018).
Probably the earliest recorded epidemic of yellow fever to occur in non-tropical America, struck New York in
late summer and early fall of 1668. It was described as an autumnal bilious fever in infectious form. The contemporary
descriptions leave some possibility open that it could have been some other
disease, but yellow fever seems the
most likely (875).
1669-1672
England experiences dysentery
(bloody flux) and infantile summer
diarrhea (flux)(Thomas Sydenham and Thomas Willis).
1669
“I first observed, that it is clearer than the light of noon, that
man, like insects, is produced from a visible egg, which after being
impregnated, is brought forth; that is, it is by local motion conveyed out of
the ovary through a tube into the uterus which is the place wherein man, that
rational animal, finds the first nourishment and represents as it were a
Vermicle or Worm, or to use Harvey’s words, a Magot lying in the egg.” Jan
Swammerdam (NL) (1547; 1549)
Although this statement does not conflict with the concept of
preformation it is interesting because Swammerdam believed in preformation. See, William Harvey, 1651.
Hennig Brandt; Hennig Brand (DE) prepared white phosphorus by
using the anaerobic destructive distillation of the solids of urine. Elemental
phosphorus passed over and collected under the liquid in the retort. He
wrote about his discovery to the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (DE), who later in his Historia
Inventionis Phosphori (Berlin 1710), wrote that Brand was an impoverished
merchant who sought to restore his wealth by converting base metals into gold;
and during his alchemical experiments with urine discovered phosphorus. As was
typical in alchemy at the time, the details of the method were kept secret.
Brand sold his secret to the German physician Johannes Daniel Krafft (1626).
John Wray; John Ray (GB) reports experiments by Francis Jessop
(GB), Samuel (GB), and John Fisher (GB) on the
isolation of formic acid by the distillation of large numbers of ants (1833).
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (DE) obtained formic acid by distilling
ants with steam (1014).
Théophile-Jules
Pelouze (FR), an assistant of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR), in 1832,
synthesized formic acid from hydrocyanic acid (1194).
Jan Swammerdam (NL) described water-fleas (Daphnia) (1546).
Jan Swammerdam (NL) described the metamorphosis of insects,
supporting the preformation doctrine (1549; 1550).
John Mayow
(GB)—who also gives a remarkably correct anatomical description of the
mechanism of respiration – preceded Priestley and Lavoisier by a century in
recognizing the existence of oxygen, under the guise of his spiritus nitro-aereus, as a separate
entity distinct from the general mass of the air. Mayow perceived the part spiritus nitro-aereus plays in
combustion and in increasing the weight of the calces (oxides) of metals as
compared with metals themselves. Rejecting the common notions of his time that
the use of breathing is to cool the heart or assist the passage of the blood
from the right to the left side of the heart, or merely to agitate it, Mayow
saw in inspiration a mechanism for introducing oxygen into the body, where it
is consumed for the production of heat and muscular activity. He remarked,
"The blood returning to the heart is for the greater part deprived of spiritus nitroaereus which it has left
in the brain for the production of animal spirit." Mayow clearly points
out that respiration within the fetus is possible because the placenta brings
nourishment and spiritus
nitro-aereus (oxygen) to it and reasons that the umbilical blood vessels near
the shell of an egg bring spiritus
nitro-aereus (oxygen) to the developing embryo. He even
vaguely conceived of expiration as an excretory process (1032-1034).
The 1669 tracts were presented in 1668. See, Hooke, 1665,
Marcello Malpighi (IT) produced the first monograph on an
invertebrate, the silkworm. He dissected the silkworm under the microscope
noting the air ducts (tracheae) and the blood duct with several pulsating
centers (corcula). He also observed
the heart, the gut, the glandular system now known as "Malpighian
tubules", and the nerve chain (998).
Marcello Malpighi (IT) separated fibers from clotted blood free of
red cells and serum and identified these using the single-lens microscope (997; 1006).
William Hewson (GB) discovered that coagulable lymph (fibrinogen)
is essential for blood clotting and that following sedimentation the coagulum
property resides in the upper liquid part of the blood, above the red cells (745; 748).
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR) and Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (FR)
introduced the term fibrin. They demonstrated that plasma contained
soluble substances, albumin and globulin, and that the precursor of fibrin was
a soluble substance present in plasma but not in serum. The term globulin was
used to describe the part of plasma precipitated when diluted in water,
albumins remaining in solution (403).
Benjamin Guy Babington (GB) concluded that blood contains a
soluble precursor to fibrin (fibrinogen) (65).
Andrew Buchanan (GB) concluded that coagulation of pleural,
peritoneal, pericardial, serous testicular, and hydrocele fluids was not
the result of the spontaneous coagulation of fibrin but rather that,
…"like albumin and casein, fibrin often coagulates under the influence of
suitable reagents: and that the blood and most other liquids of the body which
appear to coagulate spontaneously, only do so in consequence of their
containing at once fibrin and substances capable of reacting upon it and so
occasioning coagulation." (246-249)
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (DE) formulated his postulates
regarding clots in venous thrombosis (1697; 1699).
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (DE) was the first to use the term thrombin (1601).
Prosper Sylvain Denis (FR) published two monographs in 1856 and
1859 which validated and extended Panum’s technique of fractionating complex
materials like egg albumin and blood plasma into distinct proteins by salting out. Upon the salting out of
blood plasma it yielded a precipitate, which was not soluble in water but was
soluble in a dilute salt solution. The salt soluble fraction possessed
properties of a precursor to fibrin.
Denis gave the name plasmine to this
precursor of fibrin (451).
Benjamin Guy Babington (GB) had already named this fibrin precursor fibrinogen. See,
Babington, 1830 above.
Hermann Adolf Alexander Schmidt (DE) separated plasmine into its two constituents, both
proteids of the globulin class to which he gave the names fibrinogen and fibrino-plastic
substance (1417). The later
constituent was called para-globulin
by Wilhelm Friedrich Kuhne (DE) and serum
globulin by Theodor Weyl (DE) (887; 1795).
Hermann Adolf Alexander Schmidt (EE-DE) repeated the experiments
described by Buchanan and called the activity fibrin ferment (thrombin).
He found that fibrin ferment could be
precipitated by addition of alcohol to fresh serum. Schmidt later concluded
that since the presence of thrombin
in the circulation did not allow blood to remain fluid it must have a
precursor, prothrombin; at first,
therefore, prothrombin was hypothetical. Prothrombin activation was thought to
occur because of the presence of "zymoplastic substances" in the
tissues (1418-1420). Note:
Olof Hammarsten (SE) noted that calcium chloride promoted
coagulation and enhanced the amount of fibrin formed (680).
Olof Hammarsten (SE) and Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (DE) showed
that fibrinogen is the sole precursor
of fibrin and that fibrin is the consequence of a reaction
between thrombin and fibrinogen (681-683).
William Dobinson Halliburton (GB) concluded that coagulation of
the blood is due to the formation of fibrin from fibrinogen which was
previously dissolved in the blood-plasma; that this change is brought about by
the fibrin ferment; and that the fibrin ferment is one of the products of the
disintegration of the white blood-corpuscles that occurs when the blood is shed
(676).
Joseph Lister (GB) maintained that the blood has no spontaneous
tendency to clot but that it only clots when brought into contact with a
foreign body (951).
Nicolas Maurice Arthus (FR), Calixte Pagès (FR), and M.L.
Sabbatini (FR) observed that calcium precipitants inhibited coagulation, and
that this effect was reversed when sufficient calcium was re‐added.
Calcium was not required for the reaction of thrombin with fibrinogen, but was
required for the conversion of the hypothetical prothrombin to thrombin (56; 1366).
Paul Morawitz (DE) synthesized various observations into one of
the first formulations of the biochemistry of blood coagulation: prothrombin,
he hypothesized, was converted into the enzyme thrombin by “thrombokinase”
(tissue factor) in the presence of calcium; thrombin, in turn, converted
fibrinogen to fibrin. Morawitz described four coagulation factors: fibrinogen (I),
prothrombin (II), thrombokinase (III) and calcium (IV) and renamed
Schmidt's zymoplastic substance thrombokinase (thromboplastin) (1087; 1088).
Pierre Nolf (FR) called this activity thromboplastic and used the
term ‘tissue factor’ Nolf, 1908 #26183}.
William Henry Howell (US) later denominated them "tissue
thromboplastins" (factor III) (788).
William Henry Howell (US) and L. Emmett Holt, Jr. (US) coined the
term heparin to denote the presence
of a fat-soluble anticoagulant in the liver. They also isolated a second
fat-soluble anticoagulant they named pro-antithrombin (Gk. hepar) (789).
Lee M. Roderick (US) showed that "sweet-clover disease"
in cattle, a hemorrhagic condition, is caused by fungal activity producing a
rotten sweet-clover in their diet. The ill animals could be successfully
treated with a serum fraction from healthy animals which contained prothrombin (1328). Note: Sweet clover is (Melilotus
alba and M. officinalis)
Karl Paul Gerhard Link (US) discovered that molds such as Penicillium
nigricans, P. jensi, and the Aspergilli metabolize the coumarin
(naturally present in clover) into dicoumarol and its sequels. Dicoumarol is
similar in structure to vitamin K. When consumed by livestock, it inhibits
vitamin K production. Vitamin K is necessary in the body to activate
prothrombin (945). Note: Link promoted a
more potent analogue of dicoumarol named warfarin as a rat poison. Dicoumarol
was released into clinical medicine in 1941, where it has enjoyed widespread
use ever since as an anticoagulant, a drug property much in demand at the time,
since heparin was the only available alternative. After achieving success as a
rat poison, warfarin successfully made the transition to a clinically useful
anticoagulant in the 1950s (under the name “Coumadin”).
Armand James Quick (US), Margaret Stanley-Brown (US), and Frederic
W. Bancroft (US) developed the one-stage
prothrombin-time technique using rabbit brain extract. This test detects
the amount of prothrombin present in blood plasma and determines
prothrombin-clotting time (1267; 1268). Note: The technique
assumed that, given enough tissue, calcium, and fibrinogen, there is only one
factor limiting the time course of clotting: prothrombin. It is now recognized
that this result is limited by deficiencies of factors additional to
prothrombin, but this does not diminish the importance of this technique in the
control of coumarin therapy. The one-stage prothrombin-time made possible the
immediate differentiation between the coagulation defect in hemophilia and that
in obstructive jaundice. See,
Whipple, 1913.
Emory D. Warner (US), Kenneth M. Brinkhous (US), and Harry P.
Smith (US) developed a method of measuring prothrombin, which became known as
the two-stage technique (1766).
Paul A. Owren (NO) discovered the activated form of Factor V (Va) of the blood clotting
mechanism (1164; 1165). Note: This factor has
also been called proaccelerin.
Paul A. Owren (NO) described a hemorrhagic disease in a young
woman lacking a plasma clotting factor protein that was called proaccelerin. This disease is
referred to as parahemophilia (Factor
V deficiency) (1166).
Alfredo Pavlovsky (AR), Paul M. Aggeler US), Sidney G. White (US),
Mary Beth Glendening (US), Ernest W. Page (US), Tillie B. Leake (US), George Bates
(US), Irving Schulman (US), Carl H. Smith (US), Rosemary A. Biggs (GB),
Alexander Stuart Douglas (GB), Robert Gwyn Macfarlane (GB), John Vivian Dacie
(GB), W. Robert Pitney (GB), Clarence Merskey (ZA), and John Richard O'Brien
(GB) discovered blood clotting Factor IX (20; 141; 1183; 1427).
Charles A. Owen, Jr. (US) and Jesse L. Bollman (US) discovered
what would later be called Factor VII of the blood clotting mechanism (1159).
Benjamin Alexander (US), Andre de Vries (US), Robert Goldstein
(US), and Greta Landwehr (US) identified Factor VII (also known as serum
prothrombin conversion accelerator or proconvertin (25-27; 447).
Fritz Koller (CH), Emil A. Loeliger (NL) and Francois Henri
Duckert (CH) identified the same factor, which they named factor VII (877).
Gary L. Nelsestuen (US), James A. Sadowski (US), John Weston
Suttie (US), and Charles Thomas Esmon (US) elucidated the role of vitamin K as
a cofactor in glutamate carboxylation in prothrombin (511; 512; 1130).
Edward G.D. Tuddenham (US), Norma C. Trabold (US), John A. Collins
(US), and Leon W. Hoyer (US) purified Factor VIII of the blood coagulation
"cascade" which led to the molecular identification of the protein (1600). Note: Factor VIII was
first discovered in 1937. Factor VIII turned out to be deficient in the
clinically recognised but etiologically elusive hemophilia A; it was identified
in the 1950s and is alternatively called antihemophilic globulin due to
its capability to correct hemophilia A.
Agostino Scilla (IT) published Vain
Speculation Undeceived by Sense arguing for the organic origin of fossils (1436).
Giuseppe Zambeccari (IT), in 1670, performed nephrectomy on dogs (1841; 1842).
1671
Isaac Newton (GB) presented his theory of color (1135; 1136).
Niels Stensen, Nicholas Stenonis, Nicholas Steno, Nicolaus Steno,
Niels Steensen or Nicolaus Steensen (DK), in 1671, reported his studies on the
composition of the Earth’s crust in the Tuscany region. He was the first to
recognize that the strata of the Earth contain the chronological record of its
geological history. While attempting to reconstruct the earth's history Steno
made the important point that sediments are deposited in horizontal layers (1517; 1520; 1521). See, da Vinci, c. 1490.
Friedrich Martens (DE), a ship’s doctor, in 1671, described and
drew Mertensia and Bolinopsis near Spitzbergen. This was
the first description of members of this group of animals which were eventually
placed in the phylum Ctenophora (1020).
Thomas Willis (GB) showed that hysteria
is a nervous disease and not a uterine disorder as had been traditionally
believed (1812).
1672
Nehemiah Grew (GB) published an extensively illustrated volume
summarizing his detailed studies of the anatomy and morphology of stems,
flowers, seeds, and fruits. He used a microscope to aid many of his
observations. Grew is credited with coining the word parenchyma (641). He is
commemorated with the genus Grewia Linnaeus.
Jean-Baptiste Denis; Jean-Baptiste Denys (FR) first showed that
gravity induces the stems of plants to grow upwards and their main roots to
grow downwards (450).
Francis Glisson (GB) performed experiments, which indicated that
muscle volume remains constant during contraction. He is credited with
originating the idea that irritability is one of the qualities of living
tissue, irritabilitas (irritability) (618; 619).
Vincent Ketelaer (NL) gave an excellent clinical description of sprue (thrush) (856).
Thomas Willis (GB) was one of the first physicians in Europe to
note the sweet taste of diabetic urine. He observed that asthma is characterized by bronchiolar constriction and described
cardiospasm, and hyperacusis (734; 994; 1818).
Johannes Nicolaus Pechlin (NL) was well known
for his first description of the lymphatic nodules and masses located in the
walls of the ileum (1188).
Johann Conrad Peyer (CH) described noduli lymphatici aggregati (Peyer's Patches) and noduli lymphatici solitarii (Peyer's Nodules) (1207).
Peyer’s Patches
are aggregates of specialized lymphoid tissue in the small intestine
where they form circular or oval patches, from twenty to thirty in number, most
commonly in the ileum. Peyer’s Nodules are lymphoid tissue found
scattered throughout the mucous membrane of the small intestine, but most
numerous in the lower part of the ileum. All this lymphoid tissue
detects antigens such as bacteria and toxins and mobilizes an immune response.
Thomas Willis (GB) was the first to describe the clinical symptoms
of what would later be called myasthenia
gravis (1813).
Samuel Wilks (GB) was one of the first to describe a case of myasthenia gravis, It was called bulbar paralysis (1807).
Wilhelm Heinrich Erb (DE) and Samuel Vulfovits Goldflam (PL)
described a syndrome (myasthenia gravis)
characterized by ptosis, strabismus, occasionally by complete ophthalmoplegia externa, weakness of
masticatory muscles, dysphagia, dysphonia, and general muscular
exhaustion after slight activity. It occurs in both sexes at any age, with a
male to female ratio of 1:2, most commonly with onset in early middle age (510; 627). Myasthenia gravis is synonymous with Erb-Goldflam syndrome and results from
to the presence of circulating antibodies to acetylcholine receptor (AchR) and
faulty synaptic transmission at the myoneural junction. Initially, the symptoms
may last for short periods, then disappear, to return a few weeks later, becoming
more pronounced.
William Richard Gowers (GB) reported a case of myasthenia gravis (634). See, Nastuk, 1960, Patrick, 1973, and
Lindstrom, 1979.
Francois Mauriceau (FR) penned, The Diseases of Women with Child, and in Child-bed, the first
textbook devoted to the practice of obstetrics. Translated into multiple
languages, the book was widely regarded for many generations and provided some
of the earliest formal training for obstetricians and midwives (1025). Many
non-textbooks on childbirth were written at earlier dates. See, Soranos of Ephesus, c. 120.
Regner de Graaf (NL), in (1672), dissected the rabbit genital
tract at various stages after mating. Thus, although de Graaf did not observe
actual eggs, he demonstrated that the contents of the follicles enter the
fallopian tubes and develop in the uterus. He also found that the number of
empty ovarian follicles conformed to the number of conceptuses in the uterus.
He discovered that fertilized eggs, which he believed originated in the ovary,
became detectable as spherical bodies in the fallopian tube by 3 days, and
larger vesicles in the uterus by 4 days after mating (323).
Richard Lower (GB) described the autopsied brain of a death due to
a pituitary tumor (966).
1673
"By its very nature the uterus is a field for growing the
seeds, that is to say the ova, sown upon it. Here the eggs are fostered, and
here the parts of the living [foetus],
when they are further unfolded, become manifest and are made strong. Yet
although it has been cast off by the mother and sown, the egg is weak and
powerless and so requires the energy of the semen of the male to initiate
growth." Marcello Malpighi (18)
Malpighi is referring to the development of the chick.
Otto Tachenius; Ottonis Tachenii (DE) was the first to suggest
that an acid compound is hidden in fats since the strength of the alkali disappears
when making soap (1565; 1566).
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), an amateur scientist, sent his first
letter, dated 15 August 1673, to the Royal Society for publication in their Philosophical
Transactions. This letter dealt with the anatomy
of the bee and gives an account of its sting; an account of the structure and
growth of wood and the motions of fluids in wood; concerning the food and
digestion of a louse; about the compression of air (1634). He was born Thonis
Philipszoon.
Marcello Malpighi (IT) reported his observations on the embryonic
development of the chick. His discoveries include: the vascular area embraced
by the terminal sinus, the cardiac tube and its segmentation, the aortic
arches, the somites, the neural folds and neural tube, the cerebral vesicles,
the optic vesicles, the proto-liver, the glands of the pro-stomach, and the feather
follicles. He first described the blastoderm, observing the embryo in the very
first hours of incubation (999).
1674
"I have divers times endeavoured to see and to know, what
parts the Blood consists of; and at length I have observ'd, taking some Blood
out of my own hand, that it consists of small round globuls [sic] driven
through a Crystalline humidity or water." Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. From
his 3rd letter to the Royal Society of London dated 7 April (1633)
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 3rd letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 7 April and his 7th letter dated 19 October, described
examining his blood and that of a rabbit and finding what were obviously
erythrocytes. In the third letter he discovered, but did not understand, the
coccidia when he described bodies in the bile ducts of rabbits that were
without doubt the oocysts of Eimeria
stiedae. He spent some considerable time describing the globules (cells) of
blood (467; 1632; 1633; 1637; 1669; 1670). See, Jan Swammerdam, 1658, and Giovanni
Alfonso Borelli, 1680.
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 7 September 1674, reported to the Royal Society of London his
account of the anatomy of the eye and optic nerve of a cow (he reported the
nerve to be solid, not hollow as had been believed since Galen), the appearance
of various minerals, e.g. salt, clay, English and Flemish earth, and about
protozoa in stagnant water (1635; 1636; 1646).
Clifford Dobell (GB), writing in 1923, says of Leeuwenhoek, "…he
was the first protozoologist and he created bacteriology and protozoology out
of nothing" (466).
Etienne J. Morel (FR) is credited with the first use of the
tourniquet in medical treatment. This occurred during the
Seige of Besancon, in 1674 (329).
A smallpox (red plague) epidemic
affects London.
1675
"If I have seen farther [than you and Descartes] it is by
standing upon the shoulders of giants." From a letter sent by Issac Newton
to Robert Hooke, 5th of February 1675 (1137)
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), a draper and minor politician, wrote
the Royal Society in London as follows: “I can’t forebear to tell you also,
most noble sirs, that one of the back teeth in my mouth got loose again, and
bothered me much in eating: so I decided to press it hard on the side with my
thumb, with the idea of making the roots start out of the gum, so as to get rid
of the tooth; which I succeeded in doing, for the tooth was left hanging to
only a small bit of flesh, and I was able to snip it off very easily. The crown
of this tooth was nearly all decayed, while its roots consisted of two
branches, so that the very roots were uncommon hollow, and the holes in them
were stuffed with a soft matter.
I took this stuff out of the hollows in the roots, and mixed it
with clean rain-water, and set it before the magnifying glass so as to see if
there were as many living creatures in it as I had aforetime discovered in such
material: and I must confess that the whole stuff seemed to me to be alive” (467).
Jan Swammerdam (NL), in 1675, wrote a monograph on the life
history of the mayfly (1548).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 26 March 1675, reported to the Royal Society of London his
account of the circulation in leaves and compares it to veins in humans (1432).
Johannes Franciscus van Sterbeeck (NL) wrote Theatrum Fungorum oft het Tooneel der Campernoelien, the first book
devoted to the fungi (1678). See, Clusius, 1601.
Niels Stensen; Nicholas Stenonis; Nicholas Steno; Nicolaus Steno;
Niels Steensen; Nicolaus Steensen (DK) recognized the homology of the mammalian
ovary with that of the egg-laying animals (1526).
1676
"I have oft-times been besought, by divers gentlemen, to set
down on paper what I have beheld through my newly invented Microscopia: but I
have generally declined: first, because I have no style, or pen, wherewith to
express my thoughts properly; secondly, because I have not been brought up to
languages or arts, but only to business; and in the third place, because I do
not gladly suffer contradiction or censure from others." Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (1640)
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 29 May 1676, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations about the structure of wood, which Dr. Nehemiah Grew questioned;
further account of the vessels, fibers, and medullary rays of wood (1431).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 9 October 1676, reported to the Royal Society of London his
discovery of five different 'animalcules' (what were most certainly Vorticella, various ciliates, Monas vulgaris, rotifers, flagellates,
nematodes, and bacteria) in pepper-infused water and
carries out experiments with rain-, well-, moat-, sea-, and river-water, and
infusions of various spices; an account of the structure of a peppercorn,
wheat, ginger; whether or not there are organisms in the air (1431; 1639).
Nehemiah Grew (GB) recognized flowers as sexual organs, describing
the functions of the stamens and pistils. Grew speaks of the attire, or the stamens, as being the
male parts, and refers to conversations with Thomas Millington, Sedleian
Professor at Oxford, to whom the credit of the sexual theory may belong. Grew
says that "when the attire or apices break or open, the globules or
dust falls down on the seedcase or uterus, and touches it with a prolific
virtue" (643). See,
Rudolph Jakob Camerarius; Rudolph Jakob Camerer (DE), 1694.
Samuel
Morland (GB), in a paper read before the Royal Society, stated that the farina
(pollen) is a congeries of seminal plants, one of which must be conveyed into
every ovum or seed before it can become prolific
(1093).
Johann Schmidt (DE) gave the first unmistakable description of a paraphasic disorder (use of words in
wrong and senseless combinations). In addition he provided one of the first
good descriptions of alexia
(inability to read; word blindness) (1421).
Peter Rommel (DE) gave one of the best early descriptions of a
patient suffering from motor aphasia
(loss of the power of speech) (1337).
William Molins (GB) named the trochlear nerve (1075).
Richard Wiseman (GB) wrote
Severall Chirurgicall Treatises in which he related his considerable
experience, mostly military, as a surgeon. It is considered a landmark in
British surgery. It was he who initiated the use of compression during
treatment of aneurism (1824).
John Ray (GB) had Ornithologia
published. Francis Willughby (GB) a wealthy patron to Ray is credited with
being the author. Charles E. Raven (GB) in his biography of Ray concluded that
it was Ray who had authored the work. This book laid the foundation of
scientific ornithology (1276; 1278).
1677
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) was the first to observe and describe
spermatozoa. He first believed them to be parasitic animals living within the
semen but later asserted that spermatozoa can develop into a child, with the
egg providing only nutrient (1638).
Christiaan Huygens; Christian Huyghens (NL) expressed his sense of
the importance of the spermatozoa and their relevance to the generation of
animals in announcing their discovery the following year in Paris (831).
Nicolas Hartsoeker (NL) is sometimes credited as the co-discoverer
of spermatozoa because he saw them during 1678 (695). Hartsoeker
believed that spermatozoa contained a microscopic preformed individual. His
book contains drawings of spermatozoa containing these individuals. This is the
origin of the homunculus.
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 14 May 1677, reported to the Royal Society of London his
investigations of the structure of muscular tissue, the brain and spinal cord;
investigating hemolysis (loss of hemoglobin from the red blood-cells);
observations of vascular bundles in fruits and seeds; observations of the effects
of moxa, the Chinese remedy against gout; observations of cotton, in
particular, its usefulness for bandaging (1640).
John Locke
(GB), in a series
of letters to Dr. John Mapletoft in 1677, gave an
early detailed description of trigeminal
neuralgia most likely associated with hemifacial spasm. The patient was the
Countess of Northumberland (938; 1187; 1533).
Johann Jakob Wepfer (CH) gave the first complete case report on trigeminal neuralgia, the
most common cranial neuropathy (1791).
Nicolas André (FR) gave the name tic douloureux to trigeminal
neuralgia (39).
John Fothergill (GB) described 16 cases of trigeminal neuralgia. For many years thereafter, it was called Fothergill's syndrome (569).
Jeremy Stimpson (US) cured tic
douloureux by dividing the infra and supra-orbitar
nerves (1530).
Walter Edward Dandy (US) proposed vascular compression as an
etiological factor of trigeminal
neuralgia (378).
Thomas Thacher (US) wrote the first medical paper to be published
in North America, A Brief RULE To guide
the Common People of New England how to order themselves & theirs in the
Small-Pocks, or Measels (1574). It was
probably not original but rather an abbreviation of the writings of Thomas
Sydenham on these subjects (1693).
Another smallpox (red
plague) epidemic in Boston was much worse than the 1666 epidemic, and killed
several of the town leaders (875).
1678
“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search
for pearls must dive below.” John Dryden, All
for Love
Alexandre François Gilles dit Selligue (FR),
Jacques Louis Vincent Chevalier (FR), and Charles Chevalier (FR), in 1823,
departed from using only two lenses to correct aberration and employed two or
three pairs of lenses, each pair consisting of a plano-concave of flint glass,
which dispersed the colors far apart, combined with a double convex of crown
glass, which has a low dispersion. In this way excellent achromatic objectives
were produced (292; 570; 581). Gilles dit
Selligue (FR), in 1823, combined up to four achromatic cemented elements into
one objective — this was the breakthrough in the manufacture of achromatic
microscope objectives with high resolution.
Giovanni Battista Amici (IT) further perfected these achromatic
lenses in 1827 (1029).
Joseph Jackson Lister (GB), in 1824, directed the production of
achromatic lenses, which were greatly improved (622).
Giovanni Battista Amici (IT), by 1840, made the first oil immersion lenses. John
Mayall, Jr. (GB) reported that these immersion lenses were designed for use
with oils having the same refraction as glass, homogeneous-immersion (1030).
John Mayall, Jr.
(GB) gives credit to Mr. R.B. Tolles (US) for having first published a formula
and constructed a thoroughly workable immersion objective (766).
Ernst Karl
Abbé (DE) developed a mathematical description for the resolution limit of the
microscope. The optical resolution d is defined as the minimum distance
of two structural elements to be imaged as two objects instead of one. Abbe
found that d = λ / NA, where λ
(lambda) is the wavelength of light and NA is the numerical aperture of
the objective, defined as the sine of the half aperture angle multiplied by the
refractive index of the medium filling the space between the cover glass and
the front lens. A second important principle of microscope design is known as
the Abbe sine condenser. This principle is embodied in the Abbe condenser, used
for microscope illumination (5).
Ernst Karl Abbé
(DE), in 1868, invented the apochromatic lens system for the microscope. This
important breakthrough eliminates both the primary and secondary color
distortion of microscopes (2; 6;
1844). See,
Amici, 1837.
Ernst Karl Abbé
(DE) published his paper On New Methods
for Improving Spherical Correction (6).
Stefano Lorenzini (IT) wrote the first monograph on the general anatomy of
a single fish. It includes also the first mention of red and white muscle. He described
what became known as the ampullae of
Loenzini in fishes. This sense organ, common in
cartilaginous fish, helps fish to sense electric fields in the water
(electroreceptors) (960). See, Marcello Malpighi, 1663.
Caspar Bartholin (DK) discovered two bean-sized tubuloalveolar
glands situated one in each lateral wall of the vastibulum vaginae, in the lower third of the large labias, near the vaginal opening at the
base meiosis of the labia majora.
They secrete a mucous lubricating substance during sexual stimulation in
females. Bartholin’s glands are the
equivalent of Cowper’s glands – the
bulbourethtral glands – in males (81; 335).
Caspar Bartholin (DK) discovered the duct draining the anterior
portion of the sublingual gland and paralleling Wharton’s duct (81).
Francois Bayle (FR) became interested in arteriosclerosis of blood
vessels, ascribing cerebroarteriosclerosis as the chief cause for apoplexy (stroke). He was also an early
student of and writer on general paresis
or dementia paralytica (100). See, da Vinci, c. 1490.
1679
Maria Sibylla Merian (DE-NL), beginning in 1679, published her
exceptional research and illustrations on the metamorposis of butterflies (1053-1055).
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 28th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 25 April, gives what was surely a description of
spermatozoa (467). He is also
reported in a letter to Lambert Velthuysen, dated 11 July, to have discovered
the tissue crystals associated with gout (1435). See, William Stukeley, 1734.
Johann Jakob Wepfer (CH) wrote the first book on experimental
toxicology, which includes his observations on hemlock poisoning and its
remedy: the administration of a strong emetic. He noted that coniine, an
alkaloid from hemlock, in minute doses, could be useful as an antineuralgic and
antispasmodic. He also discovered its analgesic effect and was the first to use
it in minor surgery. He concluded that blood is not the
main cause of the beating of the heart (1790).
Johann Jakob Wepfer (CH), in 1679,
discovered the duodenal glands. They would be named Brunner’s glands (glandulae duodenales) for his
son-in-law, Johann Konrad Brunner (CH-DE) who, along with Georg Friedrich
Franck von Frankenau (DE), reported them later (245; 1792).
Lazare Rivière; Lazarus Riverius; Lazari Riverii (FR), in 1679
during a postmortem examination, was the first too describe congenital
diaphragmatic hernia (CDH (837; 1321).
Charles Holt (GB), in 1701, described the classical clinical and
postmortem findings of an infant with congenital
diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) (772; 837).
Théophile Bonet; Theophilus Bonetus (CH) and Stanton A. Théophile
Bonet (CH) wrote Sepulchretum as an
encyclopedic record of each recognizable disease from ancient times to his own.
Each account was accompanied by clinical features followed by a description of
the pathological findings at necropsy—some 3,000 protocols (176).
Plague spread from
the Ottoman Empire into Austria, killing thousands of people especially in
Vienna (875).
Thomas Sydenham (GB) gives the first accurate description of influenza (grippe) (1560).
French courtier Count de Frontenac Louis de Buade, describing the
effects of smallpox (red plague)on the Iroquois, termed it the “Indian Plague”
and continued: “The Small Pox desolates them to such a degree that they think
no longer of Meeting nor of Wars, but only of bewailing the dead, of whom there
is already an immense number.” (620)
Nouvelles
Découvertes,
the first medical periodical, was founded.
c.
1680
"Among the remedies which it has
pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so
universal and so efficacious as opium." Attributed to Thomas Sydenham (GB)
.
"The arrival of a good clown
exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty
asses laden with drugs." Thomas Sydenham (1539).
“Some doctors would say, ‘Clowns don’t
belong in hospitals’...well, neither do children.” Michael Christiansen founder
of Clown Care. need source
1680
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), 14 June 1680, reported
to the Royal Society of London what he saw when observing beer yeast (yeast = froth). "I
have made divers observations of the yeast from which beer is made and I have
generally seen that it is composed of globules floating in a clear medium
(which I judged to be the beer itself). Also, I saw very plainly that each
globule of the yeast consisted of six distinct globules of exactly the same
size and shape as the corpuscles of our blood." This represents the first
microscopic study of yeast.
In the same letter he described growth of animalcules in a short
glass tube filled almost entirely with pepper and rainwater, then sealed. These
organisms were surely capable or growth without oxygen or in severely reduced
oxygen tension (1433).
Jan Swammerdam (NL) wrote of using "coloured liqueurs"
on dissected worms, "the better to distinguish their internal parts, which
are all of the same colour." This work was not published for another 50
years. Note: This work,
along with that of van Leeuwenhoek in 1714, is likely one of the first examples
of staining specimens for enhanced viewing with the microscope.
Edward Tyson (GB) wrote, Anatomy
of a Porpess, the first comprehensive monograph describing a mammal and the
earliest monograph published with the imprimatur of the Royal Society in London
in 1680 (1605).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 12 November 1680, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of the lees in wine; experiments with fermenting wine; comparing
the structure of yeast cells with erythrocytes; examining yeast in syrups from
an apothecary's shop; observing particles in rain-water; an analysis of chyle
from a cow, fat globules in milk, composition of urine; examining particles in
air; discusses the function of the heart and the circulation of blood in the
body; observations of the trachea of a fly, a flea, and a cockroach;
observations of the copulation of cockchafers (Melolontha) and of dragonflies,
the spermatozoids of the grasshopper, the gnat, the flea, and of the fly;
examination of mites; calculating the number of microorganisms equivalent to a
grain of sand (1433).
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (IT) investigated the microscopic
structure of erythrocytes and accurately noted the regularity of stomatal
movements in plants. He later demonstrated that locomotion in fish is primarily
by the motion of the tail rather than by the fins. He was the first to explain
muscular movement and other body functions according to the laws of statics and
dynamics. Because of his dedication to understanding medical phenomena through
the application of mathematics and mechanics, he became the unwitting founder
of the iatro-physical school of
medicine. In his studies of animal motion and more specifically muscular
contraction he concluded that something was "transmitted along the nerves
to the muscles" (184). This is
the origin of the neurogenic theory
of muscle action.
Matheus Purmann (DE) operated on an antecubital space aneurysm in
1680, and he ligated the artery above and below the aneurysm and removed the
sac. In medieval times the antecubital fossa aneurysm was quite common as a
complication of bloodletting by puncture of the median basilic vein (73).
Collectanea
Medico-physica, was founded at Amsterdam.
1681
Denis Papin (FR) described an instrument that was the first
commercially available autoclave. It was called Papin’s digester (1178).
Nehemiah Grew (GB), a botanist and physician, wrote a book on the
stomachs and intestines of various creatures. He was the first to use the
phrase comparative anatomy (642).
Johann Conrad Peyer (CH) took the hearts of animals recently
deceased, including man, and reestablished their beat by blowing air into the
veins or by utilizing other stimuli. With some hearts he achieved artificial
cardiac activity lasting up to several hours (1208).
The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus),
a giant flightless pigeon, which lived on Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean,
was driven to extinction (1540).
Richard Owen (GB) was the first to describe the Dodo in the
scientific literature. Its bones were found in 1860 (1161).
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a., Lewis Carroll (GB) in his book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
immortalized the Dodo bird.
There is heavy mortality in London from smallpox (red plague).
1682
John Ray (GB) wrote Methodus
Plantarum Nova, in which he classified plants by overall morphology: the
classification draws on flowers, seeds, fruits, and roots. Ray's plant
classification system was the first to distinguish monocots from dicots and the
first to elaborate the biological species concept (1279).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), March 1682, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations on fibers of muscles of mammals and fish; observations of
hair-growth on his hand; discovery of the nucleus in the erythrocytes of fish;
investigations on the structure and growth of oyster shells. Writing
Robert Hooke and the Royal Society he remarked, "This made me observe the blood of a Cod and of a Salmon, which I also
found to contain oval figures as the former, and though I endeavored to examine
the same very exactly, I could not find of what parts these ovals were
constituted, for some seemed to have enclosed in them in a small space a kind
of Globules, and a small space from the said Globule it was surrounded with a
transparent ring, and then again about the same ring a long shadowing circle
which made up the oval figure, as I have represented in figure 5" (691; 1433; 1641).
h 24 July
1682, reported to the Royal Society of London his continuation of experiments
with the air-pump; structure of an insect's wing; blood and 'blood vessels' in
an insect's wing; observations of a grey owlet moth; observations of the wing
of a very small fly (1429).
Georg Friedrich Franck von Franckenau (DK) and Johann Konrad von
Brunner (CH) discovered the mucus secreting glands of the duodenal submucosa (1713).
1683
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 38th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 16 July, described dissecting a sick female frog
(probably Rana temporaria) and
finding in addition to the frog’s blood corpuscles what were most likely the
nematode Oxysoma brevicaudatum and
the various protozoa including Trichomonas
batrachorum, Opalina, and Nyctotherus (467).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 17 September 1683, reported to the Royal Society of London
his observations of saliva, his method for cleaning his teeth and the discovery
of bacteria in tartar; examination of spittle from people of different ages and
sex; observations of nasal hairs and blackheads (comedones); concerning the
structure of the epidermis and comparing scabs with fish scales; discussion of
pores and calluses (1642; 1645).
From his
drawings and descriptions, it is very likely that he saw Bacillus, Spirillum sputigenum, Micrococcus,
Leptothrix, and Streptochaeta
buccalis.
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL) described the blood capillaries in the intestine of an ox in
1683. This description was accompanied by comments on a different type of
capillary, which contained "a white fluid, like milk"; he had
discovered the lymphatic capillaries (1643).
He described capillaries again in a letter to the Royal Society of London,
dated Sept. 7 (1644).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 28 December 1683, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of skin inside his mouth and about his eczema, which he believed
sudorifics could cure; observations of a child with a skin disease which causes
the skin to become scaly (ichthyosis);
observations of the intestines where he identifies blood vessels and lymph
vessels; the effects of vinegar; experiment to demonstrate the adsorption of
food nutrients in the intestines; an account of the intestinal wall and
peristalsis (1430).
Edward Tyson (GB) was the first person to recognize the
"head" (scolex) of a
tapeworm, and his subsequent descriptions of the anatomy and physiology of the
adult worms laid the foundations for our knowledge of the biology of the
taeniid tapeworms of humans (1606). He also
described the anatomy of the round worm Ascaris (1607).
Francesco Redi (IT) wrote the first book on parasitology (1286). He
conducted the first parasitological surveys, described the larva of Taenia taeniaeformis and the structure
of Fasciola hepatic.
Philipp Jacob Hartmann; Philip Hartmannus (DE) and Marcello
Malpighi (IT) provided the first reliable accounts of cystercerci as parasites
of some kind (693; 1003).
Johann August Ephraim Goeze (DE) recognized the connection between
hydatid cysts and tapeworms. Recognized the difference between Taenia solium and Taenia saginata and began the systematics of the helminths (624).
Johann August Ephraim Goeze (DE) provided the first indications
that intermediate hosts were involved in the life cycles of taeniid tapeworms.
This emerged from his detailed studies of the pork tapeworm in which he
observed that the scolices of the tapeworm in humans resembled cysts in the
muscle of pigs (625).
Félix Dujardin (FR) demonstrated that cysticerci become adult Taenia worms (493).
Gottlob Heinrich Friedrich Küchenmeister (DE), in much-criticized
experiments, fed pig meat containing the cysticerci of Taenia solium to criminals condemned to death and recovered adult
tapeworms from the intestine after they had been executed (884; 886).
Gottlob Heinrich Friedrich Küchenmeister (DE) is credited with
recognizing the differences between Taenia
solium and Taenia saginata based
on the morphology of the scolex (885).
John Hamer Oliver (GB) observed that Taenia saginata tapeworm infections occurred in individuals who had
eaten "measly" beef (1151).
Edoardo Perroncito (IT) performed better-designed experiments,
which confirmed this finding (1196).
Thomas Sydenham (GB) clearly differentiated gout from rheumatism (1557).
Guichard Joseph du Verney (FR) gave the first scientific account
of the structure, function, and diseases of the ear. Du Verney showed that the
bony external meatus develops from
the tympanic ring and that the mastoid air cells communicate with the tympanic
cavity. It was he who first suggested the theory of hearing later developed by,
and accredited to Helmholtz (488).
Johann Conrad von Brunner (DE) was the first to perform
pancreatectomies in dogs. His experiments, consisting of ligation of the
pancreatic duct, pancreatectomy, or combinations of the two approaches. In 1683
he removed the pancreas and spleen from a dog and noticed that the animal
experienced extreme thirst and polyuria (1709). Note: This was an early
clue to the seat of diabetes.
Le
Journal de Médicine, was founded in Paris.
1684
Robert Boyle (GB) carried out the first analysis of human blood,
checking its properties: color, taste, temperature, combustibility and weight,
as well as its components: serous and red portions, volatile and fixed salts,
oil, mucus, reddening effect when shaken in the air, etc. This probably
represents the earliest attempt to apply analytical chemistry to medicine (198).
Francisco Redi (IT) was the first to appreciate the parasitic
nature of the cysts of Echinococcus
granulosus (1286).
Peter Simon Pallas (DE) hypothesized that these cysts were the
larval stages of tapeworms (1173).
Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold (DE) demonstrated that hydatid cysts
develop into Echinococcus granulosus
and that Echinococcus cysts from
sheep gave rise to adult tapeworms when fed to dogs (1743).
Bernhard Naunyn (DE) found adult tapeworms in dogs fed with
hydatid cysts from a human (1120).
Nehemiah Grew (GB) was the first fingerprint pioneer; besides
writing on the subject, he also published extremely accurate drawings of finger
patterns and areas of the palm. "If anyone will but take the pains, with
an indifferent glass to survey the palm of his hand, he may perceive ...
innumerable little ridges, of equal bigness and distance, and everywhere
running parallel one with another. And especially, upon the hands and first
joints of the fingers and thumb. They are very regularly disposed into
spherical triangles and elliptics." (644)
Govard Bidloo (NL) in his 1685 book on human anatomy discussed and
illustrated the recognition of the friction ridges and the pores within those
ridges (140).
Marcello Malpighi (IT) was one of the first to examine pores and
use a microscope in medicine. He documented his observations of how certain
elevated ridges on the ends of the fingers are drawn into spirals. Upon
examining these ridges with the microscope, he observed and examined the open
mouths of eccrine pores (1008).
Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer (DE) wrote in his illustrated
textbook, "The arrangement of skin ridges is never duplicated in two
persons". Mayer was one of the first scientists to recognize that friction
ridges are unique (1031).
Johannes Evangelista Purkinje; Jan Evangelista Purkyne (CZ) wrote
a thesis at the University of Breslau in which he mentioned a wonderful
arrangement and curving of the minute furrows connected with the organ of touch
on the inner surfaces of the hands and feet. He worked at organizing their
patterns (1265).
William J. Herschel (GB) began collecting fingerprints in 1859 and
took note of how each impression was unique to the individual and observed that
the patterns did not change over time (738).
Henry Faulds (GB) became extremely interested in fingerprints
during his mission in Japan, performing experiments, which proved that details
of ridges are immutable. In one classical experiment, he removed the skin from
the fingers of his patients after fingerprinting them; when the skin regrew on
the fingertips he fingerprinted them once more, noting that the ridge detail
was the same as it was before the skin was removed. He made two important
observations, that 1)"When bloody finger-marks or impressions on clay,
glass etc., exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals",
and 2) "A common slate or smooth board of any kind, or a sheet of tin,
spread over very thinly and evenly with printer's ink, is all that is required
[to take fingerprints]" (525). It is
believed that Faulds was the first person to identify finger imprints at crime
scenes. Faulds sent to Charles Darwin on February 15, 1880, requesting his aid
in obtaining the finger impressions of lemurs, anthropoids, etc., with a view
to throw light on human ancestry.
Raymond de Vieussens (FR) proposed that the fibers of the optic
nerve continue to the cerebral cortex (445).
Thomas Willis (GB) was among the first Europeans to recognize the
sweet taste of the urine of diabetics and named the disease diabetes mellitus (honey) (1815). See,
Aurelianus c. 450 B.C.E. and Rollo 1797.
Medicina Curiosa, the first English medical
journal, was founded.
1685
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), in
his letter from Delft, 13 July 1685,
says, "I have depicted the leaves at such a magnitude that you can see the
globules ("tiny spots of different size") that lay within them.
Actually, there are much more of these spots than I could depict in the
drawing; they are much smaller and not given in the right proportion. After
cutting the leaf, those thin globules showed the very beautiful light green
color my eyes have ever seen. Some of them were dark green and their color were
the black color of wax alike. Fig. BE is the part of the stem and the radix
within which only very few green globules could be observed" (1648). Here he undeniably describes
chloroplasts. Delft, 13 July 1685, page 7-8.
Paul Portal
(FR) was the first to
clearly describe the attachment of the placenta to the lower
uterine segment in a case of placenta
praevia Before his
description it was thought that when the placenta was felt at
the cervix in cases of ante
partum hemorrhage it had fallen from its fundal attachment. This book
includes his demonstration of turning a fetus during childbirth using one foot
and contains his teaching that face presentation runs a normal course during the
labor process (1233).
Edward Rigby (GB) differentiated between the causes
of ante partum hemorrhage (1316).
1686-1704
John Ray (GB) authored his outstanding three volume botanical work
Historia Plantarum in which he
describes 18,600 different plant species, all arranged by a natural system of
classification. Ray’s work laid the groundwork for the modern form of
systematic classification of Carl Linné; Carl von Linné; Carolus Linnaeus. Ray
defined species thus: "…no surer criterion for determining species has
occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in
propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals
or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they
are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species... Animals
likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently;
one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa" (1280). See,
Gaspard Caspar Bauhin, 1596
1686
John Ray (GB) published Historia
Piscium by Francis Willughby (GB). Charles E. Raven (GB) in his biography
of Ray concluded that it was Ray who authored the work. The manuscript contains
420 species of fish, 178 of these were newly discovered. The fish contained
within this informative literature were arranged in a provisional system of
classification (1276; 1821).
Willem ten Rhyne (NL) wrote Verhandelingen
van de Asiatise Melaatsheid, which is a classic description, etiology,
prophylaxis, and therapy of leprosy (1573).
Edmund King (GB) describes at autopsy a calcified pineal gland
in one of his insane patients (861). Note: For many years physicians thought there was a relationship
between insanity and a calcified pineal gland.
1687
Giovanni
Cosimo Bonomo (IT) and Diacinto Cestoni (IT) studied scabies in sailors
and provided a more accurate drawing of the acarus mite in 1687, thus
discovering and establishing the parasitic nature of scabies as well as
its treatment (181; 904; 1763).
Giovanni
Cosimo Bonomo (IT) and Diacinto Cestoni (IT) were most likely the discoverers
of the parasitic nature of scabies;
both were Francesco Redi's disciples. They were reluctant to champion this
discovery because powerful aristocratic physicians attributed the etiology to a
humoral origin (523; 1287).
Johann Ernst Wichmann (DE) established the parasitic etiology of scabies (1804).
Simone-Francois
Renucci (FR) proved the etiology of scabies
to the satisfaction of Central Europeans. He was taught how to extract the mite
by peasant women of his home island (Corsica) and could now show the method to
the doctors at l'Hopital St. Louis. This was on 13 August 1834, which is often
looked upon as the day when the discovery of the etiology of scabies was made (1307).
Ferdinand
Karl Franz von Hebra (AT) became the first scientific dermatologist
with extensive writings on scabies after seeing and treating over 40,000
cases. He described the life cycle and stages of infection and postulated that
species from a variety of animals and humans were essentially one species (1724).
Note:
The scabies mite (acarus or Sarcoptes scabiei)
was known to Aristotle, to Arabic medicine, and to European physicians as well
as laymen during the later Middle Ages, yet its relationship to the itch was
not appreciated.
1688
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 65th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 7 September described what was without doubt capillary
circulation. He described two kinds of frogs, of what parts their eggs consist,
that tadpoles come from these eggs and how these tadpoles are composed. He
described the circulation of blood in six different places in the head of these
tadpoles, continual sudden impulses given by the heart to the blood,
circulation of the blood in many places in the tail of the tadpole, that what
are called arteries and veins are continued blood vessels with arteries and
veins crossing each other, that the circulation takes place in the thinnest
blood vessels, that circulation of the blood occurs in small and large frogs,
how in an artery the blood came running back, and what was the cause of it. The
circulation of blood in a little fish, and thirty-four circulations in its
tail, it also being shown very distinctly that arteries and veins are continued
blood vessels. In a part of our skin, the size of a nail, as many as a thousand
circulations of the blood take place. The bodies that make the blood of fish
red are flat and oval (1434).
England experiences an epidemic of influenza (grippe). ref
1689
“Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote anywhere at its first
appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any
other reason but because they are not already common… The final struggle for
acceptance is the real challenge in achieving knowledge.” John Locke (953)
J. Brach (DE) and Antoine van Leeuwenhoek (NL) first described bivalved
veliger larvae. They were brooded in the gills of Ostrea edulis (European
flat oyster) (203; 1671).
Marcello Malpighi (IT) described simple tubular glands present in
the mucous membrane of the small and large intestines. They open into the lumen
of the intestine (1002).
Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn (DE) would later describe these same
glands, which would subsequently be named in his honor, Lieberkühn's glands or crypts (939).
Richard Morton (GB) first described a clinical condition
characterized by nervous consumption caused by sadness and anxious cares. He
called it “nervous atrophy” (1095).
William Withey Gull (GB) established the term anorexia nervosa
and provided several detailed case descriptions and treatments (656).
Charles Lasèque (FR) named the condition l'anorexie hystérique at about the same time (908).
Richard Morton (GB) was the first to apply the principles of
pathology to the study of pulmonary tuberculosis. Morton showed that the
formation of tubercles (a usage he coined) is a necessary part of the
development of this lung disease and pointed out that the tubercles often heal
spontaneously. He noted the enlargement of the tracheal and bronchial glands in
cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. He introduced the word tubercle to describe the characteristic lesions of the disease,
which was at that time called either consumption
or phthisis (1095).
Johann Lukas Schönlein (DE) coined the term tuberculosis (1425).
Johannes Bohn (DE) wrote one of the first books on forensic
medicine. At that time the best work on fatal injuries, with frequent
references of medico-legal importance (173). Bohn is
credited with coining the word forensic.
1690
Augustus Quirinus Rivinus; August Bachman (DE), in his Introductio
Generalis in Rem Herbariam and three books on the plant orders (which
comprised but a small part of the whole projected work on a methodical
description of plants) introduced several important innovations which were
later used by other botanists. He classified the plants according to the
structure of the flower. Like John Ray he extensively used dichotomous keys
that led first to the higher groups, which he called higher genera (genus
summum) of plant orders (ordo), and then to the lower genera.
Alongside Joseph Pitton de Tournefort he was the first to consistently apply
the rule according to which the names of all species belonging to the same
genus should start with the same word (generic name) (1322-1325).
c.
1691
1691
Clopton Havers (GB) discovered the bone canals, which would be
named Haversian canals in his honor. Haver's lamellae
are the bony septa surrounding the canals (709).
Thomas Fairchild (GB) was, in 1691, the first person in
Europe to create an artificial hybrid by pollination. He
transferred the pollen of a Sweet William onto the pistil of a Carnation,
creating a new plant that became known as ‘Fairchild's mule’ because
it was sterile and failed to produce seeds. It caused
considerable theological unease that man was 'playing God' when it was
presented by Patrick Blair to the Royal Society in 1720 (154).
Frederik Ruysch (NL) studied the art of making anatomical
preparations while in the laboratory of Johannes van Horne and became the
unsurpassed master of preserving anatomical preparations (1363). He never
revealed the recipes of his preservative solutions.
1692
“There are
very few things which we know, which are not capable
of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning... and where a
Mathematical Reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make
use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you
have a Candle standing by you.” John Arbuthnot (51)
Robert Boyle (GB) expressed his belief that heat is a form of
molecular motion (199). See, Francis Bacon, c. 1605.
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 16 September 1692, reported to the Royal Society of London
his examination of the micro-organisms in dental tartar; theories about the
reproduction in eels; concerning 'navel blood' of the eel; observations of
worms in the intestines of eels; a postscript concerns the blood vessels in
grasshoppers. He clearly indicated that he opposed the doctrine of spontaneous
generation. "The little animals sitting in
the white stuff on the teeth and molars (the plaque), could not endure the heat
of my coffee (drink) and they were killed. Like I have shown many times, that
the little animals being in the water, died after some heating."
(1429; 1645).
Richard Morton (GB) was the first to write on Herpes fibrilis (1096).
Guy Patin
(FR) was the first to describe myositis
ossificans (fibrodysplasia ossificans
progressiva), an extra-osseous non-neoplastic growth of new bone (1180). It most
often occurs in athletes who sustain a blunt injury that causes deep tissue
bleeding.
John Freke (GB) described a boy with myositis ossificans progressiva (580).
Bernard Connor; Bernard O’Connor (IE), while in Paris, described
a completely fused human spine which he believed came
from a church grave yard or charnel house due to its dry
condition and red discoloration. This is the
first known description of a disease which would later go by many names,
including: Bekhterev’s disease,
Marie-Stumpell disease, ankylosing
spondylitis, ankylosing polyarthritis, atrophic ligamentous spondylitis, and
atrophic spondylitis (316; 317).
Benjamin
Collins Brodie (GB) became the first physician to document a person believed to
have active ankylosing spondylitis
who also had accompanying iritis (225).
Vladimir
Mikhailovich Bekhterev (RU), Pierre Marie (FR), and Ernst Adolf Gustav
Gottfried von Strümpell (EE-DE) were among the first to provide clinical
descriptions of this disease (109; 110; 1015; 1749).
Hugh O’Neill McDevitt (US), Michael B.A. Oldstone (US), and
Theodore Pincus (US) reported that research evidence strongly supports the
concept that certain human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genotypes predispose
individuals to diseases such as ankylosing
spondylitis, psoriasis, celiac disease, and multiple sclerosis (1037).
Ankylosing spondylitis is a chronic
and progressive autoimmune disease condition characterized by arthritis,
inflammation, and eventual immobility of several joints.
1693
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 15 October 1693, reported to the Royal Society of London
concerning his examination of the colors of plumes of the feathers of his green
parrot; observations of the color of wool; metamorphosis of the pigeon flea;
the life cycle of a human flea; anatomy of the legs of a flea (1429).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL) reported to the Royal Society of London his observations of
the testicles and spermatozoids of a rat; observations of organisms in the
gills of oysters; observations of organisms in the sap of vines (1647)
John Ray (GB) wrote Synopsis
Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis [Synopsis of Quadrupeds and Snakes], in which he disproved
Descartes's claim that animals are insentient (unfeeling), questioned the existence
of fabulous creatures, and argued against spontaneous generation. This book is
one of the first to present a logical classification of animals. Ray grouped
amphibians and reptiles together because of the similarity in structure of
their hearts. Prior to Ray the term species had various meanings. It was he who
gave it its modern and stable meaning, applying it only to groups of similar
individuals that exhibit constant attributes from generation to generation (1281).
Herman Boerhaave (NL) discovered the sweat glands (168).
1694
Johann Jacob
Harder (CH) discovered a lachrymal type gland (Harderian’s gland) in the orbit of the eye of the fallow deer, Dama vulgaris (688).
These are accessory lachrymal glands at the inner corners of the eyes in
animals that possess nictitating membranes; they excrete an unctuous fluid that
facilitates the movement of the third eyelid. They are rudimentary in humans.
Antonie
van Leeuwenhoek (NL), in a 16 September letter to the Royal Society, describes
the blood circulation in the hairy leg of a tiny crab (1672).
Rudolph Jakob Camerarius; Rudolph Jakob Camerer (DE) was the first
to convincingly demonstrate that sexuality exists in plants. He demonstrated
that anthers are the sex organs in plants and confirmed through experimentation
that pollen was needed for fertilization (264; 265). See, Nehemiah Grew, 1676.
Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter; Joseph Gottlieb Koelreuter; Josephus
Theophilus Kölreuter (DE) published reports describing 136 experiments in
artificial hybridization. He found through the discovery of the identity of reciprocal
crosses that the contributions of maternal and paternal parents were of the
same nature and equal. This refuted not only all theories of preexistence (ovism and spermism), but also the views of investigators from Aristotle to
Buffon and Carl Linné/Carl von Linné/Carolus Linnaeus that certain structures
of the organism are contributed by the father, and others by the mother. For
this discovery he is credited with partially laying the foundation for the work
of Mendel.
He gave a detailed account of the importance of insects in flower
pollination. That insects may be necessary for pollination in dioecious plants
may have occurred to some botanists, but that it is also the normal mode of
pollination in most monoecious flowering plants was not appreciated prior to
Kölreuter.
He discovered dichogamy
(separate maturing of the male and female parts of a flower, which precludes
self-fertilization) and why hybridization is rare in nature, observing that
there exists a special affinity between the pollen and the female portions of
conspecific flowers that permits the pollen tube to grow much faster into the
style than pollen tubes produced by pollen of other species. His work in the
breeding of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)
led to the conclusion that the genetic contribution of the male and female
parents is equal (879). This work
was done from 1761-1766 but not published until 1893. He is commemorated by the
genus Koelreuter.
Christian Konrad Sprengel (DE) independently reached many of the
same conclusions as Kölreuter. He reported: that flower structure can be
interpreted only by considering the role of each part in relation to insect
visits; that color and scent are attractants; corolla markings are guides to
the hidden nectar; grasses have light pollen and are wind pollinated. He also
discovered dichogamy which led him to
conclude that, “Nature appears not to have intended that any flower should be
fertilized by its own pollen” (1499). In
the context of the flowering plants (angiosperms), there are two forms of
dichogamy: protogyny—female function
precedes male function—and protandry—male
function precedes female function. He is commemorated by the plant genus Sprengelia (1794).
Christian Konrad Sprengel (DE) wrote on the importance of
beekeeping vis-à-vis pollination (1500).
Giovanni Battista Amici (IT) concluded, from microscopic
observations, that pollen tubes grow down through the style and contact the
ovules (32; 33). (The
Italian edition was originally published in 1823.)
Jean-Louis Prévost (CH) and Jean Baptiste André Dumas (FR) repeated
Lazzaro Spallanzani's filtration experiments, thus confirming the necessity of
spermatozoa for fertilization They studied the maturation of sperm in the
frog’s testicle and the fertilization of the ovum together with its subsequent
segmentation. This gives them the distinction of being the first to describe
cell division (1248; 1249). Note: Spallanzani had incorrectly
concluded that the fluid portion of semen is responsible for fertilization.
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart (FR) repeated the investigations of
Jean Pierre Étinne Vaucher (CH) by following fertilization in plants all the
way to the fusion of the male and female germ cells. He confirmed and
generalized the existence of the pollen tube; he also named the embryo sac and
adopted the theory of epigenesis. He provided a description of his discovery of
the tetrads, which appear during male sporogenesis, and the distinction between
the fertilized egg and the seed (228). See, Robert Brown, 1831.
Martin Barry (GB) provided evidence (in the rabbit) that the
spermatozoon enters the mammalian egg during fertilization (80).
Giovanni Battista Amici (IT), working with Orchis, produced
decisive evidence that the plant embryo arises from the germinal vesicle within
the embryo sac after it is stimulated by the pollen tube (34). Wilhelm
Friedrich Benedikt Hofmeister (DE), two years later, confirmed this observation
in 38 species among 19 genera (765).
Nicholas A. Warneck (RU) while studying fertilization in
freshwater gastropods observed pronuclei in fertilized eggs. He did not
appreciate their significance (1765).
George Newport (GB) noted that during fertilization in higher
animals impregnation of the ovum by the spermatozoon is by penetration and not
just by contact as previously thought (1134).
Eduard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE) postulated that only one sperm
cell of the fern is involved in fertilization; that it passes down the neck of
the archegonium, meets the egg cell, penetrates it, and dissolves there (1534).
Leopold Auerbach (DE) reported the de novo appearance of two pronuclei
in the fertilized egg cell and their subsequent fusion to form the cleavage
nucleus. ''Suddenly the borderline between both nuclei disappears, '' he wrote,
"and they become united to a single mass" (63).
Eduard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE) reported observing the union of
nuclei when sex cells of plants joined during fertilization (1535).
Wilhelm August Oskar Hertwig (DE) and Hermann Fol (CH) observed
that the sperm cell penetrates the egg and that the sperm nucleus appears to
fuse with the egg nucleus. Fol concluded that the germinal vesicle underwent
two rapid divisions and that only one nucleus, the female pronucleus, remained in
the egg, the others being expelled. He also described the actual penetration of
a single sperm into the egg, where, he explained, it fused with some egg
protoplasm to form the male pronucleus. This pronucleus then traversed the egg
to unite eventually with the female pronucleus. Fol, in 1879, proved that
fertilization must be accomplished by a single spermatozoon (552-556; 740-742). Hertwig
made his observations in the sea urchin, Toxopneustes
lividus, while Fol used sea star, sea urchin, and acorn worm.
Emil Selenka (DE) appreciated that the male pronucleus is the
metamorphosed spermatozoon (1441).
Eduard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE) described the nuclear divisions,
beginning within the megaspore mother cell, leading to the formation of a
mature embryo sac containing the egg nucleus (1536).
Eduard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE), working with orchids, mostly Orchis latifolia, discovered the actual
process of syngamy, or the fusion of the male and female gametes in plants. He
described the division of the microspore nucleus in such a way as to give rise
to three nuclei, one tube nucleus and two male gametic nuclei. He showed that
after the pollen tube penetrates the micropyle opening it discharges two of its
nuclei into the embryo sac and that one of the two male nuclei fuses with the
egg nucleus. Apparently, he did not observe the fusion of the male sperm
nucleus with female nuclei leading to the formation of the endosperm, i.e.,
double fertilization (1537).
August Friedrich Leopold Weismann (DE) proposed the concept of the
continuity of the germ plasm. Even in
multicellular organisms each organism could be traced back to an egg (and
sperm) that was a living part of a living organism that could itself be traced
back to an egg (and a sperm) and so on for as far back as life existed. To quote Samual Butler, a contemporary English writer, “A hen is
only an egg’s way of producing another egg” (258).
Weismann performed a well-known experiment that helped to
discredit the idea that acquired characteristics could be inherited. He cut the
tails off 1,592 mice over twenty-two generations and showed that all continued
to bear young with full-sized tails. (The Bible contains documentation of a
similar, much more protracted, experiment performed on male children, i.e.,
circumcision.)
He suggested that chromosomes contain the hereditary machinery and
that their careful division during cell fission must maintain the machinery
intact. He further suggested that the germ plasm is halved when sperm and egg
are formed and that the process of fertilization restores the original
quantity. “At least one certain result follows, viz., that there is an hereditary
substance, a material bearer of hereditary tendencies, and that this substance
is contained in the nucleus of the germ-cells, and in that part of it which
forms the nuclear thread, which at certain periods appears in the form of loops
or rods. We may further maintain that fertilization consists in the fact that
an equal number of loops from either parent are placed side by side, and that
the segmentation nucleus [the embryo’s nucleus] is composed in this way. It is
of no importance, as far as this question is concerned, whether the loops of
the two parents coalesce sooner or later, or whether they remain separate. The
only essential conclusion demanded by our hypothesis is that there should be
complete or approximate equality between the quantities of hereditary substance
derived from either parent.
If then the germ-cells of the offspring contain the united-plasms
of both parents, it follows that such cells can only contain half as much
paternal germ-plasm as was contained in the germ-cells of the mother” (1778-1780; 1782-1784).
Eduard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE) showed that fertilization in plant
species also required the penetration of a single male germ cell into an egg
cell (1538).
Edouard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE) found that sperm fuse with the
egg nucleus but not with the polar nuclei (1538).
Eduard Adolf Strasburger (PL-DE) observed that the process of
fertilization comprises the union of the nucleus of the male gamete with that
of the egg; the cytoplasm of the gametes is not concerned in the process; and
the sperm nucleus and egg nucleus are true nuclei. He concluded that the
physical basis of inheritance must be the chromosomes (1538).
August Friedrich Leopold Weismann (DE) noted that the complex
cytological events leading up to the formation of the germ cells were of
fundamental importance to the interpretation of sexual reproduction. They
represented, according to Weismann, ''the attempt to bring about as ultimate a
mixture as possible of the hereditary units [the ids] of both father and
mother." Therefore, sexual reproduction was the means of introducing
variation into the population; it provided the raw material upon which natural
selection acted. Not only was sexual reproduction totally different from
asexual reproduction, but also it was essential to the whole evolutionary story (1781).
Sergius Gavrilovich Nawaschin; Sergey Gavrilovich Navashin (RU)
and Jean-Louis-Léon Guignard (FR) independently showed that in angiosperms two
male gametic nuclei produced in the pollen tube enter the embryo sac and
participate in fertilization, one fusing with the ovicell (egg nucleus) and the
other with the embryo sac (two polar nuclei), i.e., double fertilization (652; 1121-1123).
Ethel
Sargant (GB) gave some of the first evolutionary viewpoints on double
fertilization (1378).
Jacques Loeb
(DE-US) demonstrated that fertilization of sea urchin eggs does not occur
in the absence of calcium ions (957; 959).
Wilhelm August Oskar Hertwig (DE) made the general observation
that in both plants and animals the essential feature of fertilization is the
union of two nuclei, one supplied by each parent
(743).
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (FR) authored Elémens de Botanique followed in 1700 by Institutiones Rei Herbariæ. In these books he contributes to the
field of botany the concept of genus in the modern sense. Tournefort determines
genus according to two criteria (flower and fruit) and classifies the plants by
examining the flowers (in priority, the corolla), the sheets, the roots, the
stems and savor. He was the first to attempt to arrange all petaliferous plants
into genera based on the corolla (443; 444). Pittonia is named in his honor.
Thomas Spencer Leslie Beswick (GB) presents a clear account of Herpes labialis as a distinct clinical
entity (132).
Pieter Andriannszoon Verduyn; Verduuin (NL) introduced the first
non-locking, below knee prosthesis (1336).
Nehemiah Grew (GB) advocated the use of Epsom salts for purging (645).
Queen
Mary II of England, age 32, died of variola hemorrhagica, a lethal form
of smallpox (red plague) in which bleeding occurs into the pustules, from other
body surfaces, and internally (1050).
1695
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) may have been the first to see cells
in human milk (1673).
Humphrey Ridley (GB) described the restiform body (a column shaped
region within the medulla oblongata which connects the posterior roots of
spinal nerves with the cerebellum). He injected mercury and tinged wax into the
cerebral veins of freshly executed criminals, taking advantage of the
considerable venous engorgement to demonstrate the anatomy of the venous plexus
of the skull base. His work is reflected in the naming of the circular sinus
the “Ridley sinus.” He points out the various branches supplying the fourth
ventricle and plexus choroideus, gives the first accurate description of the
fifth cranial nerve ganglion and its 3 branches, which several years later was
confirmed by Jacques B. Winslow who termed it “nerf trijmeaux” (trigeminal
nerve). Ridley notes that within the styliform process, where the carotid
artery does indeed enter the long canal, to the place where it perforates the
dura mater to enter the brain, there is not one branch sent out from it. He
then described the intracranial origin and distribution of the meningeal
arteries, briefly mentioning the labyrinthine artery or the internal auditory
artery, described the ophthalmic artery and a vein attendant to it as they both
pass the os cuneiforme all the while discussing the precise origins of the
branches of the carotid artery.
Ridley observed that the cerebral veins do not run
concomitantly with their corresponding arteries, and he recognized this
difference from the other parts of the body. He was the first to point out the
existence of what we know today as the cerebellomedullary cistern, the
quadrigeminal cistern, and the olfactory cistern.
Ridley described the presence of the choroid plexus
in the third and the fourth ventricles and pointed out the differential
permeability of the cerebral blood vessels toward a substance (wax/mercury)
injected into the bloodstream (evidence of a blood/brain barrier).
Ridley was the first to describe a pineal tumor.
He gave us the first accurate description of the fornix and its pathways (1315). Note: This work is the first treatise
focused on neuroanatomy published in the English language. It is also a heroic
document in anatomical research.
Martin Lister (GB) described the anatomy of the scallop (952).
1697
Georg Ernst Stahl (DE) showed that
vinegar could be concentrated by freezing out part of the water (repetition
of the freezing process yielded acetic acid crystals),
and better, in 1702, by neutralizing the acid with an alkali and distilling the
salt with oil of vitriol (3).
Jean Francois Durande (FR)
in editing Morveau's Handbook of Chemistry in 1777, names the solid crystalline form of acetic acid, glacial,
a name still used.
Georg Ernst Stahl (DE) developed the idea that fermentation is
essentially an upheaval in the internal composition of bodies. He further
observed that the upheaval was communicable to other fermentable or putrescible
substances. Stahl recognized three kinds of fermentation, viz., (a) the
fermentation of wine, beer, and bread; (b) acetic fermentation; (c)
putrefaction and decomposition.
He presented the phlogiston
theory which proposed that combustible substances are compounds rich in
phlogiston and that combustion is due to the phlogiston leaving the other
structures of the substance behind. Although incorrect this theory was
important because it stimulated much research and represents the first
important generalization in chemistry. With the discovery of oxygen, the theory
was abandoned (3; 1502; 1504).
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) met with Peter the Great, Czar of
Russia, and showed him various things through the microscope including the
marvelous blood circulation in the tail of an eel (1676).
1698
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 9 May 1698, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of the compound eye of a beetle and calculations about the number
of facets; observations through the human cornea; observations of the legs,
cornea and ommatidia of a drone fly; observations of the brain of a gnat (1649).
William Cowper (GB) discovered the gland that would be named in
his honor—Cowper’s gland (334). Cowper
blatantly plagiarized most of this work from Govard Bidloo’s book of 1685.
Edward Tyson (GB) reported a perforated gastric ulcer found
in an American opossum (1608).
1699
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 25 September 1699, reported to the Royal Society of London
his observations of the circulation of blood in tadpoles: blood vessels;
clotting; computation of quantity of flowing blood, capillaries (1653).
L. Christoph Hellwig (DE) was the first to demonstrate a pathogen
accompanying a seed. He noticed that outbreaks of ergot (Claviceps
purpurea) on rye followed the sowing of ergot-infected seeds (724).
John Woodward (GB) discovered and reported the phenomenon of
transpiration in plants (1831).
Edward Tyson (GB) wrote one of the first comparative anatomy
books. In it he reported the first recorded dissection of a great ape (a
chimpanzee) remarking that the body of this animal resembles that of a man far
more closely “than any of the ape kind, or any other animal in the world, that
I know of” (1609).
Charleston, South Carolina had an epidemic, the first there to be
positively identified as yellow fever;
probably about 160-190 died (875).
c.
1700
Richard Wiseman (GB) wrote on many surgical subjects including
amputation and compression of aneurism (1825).
1700
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 125th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 2 June, described examining the stomach of a shrimp
and finding a foraminiferan, most likely Polystomella (467). Robert
Hooke (GB) was the first to observe these foraminiferans.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), in his letter of 9 July to the Royal
Society of London, recounts his observations of blood circulation
in the flounder; on red blood corpuscles of flounder and salmon, their oval
form and the way they change shape to pass through capillaries; on blood
vessels; observations of the sperm of a young cock (1652).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 2 January1700, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of liver fluke; on the larvae of gnats; observations of a species
of green algae belonging to the genus Volvox; observations of circulation of
blood in a frog and micro-organisms in its feces
(1651).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 26 October 1700, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations comparing the parthenogenetic procreation of aphids with
spermatozoa (1650).
An English trader of the East India Company reported to the Royal
Society in London that the Chinese inoculated against the smallpox (red plague)
by “opening the pustules of one who had the Small Pox ripe upon him and drying
up the Matter with a little Cotton, … and afterwards put it up the nostrils of
those they would infect” (629).
Antonio Vallisnieri; Antonio Vallisneri (IT) proved that certain
plant galls are caused by larval insects arising from eggs deposited in the
plants by their parent (1619; 1623).
Giorgio Baglivi (Yugoslavian) experimented with restarting hearts
from animals recently deceased. He concluded that the heart dies not from lack
of nervous fluid but from lack of blood. He also distinguished between smooth
muscles and striated muscles based on their fiber structure (67; 68).
1701-1786
Diphtheria (Boulogne
sore throat) is endemic and epidemic in Spain. ref
1701
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 6 December 1701, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of the sperm of young cocks; life span of these spermatozoa to
fertilize a hen's egg (1656).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), in his letter of June 21, 1701, reported to the Royal Society
of London his observations of capillaries in the retina of the eye, blood cells
within these capillaries, floaters within the eye, and flagellated fish sperm (1654).
Nicolas Andry de Bois-Regard (FR) produced the first illustrations
of the parasitic worm, Taenia (41).
Giacomo Pylarini (GR) modified the oriental method of ingrafting (variolation) by removing
matter from the pustule and rubbing it into a small needle scratch in the
patient’s skin. Emanuel Timonius (GR) communicated Pylarini's method to a
London physician, Dr. John Woodward, who had it published (1587).
Robert Houstoun (GB) performed the first successful ovariotomy. The
patient was Margaret Millar of Renfrewshire, Scotland. Houstoun presented the
case before the Royal Society in London in 1724 (980).
1702
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) originated the concept of
“resuscitation of lifeless desiccated microorganisms,” also known as anabiosis or cryptobiosis, when he demonstrated that some little animalcules
(probably tardigrades and rotifers) could be kept dry for several months
without showing any signs of life and then brought back to active life with the
mere addition of rain water (467).
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 144th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 9 February, described examining water from a lead
gutter on his home and finding what were very likely two phytoflagellates, Haematococcus pluvialus (Sphaerella
lacustris) and Chlamydomonas, and a ciliate Coleps (467).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 28 April 1702, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of protozoa in rain water; observations of air bubbles in rain
water; observations of the circulation of blood in an eel (1657).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL) reported to the Royal Society of London his observations of
duckweed, its roots and reproduction; observations of ciliates, vorticellids
and rotifera and the budding of hydra, an asexual form of procreation, all of
which are attached to duckweed (1655; 1658; 1660; 1665).
Ferdinand
Johann Adam von Pernau (AT) anonymously published a popular pioneering essay on
bird behaviour (1). Note:
It was reprinted in 1707 and 1716 as Angenehmer Ziet-Vertreib, welchen das
liebliche Geschöpf Die Vögel, Auch ausser dem Fang in Ergründung deren
Eigenschaften Zahmmachung oder anderer Abrichtung dem Menschen schaffen können ;
Mit vielen Anmerckungen versehen und mit schönen Kupffern gezieret Durch einen
Die erschaffenen Creaturen beschauenden Liebhaber.
Ferdinand
Johann Adam von Pernau (AT), in 1720, published an essay, in which he said bird
song is not necessarily instinctive but likely involves learning. He recognized
the migration trigger factor was not hunger or cold, but some hidden mechanism (1740).
Louis Lémery (FR) established the presence of iron in the ash of
blood (930; 1758).
Vincenzo Menghini (IT) proved that the level of iron in the blood
could be increased by feeding animals iron-containing food (1051).
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) concluded that during respiration,
as in the combustion of charcoal, oxygen is removed from the air and is
converted into carbon dioxide; he suggested that this process occurs in the
lungs, and that oxygen combines with the blood to give the latter its arterial
red color. He concluded that the nitrogen fraction remained unchanged (913; 915).
Johannes Petrus Müller (DE), in 1838, suggested that oxidation takes
place not in the blood but in the tissues (1105).
Karl Vierordt (DE) stated the facts of internal respiration: that
oxidation takes place in the tissues; and that the blood transports oxygen to
the tissues and takes carbon dioxide away from the tissues (1753).
Karl Bogislaus Reichert (DE) saw red tetrahedral crystals in the
blood of a dissected guinea pig. He observed that these seemed to be
protein-like and attempted to demonstrate such. Hemoglobin was therefore the
first protein to be observed in a crystalline form (1293). This was
ninety years before Sumner accidentally crystallized urease.
Otto Funke (DE) devised the first techniques for intentionally
crystallizing blood (hemoglobin) crystals (588).
Lothar Meyer (DE) discovered the high affinity of oxygen for
hemoglobin at low partial pressures and confirmed that blood transports both
carbon dioxide and oxygen (1062; 1063).
Claude Bernard (FR) showed that the poisonous action of carbon
monoxide lay in its ability to displace oxygen in its combination with
hematoglobin (hemoglobin). The body could not counter this quickly enough to
prevent death by oxygen-starvation. This was the first successful explanation
of the specific way a drug acted on the body (123).
Ernst Felix Immanual Hoppe-Seyler (DE) crystallized hemoglobin,
analyzed its spectrum, and determined that there is strong absorption around
Fraunhofer lines D and E (5600 and 5350 angstroms). He proved that hemoglobin, which he named, is the only
pigment in erythrocytes (783).
Ernst Felix Immanual Hoppe-Seyler (DE) crystallized and renamed
the protein hematoglobulin (Berzelius),
hemoglobin. Heme is from the Greek meaning blood and referred to the red
portion while globin referred to the
colorless protein left when the heme portion was removed. He demonstrated that
hemoglobin solutions take up oxygen to form oxyhemoglobin and introduced the
term prosthetic group to designate
the hematin (iron protoporphyrin) portion of hemoglobin (784).
George Gabriel Stokes (GB) suggested that venous blood must be
oxidized during its time course in the lungs (1531).
Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (DE) showed
conclusively that metabolism takes place in peripheral tissues
and that the blood simply transports the respiratory gases (1211).
Max Josef
Pettenkofer (DE), Karl Voit (DE) and Hermann Lossen (DE) were probably among
the first to incline physiologists to the belief that respiration is not the
cause of metabolism, but the result of the needs of the metabolism (961; 1206).
Nathan Zuntz (DE) and Eduard Friedrich Wilheim (DE) recognized
that carbon dioxide, unlike oxygen, is not carried by hemoglobin, but that
hemoglobin is nevertheless an essential factor in the transportation of this
gas by the blood. They showed that in the blood carbon dioxide is combined with
bases, chiefly as sodium bicarbonate. They thus demonstrated, for the first
time, what is now generally, but rather unwisely, called the alkaline reserve (1856; 1857).
This mode of transportation of carbon dioxide is one of the most
extraordinary features of the blood and respiration. The evidence for it rests
upon two facts demonstrated by Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger and others
during the great epoch of German physiology in the second half of the 19th
century. One of these facts is that the blood plasma, if separated from its corpuscles,
will part with little of its carbon dioxide even in the presence of a vacuum.
The other fact is that all the carbon dioxide in the plasma, both that in
simple solution and that combined with alkali into the bicarbonates comes off
readily if the red corpuscles of the blood are present. Thus, the hemoglobin of
the red corpuscles, by supplying or recombining with alkali, dominates the
capacity of the plasma to transport carbon dioxide; it thus enables the blood
to take up this gas in the tissues and to give it off in the lungs under very
slight differences of pressure (1212; 1213).
Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (DE) claimed all gas exchanges
within the body tissues could be explained solely by diffusion (1214).
Oscar Zinoffsky (CH) determined the empirical formula of horse
hemoglobin as C712 H1130 N214 O245
S2 Fe. He concluded that the minimal molecular
weight of hemoglobin is 16,700 (1850).
Gerardus Johannes Mulder; Gerrit Jan Mulder (NL) and van Goudoever
(NL), in 1844, reported the elemental
combustion analysis of and suggested a formula (C44H44N6O6Fe) for the substance
Mulder called hematin, and for its iron free derivative C44H44N6O6 (1101).
Carl Gustav von Hüfner (DE) reported experimental evidence that
1.34 ml of oxygen combined with one gram of crystalline hemoglobin; this was
precisely the same as his theoretic value based on the iron content of blood that
he had also determined (1729).
Count Karl Axel Hampus Mörner (SE) and Hans Günther (DE)
established muscle hemoglobin as a distinct protein different from blood
hemoglobin. Günther named it myoglobin in 1921 (660; 1094).
Christian
Harald Lauritz Peter Emil Bohr (DK), Karl Albert Hasselbalch (DK), and Schack August Steenberg
Krogh (DK) discovered that if percent of oxygen saturation of blood hemoglobin
is plotted versus the partial pressure of oxygen (in mm mercury) a sigmoid
curve is obtained. They found also that the blood level of carbon dioxide
effects the slope of this sigmoid curve and reasoned that as blood reaches the
tissues and its oxygen content begins to drop, the carbon dioxide it is picking
up, at the same time, drives the affinity of blood for oxygen down further. This
influence of carbon dioxide on the binding of oxygen by hemoglobin is called
the Bohr Effect (174; 883).
William Küster (DE) suggested that in both hemoglobin and
oxyhemoglobin the iron is in the divalent (ferro) state, whereas the iron of
methemoglobin is in the trivalent (ferri) state (889). Verify
Edward Tyson Reichert (US) and Amos Peaslee Brown (US) determined
that the hemoglobin crystals of various species were virtually unique and could
be distinguished one from the other by angles or axial ratio and optical
characters (1291).
Archibald Vivian Hill (GB) reported on the combinations of
hemoglobin with oxygen and with carbon monoxide and found that the sigmoid
curve obtained when oxygen pressure is plotted versus oxyhemoglobin
concentration of the blood is due to hemoglobin existing as a complex with
subunits, oxygen uptake by one unit promoting the uptake of oxygen by other
subunits (751). John W.
Severinghaus (US) modified an oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve proposed by Archibald
Vivian Hill (GB), thereby providing a remarkably accurate standard dissociation
curve with a maximum error of plus or minus 0.5% saturation from 0 to 100% (1459).
Joseph Barcroft (GB), Johanne Christiansen (GB), Claude G. Douglas
(GB), and John Scott Haldane (GB) demonstrated that the loss of hemoglobin’s
affinity for oxygen as it moved to the tissues was only in part due to the
direct action of carbon dioxide. The major impact came from protons released as
carbon dioxide combined with blood water to form carbonic acid and from
temperature (76; 296).
Richard Martin Willstätter (DE), Arthur Stoll (CH), Hans Fischer
(DE), and Hans Orth (DE) explained the details of their discoveries of the
structure of heme (534; 535; 1819; 1820).
Joseph Barcroft (GB) Carl A. Binger (GB),
Arlie V. Bock (GB), James
Hamilton Doggart (GB),
Henry S. Forbes (GB),
George A. Harrop, Jr. (GB),
Jonathan C. Meakins (GB), Alfred C. Redfield (GB),
Harold Whitridge Davies (GB),
James Matthews Duncan Scott (GB), W.J. Duncan Fetter (GB),
Cecil D. Murray (GB),
and Arthur Keith (GB) obtained
evidence to support his hypothesis that exchange of substances through the
epithelium of the lungs and the tissues occurs by simple diffusion (76; 77).
John Scott Haldane (GB) demonstrated that carbon monoxide competes
with oxygen to bind with hemoglobin in a loose, reversible manner (668).
James Bryant Conant (US) showed that under normal conditions the
iron in hemoglobin remains in the ferrous state regardless of whether the
molecule has taken on or released oxygen. He suggested that blood exists in oxygenated and deoxygenated states rather than in reduced and oxidized states.
Conant demonstrated that methemoglobin is truly an oxidized form of hemoglobin
with its iron in the ferric state (313). James
Bryant Conant (US) and Louis Frederick Fieser (US) would experimentally
demonstrate that this was correct, leading to the realization that
oxyhemoglobin is the oxygenated form,
rather than the oxidized form, while
methemoglobin is the oxidized form (314).
Arlie V. Bock (US), Henry Field, Jr. (US), and Gilbert Smithson
(US) first described the oxygen-hemoglobin dissociation curve. This report was
based on David Bruce Dill’s (US) analysis of the blood of one man, Arlie Bock (164).
Hans Fischer (DE) and his students, in 1929, discovered that the
heme group of hemoglobin is composed of four pyrrole rings (each consisting of
four carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom) arranged in a larger ring. They
eventually located every atom in its complex structure (533).
Felix Haurowitz (CZ-US), Adolf Winkler (CZ), and Franz Kraus (CZ)
were the first to isolate fetal hemoglobin. They crystallized it and determined
its affinity for oxygen (706).
Alfred Chanutin (US), Richard R. Curnish (US), Reinhold Benesch
(US), and Ruth E. Benesch (FR-DE-US) reported
that organic phosphates lower the oxygen affinity of dilute solutions of human
hemoglobin. The effects of 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (DPG) (and ATP, to a
lesser extent) were exerted at concentrations comparable to those within human
red cells (119; 286).
Georg Ernst
Stahl (DE) gives the original description of lachrymal fistula (1503).
Yellow
fever
struck New York, killing more than 500 people over a three-month period, which
was probably about 10% of the population at the time (875).
Smallpox (red
plague) hit Boston again. This time about 300 died, but a simultaneous
outbreak of scarlet fever makes it difficult to assess who died from what (875).
1703
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 150th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 5 February, described what was probably the colonial
flagellate Anthophysa vegetans (467).
Charles Plumier (FR) dedicated the plant genus Magnolia to
a Professor Peter Magnol (FR) (1229). Plumeria,
an American tree or shrub of the family Apocynaceae, was named in Plumier’s
honor
1704
“The course of nature…seems delighted with transmutations.” Isaac
Newton (1136)
William Cowper (GB) described aortic valve regurgitation as
follows: “The Valves of the Great Artery…were Petrify'd, insomuch that they
could not approach each other…. But an Orifice…remain'd always open by the Petrifactions…which
had clogg'd these Valves and hindered their application to each other…. These
Valves…are rendered useless: For as their Offise is to prevent the return of
the Blood into the Heart, in its Diastole…the consequences must be, not only a
regurgitation of Blood into the Heart, but they baulk its impulsive force” (336).
1705
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), 24 April 1705, reported to the Royal Society of London his
observations of a fern (Polypodium
interjectum Shivas); observations of the seed capsules (sori), the sporangia (grouped within the
sori) and spores (contained within
the sporangia); experiment to open and close the sporangia (1659).
Robert Hooke (GB) offered the correct explanation for the
mechanism underlying the formation of fossils (782).
Leonardo da Vinci (IT) made a similar observation in his notebook
written nearly 100 years earlier but did not publish this observation (366).
Walter Harris (GB) in his famous book on pediatrics anticipated
the modern treatment of tetany by using calcium salts in infantile
convulsions (692).
Antonio Pacchioni (IT) determined the structure and functions of
the dura mater and described the
arachnoidal, or so-called, Pacchioni granulations (1168; 1169).
Jean-Louis Petit (FR) wrote the first important book on diseases
of the bone. In it he relates the first account of softening of the bones and
of the formation of clots in arteries following ligation. He also invented the
screw tourniquet (1201; 1202).
1706
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL), in his letter of 20 April, 1706, reported to the Royal
Society of London his observations of the intestines of a woman who had been
hanged: an account of the various layers and fibers of the colon (1662).
Charleston, South Carolina was struck by yellow fever again. About 5% of the population died (875).
1707
John Floyer (GB) published Pulse-Watch,
the first scientific study of the pulse. He was able to determine pulse rate,
rhythm, amplitude, forcefullness, and compressibility by using his
"Pulse-Watch" which he commissioned Daniel Quare (GB) to manufacture (550).
There is a pandemic of influenza (grippe) in Europe. ref
1708
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL) in a letter of 28 August 1708, and a subsequent letter,
reported to the Royal Society of London concerning the circulation of blood
within fish (1661; 1663).
1709
Jean-Louis Petit (FR) reported successful surgical intervention in
a patient with a strangulated hernia (1204).
1710
John Ray (GB) wrote Historia
Insectorum (1282).
Antonio Vallisnieri; Antonio Vallisneri (IT) proved that parasitic
worms in humans do not arise spontaneously, but grow from eggs (1620).
A severe smallpox (red plague) epidemic occurs in
England.
1711
Louis Joblot (FR) became the first person to use heated infusions
to test the doctrine of spontaneous generation. On 13 October, 1711, he wrote,
“I boiled some similar hay in ordinary water for more than one quarter of an
hour. Afterwards I put equal quantities of it in two vessels of approximately
the same size. One of them I closed as well as I could with parchment well
soaked and even before it was cooled; the other I left uncovered. In this I
found animals at the end of several days but not one in the infusion, which had
been stoppered. I kept it thus closed for a considerable time in order that I
might discover any living insects if they should have appeared in it but having
found none of them I finally unclosed it and at the end of several days I then found
some in it, and this shows that these animals had developed from eggs dispersed
in the air since such as might have happened to be on the hay had been
completely destroyed in the boiling water” (845).
Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his letter of 22 September 1711, to the Royal Society of
London described his observations of the structure and habits of a variety of
mites (1664).
1712
Bernardino Ramazzini (IT) wrote a classic in epidemiology when he
investigated the rinderpest epidemic of 1710/1711 that decimated the
cattle flocks of the peasants and threatened the food supply to the Republic of
Venice (1270).
1713
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) in his 7th letter to the Royal
Society of London, dated 28 June, gives what was surely the first description
of ciliary motion (467).
John Ray (GB) wrote Joannis
Raii Synopsis Methodica Avium & Piscium (1284). One of
Ray’s greatest contributions to science was to bring order to the chaotic mass
of names in use by the naturalists of his time.
John Ray (GB) wrote the third edition of Three Physico-Theological Discourses in which he rejected the
belief that fossils were brought in by the Deluge and states that they were at
one time at the bottom of the sea and that the earth above them was deposited
as sediment (1283).
Antonio Vallisnieri; Antonio Vallisneri (IT), in studies on the
ostrich, ascertained the presence of an active digestive agent in gastric juice (1623).
Antonio Vallisnieri; Antonio Vallisneri (IT) confirmed Malpighi's
observation that plant parasites, far from being of vegetal origin, laid eggs
in the plant buds (1621).
Michael Bernhard Valentini (DE), using his “schema pulsuum”, was possibly the first to use a pulse theory in
the general practice of medicine (1618).
Dominique Anel (FR), to relieve a fistula, performed lachrymal
duct catheterization for the first time (43).
1714
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) applied an alcoholic solution of
Crocus (likely the dye saffron) to muscle preparations to enhance their
appearance under the microscope. Reported to the Royal Society of London in his letter of 21 August
1714. It was not published until 1719 (1666). See, Jan Swammerdam, 1680
Carlo Francesco Cogrossi (IT) presented his theory of contagium vivum in which he asserted
that contagious diseases such as cattle
plague are due to microscopic parasites (305).
Herman Boerhaave (NL), in 1701, was appointed professor of
medicine and botany at the University of Leyden where he tried to explain most
physiological processes as purely mechanical. His greatest legacy was his
method of teaching at the bedside—begun in 1714— which became the foundation of
modern clinical medicine. His use of postmortem examinations to find the cause
of fatal illnesses and the use of the Fahrenheit thermometer in the clinical
assessment of patients were also landmark contributions (994). He
regarded Hippocratism of value only if the results of investigation in anatomy,
physiology, physics, and chemistry were properly used (172; 257).
London experiences epidemics of typhus fever (camp fever) and
smallpox (red plague). ref
1715
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (PL-NL) introduced the Fahrenheit
temperature scale in which the boiling point of water is 212 degrees and its
freezing point is 32 degrees (1149).
Ole Christensen Römer (DK) had invented the alcohol thermometer in
1701. Fahrenheit visited him in 1708 then proceeded to modify Römer’s scale and
substitute mercury for alcohol.
Raymond de Vieussens (FR) wrote, Traité Nouveau de la Structure et des Causes du Mouvement Natural du
Coeur which became a classic in cardiology. In it he gave the first
accurate detailed illustration of the coronary vessels, the first illustration
of mitral stenosis, and the first
recognizable description of the characteristic pulse of aortic insufficiency.
He described mitral stenosis with the
clear recognition of the cause of the dyspnea,
which he ascribed correctly to pulmonary congestion secondary to the effect of
the tight mitral stenosis (of which
he gives an excellent description) and not to failure of the heart muscle (446).
1716
“. . . my
work, which I've done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the
praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice
resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found
out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on
paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.” Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek. On
the occasion of an honorary degree awarded to him, Leeuwenhoek wrote to the
faculty at the University of Louvain, on June 12th, 1716 (467)
Cotton Mather (US) of Boston wrote the Royal Society of London as
follows: “ I am willing to confirm you, in a favorable opinion, of Dr.
Timonius’s Communication; and therefore, I do assure you that many months
before I met with any Intimations of treating ye Small-Pox, with ye methods of
Inoculation, anywhere in Europe, I had from a servant of my own, an account of
its being practiced in Africa. Enquiring of my Negro-man, Anesimus, who is a
pretty intelligent Fellow, Whether he ever had ye Small-Pox; he answered, both,
Yes, and No; and then told me that he had undergone an operation, which had
given him something of ye Small-Pox, and would forever preserve him from it;
adding, That it was often used among ye Guramantese, and whoever had ye courage
to use it, was forever free from ye fear of the Contagion. He described ye
operation to me, and shew’d me in his Arm ye Scar, which it left upon him; and
his Description of it, made it the same that afterwards I found related unto
you by Timonius” (865).
The first specific measure used in America, as in Europe and
before that for centuries in India and probably in China, was inoculation
against the smallpox (red plague).
The direct application of material from a pustule of an active case of this
disease to a normal person was a hazardous large-scale experiment in
microbiology. It was an active immunization by producing the disease at a
chosen time and by a different route of introduction of the virus from that in
the natural disease (306).
Cotton Mather (US) reported in a letter to James Petiver on the
first unambiguous account of plant hybridization in America: it involved red
and blue kernels of Zea mays (1022; 1023).
1717
Giovanni Maria Lancisi (Lancisio) (IT) linked malaria (the ague) with poisonous vapors of swamps and thus
originated the name malaria—meaning bad air. He suggested that mosquitoes
might in some way transmit this disease (897; 898; 901).
Marcus Gerbezius (Slovenian-DE) described the symptoms of
bradycardia induced by complete atrioventricular (AV) block. These observations
were not published until 1718 (606). Giovanni
Battista Morgagni later cites Gerbezius on this subject in the 64th letter of
his book in 1761.
1718-1719
Clifton Wintringham (GB) reports typhus fever (camp fever)
in England. ref
1718
Stephen Hales (GB) concluded that plants are nourished in part by
the atmosphere and noted that light also, by entering the leaves may promote
vegetation. He also studied the ascent of water in plants and applied physical
principles to the study of plant physiology (671). Read
before the Royal Society in 1718.
Mary Wortley Montagu (GB), wife of the British ambassador to
Constantinople, wrote Sarah Chiswell encouraging that English citizens adopt
the process of ingrafting (variolation) to protect themselves
against smallpox (red plague). In letter number 31, written in 1717, she says,
“The small pox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here rendered entirely
harmless by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it. There
is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every
autumn… The old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort
of smallpox and asks what veins you please to have opened. She immediately rips
open that you offer to her with a large needle…and puts into the vein as much
venom as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after binds up the little
wound with a hollow bit of shell” (612; 1083; 1084). Note:
This process had already been used for countless years in Asia and Africa.
Giovanni Maria Lancisi (IT) produced a monograph on the heart in
which he became the first to call special attention to the association of syphilis with cardio-vascular disease.
He noted that engorgement and pulsation of the jugular veins (Lancisi’s sign) is
evidence of enlargement and failure of the right ventricle (898; 899).
James Mackenzie (GB) would rediscover Lancisi’s sign (979).
Lorenz Heister (DE), in 1718, published the German edition of his
book Chirurgie. The English
translation became the first systematic treatise on surgery to appear in that
language (723). Heister is
credited with coining the terms tracheotomy—previously
known as laryngotomy or bronchotomy—and spinal brace.
1719
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) may have been the first person to see
and report on spirochetes when he wrote, “I have seen a sort of animalcule that
had the figure of our river eels: these were in very great plenty and so small
withal that I deemed 500 or 600 of ‘em laid out end to end would not reach to
the length of full-grown eel such as there are in vinegar. These had a very
nimble motion and bent their bodies serpent-wise and shot through the stuff as
quick as a pike does through water” (1666).
Caspar Neumann (DE) discovered thymol in Monarda (Horsemint) (1133).
Johann Thomas Hensing (DE) wrote, The Chemical Examination of the Brain and the Unique Phosphorus from it
[which] Ignites All Combustibles. This was his dissertation at the
University of Giessen. In this work he successfully carried out a chemical
search for phosphorus in beef brain thus becoming the first modern neurochemist (733; 1592).
Europe experiences a pandemic of dysentery (bloody flux).ref
There is an epidemic of plague
in Marseilles.
There is an epidemic of influenza
(fierro chuto) in Peru. ref
1720
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) and Dr. Sprengeli (NL) wrote, “I
could distinctly see that the fleshy fibers, of which the greater part of a
muscle consists, were composed of globules.” He presented a drawing, that
clearly shows the cross striations which delineate the “globules” (sarcomeres)
and calculated that a muscle fiber may contain thousands of filaments (1435; 1667; 1668; 1675).
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL) wrote, “who can tell, whether each of
these filaments may not be enclosed in its proper membrane and contain within
it an incredible number of still smaller filaments” (1674).
Very likely these microscopic observations make van Leeuwenhoek
the first to observe cross-striations and myofibrils in muscle fibers (1124).
Abraham Vater (AT) described papilla duodeni (Vater’s tubercle or papilla
of Santorini), a small elevation at the site of
the opening of the conjoined common bile duct and pancreatic duct into the
lumen of the duodenum. He also described the ampulla
of the bile duct, (Vater's Ampulla).
This is dilation within the major duodenal papilla, the duodenal end of the
drainage systems of the pancreatic and common bile ducts (1377; 1680).
John Louis Petit (FR) recognized that control of hemorrhage
following amputation was associated with the blood clotting process (1160).
Plague ravages
France, centered on Marseilles it probably killed a third to a half the
population there (875).
1721
John Atkins (GB), in 1721, gave the first definitive accounts of
African sleeping sickness (60).
Thomas Masterman Winterbottom (GB) described African sleeping
sickness called Soosoos or kee kóllee kondee. “The appetite
declines, and the patient gradually wastes away…. The disposition to sleep is
so strong, as scarcely to leave a sufficient respite for the taking of food;
even the repeated application of a whip…is hardly sufficient to keep the poor
wretch awake…. The disease…usually proves fatal with three or four months.” He
coined the phrase Negro lethargy (1822).
Griffith Evans (GB) found trypanosomes in the blood of horses and
camels with a wasting disease called surra
and suggested that the parasites might be the cause of this disease. This was
the first pathogenic trypanosome to be described (516). The
trypanosome was later called Trypanosoma
evansi in his honor.
Antonio Vallisnieri; Antonio Vallisneri (IT) showed
the nature of fossil shells and correctly maintained that they were the remains
of organisms that had lived in other ages, but which had nothing to do with the
Universal Flood (1622). The
freshwater plant genus Vallisneria commemorates him.
Smallpox (red
plague) struck Boston again, with about 6000 people affected in a total
population of 11,000, of whom 844 died. This epidemic prompted the first use of
inoculation against smallpox in the
New World (875).
Dr. Zabdiel Boylston (US) of Boston was persuaded by Rev. Cotton
Mather to use inoculation as a method to immunize against the smallpox (red plague). On June 27, 1721,
he inoculated his only son, a boy of thirteen, and two black servants. During
the year 1721 and the first part of 1722, according to Hutchinson in his
history of Massachusetts, “Dr. Boylston inoculated 247 persons and 39 were
inoculated by other persons in Boston and vicinity. Of this number, six died or
2.1%; several of these were supposed to have taken the infection before
inoculation. In the same period, 5759 took the disease in the natural way, of
whom 844 died or 14.6% and many of those who recovered were left with broken
constitutions and disfigured countenances.” Both Cotton Mather and Zabdiel
Boylston underwent persecution, bomb-throwing, assault, and attempts of the
courts and other physicians to suppress the practice (821).
The word anesthesia
first appeared in English (855). See, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1846.
1722
Dr. Benjamin Marten (GB) of London in his work entitled, A New Theory of Consumption: More Especially
of a Pthesis or Consumption of the Lungs says, that the cause of
consumption “…may possibly be some certain species of animalcula or wonderfully
minute living creatures that by their peculiar shape or disagreeable parts are
inimical to our nature but however capable of existing in our juices and
vessels and which being drove to the lungs by the circulation of the blood or
else generated there from their proper ova or eggs with which the juices may
abound or which possibly being carried about by the air may be immediately
conveyed to the lungs by that we draw in and being there deposited as in a
proper nidus or nest and being produced into life coming to perfection or
increasing in bigness may by their spontaneous motion and injurious parts
stimulating and perhaps wounding or gnawing the tender vessels of the lungs
cause all the disorders mentioned, viz., a more than ordinary afflux of
humorous upon the part, obstruction, inflammation, exulceration and all the
other phenomena and deplorable symptom of this disease.”
Marten also considered the question of specificity among
animalcules. He stated, “Thus one species of animalcula by means of their
wonderful smallness and injurious parts may instantly affect the brain and
nerves and cause apoplexies and sudden death whilst other species may produce
the plague, pestilential or malignant fevers, small pox, etc. Diseases that
recur in different seasons or years and maintain their type are best explained
on the supposition that there are specific animalcules.” Marten also discussed
how certain persons could be affected with animalcules and others not so, and
he concluded that if the air or food were full of animalcules all persons would
get the diseases. It is reasonable to say that only those who come into chief
contact with a sick person are more prone to contract the disease. About
consumption he thought it likely that, “by an habitual lying in the same bed
with a consumptive patient, constantly eating or drinking with him or by very
frequently conversing so nearly as to draw in part of the breath he emits from
his lungs a consumption may caught by a sound person.”
To account for the fact that all people do not get consumption by
coming near a consumptive, Marten tells us that “slight conversation” with a
consumptive is seldom or never sufficient to catch the disease, “…there being
but few if any of those minute living creatures or their eggs communicated in
slender conversation and which if there are may perhaps not be produced into
life or be nourished or increased in the new station they happen to be cast
besides we may imagine that some persons are of such a happy constitution that
if any of the ova of the minute animals that cause consumption happen to get
into their bodies they may likewise be quickly forced out again” (1019).
1724
Philip Miller (GB) wrote The Gardener's and Florists Dictionary
or a Complete System of Horticulture (1724) and The Gardener's
Dictionary containing the Methods of Cultivating and Improving the Kitchen
Fruit and Flower Garden, which first appeared in 1731. These display the
amazing knowledge of this most outstanding gardner.
Giovanni Domenico Santorini (IT), Carlo Orsolini (IT), and
Giovanni Battista Recurti (IT) produced an outstanding book on human anatomy
detailing muscles of the face, external ear, skull, nose, larynx, eyes,
abdomen, male genitalia, and pelvic area (1377).
Frederick Ruysch (NL) employed a microscope to study human blood
vessels made visible by injections of cinnabar in a mixture of tallow and wax (1364).
Herman Boerhaave (NL) described a case in which a man died soon
after developing chest and abdominal pain after vomiting on a full meal.
Boerhaave performed a postmortem and identified an esophageal rupture with
spillage of gastric contents into the mediastinum. This is now called Boerhaave's syndrome (169).
1725
John Freind (GB) wrote the first history of medicine by an
Englishman (579).
1726
“I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now
and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean
of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” -Isaac Newton (GB) (209)
Edmé Gilles Guyot (FR) reported to the Royal Academy that during
1724 he had relieved his own deafness by inserting a curved tube into his
eustachian tube by way of the mouth (665).
Archibald Cleland (GB), in 1741, was successful in catheterizing
the eustachian tube, through the nose, to relieve deafness (302).
1727-1729
Catarrhal fever (ague)
is epidemic in England.
1727
Jean André
Sieur de Peyssonnel (FR), in 1727, classified sponges, corals, and madrepores
as animals (417; 435; 437).
Abraham
Trembley (FR) discovered the coral polyp in 1739
(1595; 1596).
John Ellis (GB), in 1755, concluded that sponges are animals
because he observed water currents associated with movements of their oscula.
Ellis also demonstrated that corallines and gorgonins are animals (504).
Félix Joseph Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (FR), in 1864, quotes
Peyssonel, "I made the coral bloom in solid seawater vases, and I noticed
that what we believe to be the flower of this plant is purported to was true,
that a similar bug has a small nettle or octopus. I had the pleasure of seeing
move the legs, or feet, of this nettle, and having put the vase full of water
or coral near a gentle heat of a fire, all small insects expanded. The nettle
output extends feet, and forms what M. de Marsigli and I had taken for the
petals of the flower. The calyx of the flower is the same purported animal body
forward and out from the cell" (417).
Anita McConnell (GB), in 1990, quotes from Peyssonnel’s
unpublished letter to René-Antoine Ferchault de Réamur, director of the French
Académie des Sciences, " J'observais ce queue nous crayons ere la fleur de
cite prêt endue planet nest au vary Qur’an insect semblable a une petite
ortie... J'avais le plaisir de voir remuer les pattes de cette ortie, et ayant
mis le vase plein d'eau ou le corail était a une douce chaleur aupres du feu,
tous les petits insectes s'épanourient. " ["I noticed that what we
believe to be the flower of this so-called plant is an insect like a small
nettle. I was pleased to see the feet of this nettle move and, having warmed the
water where the coral was, all the insects opened up"] (1035).
Stephen Hales (GB), a great experimental physiologist, performed
such pioneering studies in plant physiology as measuring the effect of the
sun’s heat on the rising of sap, determining the rate of flow of sap and the
pressure of sap. He found that leaves perspired
or, as we say now, transpired and that transpiration on the surface of the leaf
promoted a continuous flow of sap, that the upward flow of sap was due to
transpiration, capillarity and root pressure, and that sap did not flow in a
circulator fashion like blood. In this book he says, “Plants very probably draw
through their leaves some part of their nourishment from the air, may not light
also by freely entering surfaces of leaves and flowers contribute much to
ennobling the principles of vegetables” (670; 674). Some
consider this the discovery of photosynthesis.
The famous seed-breeding establishment Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie
(FR) was founded. It was through the work of this concern that the sugar beet
was developed during the Napoleonic era.
Stephen Hales (GB) deduced the specific location of the bone’s
growth plate. He noted that the distance between drill holes he made in the diaphyses of leg bones of chickens did
not increase as the birds grew. From this he correctly concluded that
longitudinal growth occurred at the ends of these long bones and not in the
middle (670).
1728-1732
Charleston, South Carolina was hit by yellow fever twice in a four-year period. The vector (mosquitoes)
was not understood, and treatment wasn't very effective (875).
1728
Henri-Louis Duhamel de Monceau (FR) identified a fungal disease on
the bulbs of saffron crocus (now named Helicobasidium purpureum) and
illustrated its sclerotia on the bulbs. He discovered that this fungus spreads
underground from one bulb to another (430).
Pierre Fauchard (FR) wrote Le
Chirugien Dentiste, ou Traité des Dents [The Dental Surgeon, or Treatise on the Teeth]. Aside from the
physics and mechanics of tooth extraction, Fauchard dealt with filing, scaling,
drilling and filling, ligations, crowns, and bridges. An interesting oral
mechanical application—a rare departure from teeth, gums, and jaw—was his
development of a metal obturator to
counter the ravages of syphilis upon
the palate. He gave the first description of the toothbrush in Europe and
employed orthodontal procedure to treat malocclusion (524). In the
second edition (1746) he gives the first account of pyorrhea alveolaris (Riggs disease). This book was the most
influential in the field until the turn of the century.
John M. Riggs (US) introduced treating pyorrhea alveolaris by scraping the teeth to the roots (1317).
Michael
Alberti (DE) described an epidemic of whooping
cough (22).
1729-1730
Europe experiences an influenza
(grippe) pandemic (350).
1729
Pier' Antonio Micheli (IT) was the first to develop a technique
for routinely producing axenic
cultures of certain molds. He grew them on freshly cut pieces of melon, quince,
and pear. In this manner he followed the growth of Mucor, Botrytis, and
Aspergillus (all of which he named) and noted that each fungus formed its own seeds and reproduced only its own kind.
Micheli, in his book New
Genera of Plants, Arranged After the Method of Tournefort…with Additional Notes
and Observations Regarding the Planting, Origin, and Growth of Fungi, Mucors,
and Allied Plants, says “On the 30th day of December, I took a piece of
melon and shaped it into a triangular pyramid. Then, choosing a piece of a
quince and also of an almost ripe pear, commonly called Spina, I formed them into truncated pyramids, with their apices
removed, giving the piece of quince a pentagonal, and the piece of pear a
hexagonal base. On the individual faces of the pyramids, I sowed the seeds of Mucor, Aspergillus, and Botrytis,
keeping each kind separate, so that on the piece of melon I had placed three
kinds, on the quince on five sides five kinds, and lastly on the pear on six
sides, six kinds…. All these species of seeds began to germinate from the
fourth to the fifth or sixth day of the month, as I observed. They developed
into plants according to their seed, of which some attained their maturity on
the tenth day, others on the twelfth, others on the thirteenth, and finally
others on the fifteenth: and they produced the seeds of their kind. I kept
these seeds separate, and again and again planted the seeds produced in like
fashion from them; and then I always observed the same mode of growth in them,
not in one trial only, but however often and whenever I attempted it, without
any difference whatsoever other than in the rate of growth or in the earlier or
later ripening” (1066). He is
commemorated by the genus Michelia.
Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan (FR) conducted an experiment
showing that, even in total darkness, the leaves of a “sensitive heliotropic
plant”—probably Mimosa pudica —
continue to fold and unfold in a 24-hour cycle that was previously thought to
be in response to daylight (427). This is
possibly the first experiment to illustrate a circadian—circa
"about" and diem "a day"— rhythm.
Wilhelm Friedrich Philipp Pfeffer (DE) confirmed that circadian
movements of plants are independent of the daily light-dark cycle (1210).
George Thomas White Patrick (US) and J. Allen Gilbert (US)
observed that during a prolonged period of sleep deprivation, sleepiness
increases and decreases with a period of approximately 24 hours (1181; 1182).
J.S. Szymanski (DE) showed that animals are capable of maintaining
24-hour activity patterns in the absence of external cues such as light and
changes in temperature (1564).
Derk-Jan Dijk (GB) and Malcolm von Schantz (GB) relate that daily
rhythms in sleep and waking performance are generated by the interplay of multiple
external and internal oscillators. These include the light-dark and social
cycles, a circadian hypothalamic oscillator oscillating virtually independently
of behavior, and a homeostatic oscillator driven primarily by sleep-wake
behavior. Both internal oscillators contribute to variation in many aspects of
sleep and wakefulness (e.g., sleep timing and duration, REM sleep, non-REM
sleep, REM density, sleep spindles, slow-wave sleep, electroencephalographic
oscillations during wakefulness and sleep, and performance parameters,
including attention and memory). The relative contribution of the oscillators
varies greatly between these variables. Sleep and performance cannot be
predicted by either oscillator independently but critically depend on their
phase relationship and amplitude. The homeostatic oscillator feeds back onto
the central pacemaker or its outputs. Thus, the amplitude of observed circadian
variation in sleep and performance depends on how long we have been asleep or
awake. During entrainment to external 24-h cycles, the opposing interplay
between circadian and homeostatic changes in sleep propensity consolidates
sleep and wakefulness. Some physiological correlates and mediators of both the
circadian process (e.g., melatonin and hypocretin rhythms) and the homeostat
(e.g., EEG, slow-wave activity, and adenosine release) have been established,
offering targets for the development of countermeasures for circadian sleep and
performance disorders. Interindividual differences in sleep timing, duration,
and morning or evening preference are associated with changes of circadianor
sleep homeostatic processes or both. Molecular genetic correlates, including
polymorphisms in clock genes, of some of these interindividual differences are
emerging (464).
1730
Smallpox (red
plague) epidemics took heavy tolls in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia (1050).
William Cheselden (GB) was a very influential surgeon known for
his lithotomies, artificial pupil operations, and his anatomy book, The Anatomy of the Human Body, which
went through at least 13 editions (290).
1731
Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari (IT) formally discovered Foraminifera in
sands near Bologna and in the beach sand of the Adriatic Sea at Rimini (103). See, Hooke, 1665.
Robert Nesbitt (GB) demonstrated that in the human fetus some
bones are formed not in cartilage but directly in fibrous tissue (1132).
Karl Ernst von Baer (EE-DE-RU) noted, “The process of ossification
supplants the cartilaginous skeleton. So long as the ossifications lie in the
skin, as in the sturgeon, they form corneous bones, but when they lie under the
skin, they form true bones, e.g., the bones of the skull in the pike” (1703).
Antoine Dugès (FR) distinguished between bones formed by direct
ossification of the cartilaginous groundwork of the skull, and those developed
in the periosteal fibrous tissue (492).
Karl Bogislaus Reichert (DE) found that several skull bones in
Amphibia are formed without the intermediary of cartilage, nasals, maxillaries,
and lacrymals. In teleosts frontals and parietals developed independently of
the cartilaginous skull, thus belonging to the skeletal system of the skin. He
discovered that in the newt several bones connected with the palate are formed
in the mucous membrane of the mouth by the fusion of several little conical
teeth (1292).
Heinrich Müller (DE) showed that there is no histological
difference between membrane bone and cartilage bone (1102).
Stephen Hales (GB) tied a brass tube into the crural artery of a
horse, attached a glass tube nine feet in length to the brass tube, and, on
“untying the ligature on the artery, the blood rose in the tube to a height of
eight feet, three inches perpendicular above the level of the left ventricle of
the heart”—the first recorded quantitative determination of blood pressure
(called Hale’s piezometer). Using wax, he formed images of the heart chambers,
calculated their volume, and determined that small animals expel a weight of
blood equal to their own weight in less time than a large animal. He made
microscopic examinations of capillaries in the living state and performed
experiments in which he perfused various chemicals into the blood stream and
concluded that changes occur in the diameter of the capillaries as a result.
Hales postulated that the blood globules [erythrocytes] described by
Leeuwenhoek were only slightly smaller than the diameter of the smallest
vessels. Thus, the flow of these blood particles through the capillaries was
accompanied with considerable friction and resistance, which slowed the
circulation. He popularized the use of ventilators in jails, mines, and ships’
holds, etc. for health reasons (671-673).
Mark Catesby (GB), the first real naturalist in America, published
a two-volume book on natural history in the Carolina area, which provided a
wealth of knowledge for future scientists (278).
1732-1733
A yellow fever epidemic struck Charleston, SC starting in
May and running into the fall, with deaths occurring so frequently that the
usual ringing of bells upon a death was forbidden. A smaller outbreak hit New
York the same year (1050).
Europe experienced an influenza
(grippe) pandemic (350).
1732
Herman Boerhaave (NL) developed the idea that true fermentation
occurred only in vegetable matter, and that although putrefaction is a true
internal motion it never produces acids and flammable spirits and, in this
respect, differs from fermentation. He describes the ferment as a body “which when intimately mixed with a fermenting
vegetable excites, increases and promotes the fermentation.”
He reports that if bone is treated with muriatic acid, the
inorganic salts are dissolved leaving the organic matrix in the original shape
of the bone. Boerhaave was the first to separate out urea from urine, without
using chemicals such as alcohol or nitric acid (170; 171).
Hilaire Marie Rouelle (FR), the cadet, in
1773, isolated urea from human, cow, and horse urine. This was the first animal
metabolite to be isolated in crystalline form. Rouelle called it matière savonneuse (soapy matter) (1342).
William Cruickshank (GB), in 1797, added concentrated nitric acid
to evaporated urine and obtained crystalline urea nitrate (an explosive) (345; 1128).
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR) and Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (FR)
isolated then crystallized urea, which they named urée, and ascertained its
weight and constituent atomic components. They favored the idea that urea was a
waste product of nitrogenous metabolism present in all living tissues with the
kidney serving as an organ to “de-nitrogenize” the body by excreting urea in the
urine. They hypothesized that urea was the source of urinary ammonia (405-409).
Jean-Louis Prévost (CH)
and Jean
Baptiste André Dumas (FR) binephrectomized animals and found their blood urea was
high and chemically identical to that of urine. They concluded that urea is
produced in the body (not the kidney) and excreted by the kidney (1246; 1247).
1733
“All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return”
Alexander Pope (GB), An
Essay on Man (208)
"He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the
most medicines." Benjamin Franklin (US), (577)
Chester More Hall (GB) successfully fashioned an achromatic
objective lens for a telescope by combining two lenses made of glass with
different indices of refraction; the different refractions of the two glasses
canceled the aberration. This practical discovery made possible light
microscopy as we know it today. Hall did not patent the invention but rather
kept it a secret. John Dolland (GB) reported the process in 1758, then patented
it around 1759 (469; 613).
William Cheselden (GB) created his book Osteographia, which
was of much use in directing attention to the study of the skeleton and the
morbid changes to which it is liable (291).
1734
“So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.” Jonathan Swift (1555)
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (FR) wrote, Mémoires Pour Servir à l’Histoire Naturelle des Insectes, one of
the monumental works in the field of insect biology (437).
Jacob Theodor Klein (PL) is likely to have coined the name echinodermata (866).
William Stukeley (GB) noted that in gout a certain “Dr. Mead observ'd it upon a microscopic glass; a
parcel of small salts nimbly floating in a liquor and striking out into
crystals of incredible tenuity and sharpness, he calls them spicula and darts” (1543). See, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 1679.
The Daughters of Charity Medical Center in New Orleans was
founded, making it the oldest hospital in the United States (1506).
1735-1740
Epidemics of diphtheria (Boulogne
sore throat) and scarlet fever spread
through various parts of New England. Both diseases were referred to as throat distemper and weren't distinguished. Hundreds of people died, most
of them children (875).
1735
Paul Gottlieb Werlhof (DE) described a disease he called morbus haemorrhagicus maculosus (also
called purpura haemorrhagica, or idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura or essential
thrombocytopenia) (1793).
Robert Willan (GB) distinguished four types of purpura; one of
these was designated purpura hemorrhagia
(1809).
Eduard Krauss (DE) discovered that platelet numbers are decreased
in a patient with purpura hemorrhagica
and return to normal with cessation of bleeding (882).
Georges Hayem (FR) firmly established the relationship between
platelets and purpura hemorrhagica.
He noted that the patient's platelets are large, and their clots are soft and
poorly retracted (710).
Cecil James Watson (US), circa 1925, confirmed a previously
published observation that thrombocytopenic
purpura can be reproduced with antiplatelet serum (1413). This
finding was significant
for an understanding of autoimmune diseases.
William J. Harrington (US), Virginia Minnich (US), James W.
Hollingsworth (US), and Carl V. Moore (US) demonstrated that idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura is
initiated by a plasma factor (690).
John Belchier (GB) noted that the bones of madder-fed animals
stain red in their growth areas (111; 112). Madder is
a crude dye from the plant Rubia
tinctorum that contains the dye alizarin.
Henri-Louis du Hamel du Monceau (FR) studied the uptake of dye
(madder) by bone and found it was only deposited where osteoblast activity was
present. Duhamel, a bachelor, was a natural research worker delighting in his
self-described role as 'Nature's detective'. He found that only certain parts
of the bone became stained. The younger the animal the more bone would be
stained because the madder was only deposited in newly formed active bone. By
alternating a madder treated diet with a normal diet, he could produce
successive layers of dyed bone, proving that bone grew by interstitial
formation. By drilling holes in bone, a measured distance apart, he proved that
growth took place from the ends of long bone. He found that typically the
periosteum produces cartilage, which is subsequently transformed into bone (482; 483).
John Hunter (GB), in the eighteenth century, showed that bone
substance is not the static resistant structure it appears to be, but that it
exists in a state of constant deposition and resorption and that this activity
is the important element in bone repair (775; 809).
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (FR) confirmed Duhamel’s work, finding
that the sides of long bone grow by the superposition of external layers; the
medullary canal grows by the reabsorption of the internal layers. He proved
that the external periosteum membrane forms cartilage, which becomes bone (543; 545; 546).
Carl Gräbe (DE) and Carl Theodore Liebermann (DE) demonstrated
that alizarin is a dihydroxyanthraquinone (635; 636).
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens
(FR) confirmed Hunter’s work (546).
Harry Gideon Wells (US) wrote that the calcium salts exert a
specific influence on the connective-tissue cells which cause them to assume
active growth and to undergo a metaplasia not only into osteoblasts and bone
corpuscles but apparently even into marrow cells with hematogenic function (1787).
Gaspar Roque Francisco Narciso Casal y Julian (ES), in 1735,
described the disease state of mal de la
rosa, later called pellagra (274). His book
containing this observation was published posthumously.
Francois Thiéry (FR) described pellagra (1578).
1736
Benjamin Franklin’s (US) four-year-old son, Francis Folger Franklin,
died of smallpox (red plague) on November 21, 1736. Rumors began to
circulate claiming that the boy had been inoculated. Franklin published a
denial and advocated inoculation (1050).
Jean Astruc (FR) wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and
venereal diseases. This work includes the first description of Herpes genitalis (57; 823). Note: The book was first written in
Latin and published in 1736.
1737
Carl Linné; Carl von Linné; Carolus Linnaeus (SE) was a naturalist
who held the chairs of medicine and botany at the university at Uppsala. He
published Genera Plantarum,
considered the starting point of modern botany, and Species Plantarum, which contains the first consistent use of the
binomial system of nomenclature in the classification of life forms. It is the
basis of the system used today. He grouped plants and animals by first grouping
species into genera, then analogous genera into families, then related families
into orders and classes. Linnaeus used structure or reproductive organs in the
flowers to group higher plants. He distinguished plants with true flowers and
seeds, the phanerograms, from those lacking true flowers and seeds, the
cryptograms. The phanerograms were subdivided into bisexual (hermaphroditic)
and unisexual. The mammals were divided using teeth and toes, while the birds
were divided by shape of beaks. In his Species
Plantarun (1753 edition) he also included some fungi making this publication
the starting point for modern systematics and nomenclature for both plants and
fungi. In the 1753 edition he became the first to use the traditional symbols
circle with arrow and circle with cross to represent male and female sexes,
respectively. It is believed that these symbols were derived from the Greek
letters theta and phi, which begin the Greek names of the gods Thouros (Mars)
and Phosphorus (Venus) (946; 948; 1737; 1738). See,
Bauhin, 1596.
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (FR) and Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte
de Buffon (FR) examined the effect of growing conditions on the shape of tree
rings. They found that in 1709, a severe winter produced a distinctly dark tree
ring, which served as a reference for subsequent European naturalists (484; 485). See,
Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1497
Giuseppe Zinanni (IT) wrote the first book devoted to the eggs and
nests of birds (1848).
1738
René Réaumur
(FR) wrote The History of Insects, in
which, he speculated that aphids can produce offspring parthenogenetically,
however, he did not prove such.
Charles Bonnet
(CH), in 1740, devised an experiment to prove that Réaumer was correct. He
wrote of his success to Réaumur, who read Bonnet’s letter to the French Academy
of Sciences, which then named Bonnet an official correspondent.
Charles Bonnet (CH) while observing aphids became the first to
prove that some eggs can develop parthenogenically (n. parthenogenesis). He demonstrated the regenerative ability of
annelid worms, studied the respiration of insects, tissue regeneration in
Hydra, photosynthesis, and epinasty (a downward bending of leaves or other
plant parts, resulting from excessive growth of the upper side) in plants. It
was he who coined the term evolution (177-179).
Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold (DE) rediscovered parthogenesis in
insects (1745).
Francis Walker (GB), in the 1830s, collected many aphids and noted
that they could exist in many different morphologies (470).
Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold (DE) discovered parthenogenesis in
moths and the honeybee, Apis mellifera
Linn (1745; 1746). He is
commemorated by Ergasilus sieboldi
von Nordmann, 1832; Lineola sieboldii
Kölliker, 1845; and Pegantha sieboldi
Haeckel, 1879.
Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold (DE) established the fact of
parthenogenesis in two wasps, in a sawfly, in several moths, and in certain
phyllopod crustacea (1747).
Wilhelm Kurz (DE) was among the first to point out that
environmental conditions may trigger parthenogenesis. He found that increased
salt concentrations in evaporating watery media brought it about in Daphnia. Kurz was apparently the first
to document the existence of sex intermediates in the Cladocera (888).
Anton Kerner Marilaun (AT) discovered parthenogenesis in the
angiosperm plant Antennaria alpina (1016).
Hans Oscar Juel (SE) and Svante Murbeck (SE) confirmed this in Antennaria
and Alchemilla (849; 850; 1115; 1116).
Charles Sedgwick Minot (US) and Theodor Boveri (DE) realized that
parthenogenesis is due to some failure or modification of cell division during
the maturation of the egg (190; 1070).
George Bowdler Buckton (GB) worked out the complex life cycles of
many aphids (251).
Richard Karl Wilhelm Theodor von Hertwig (DE) was the first to
describe the artificially stimulated development of sea urchin eggs
(parthenogenesis). He stimulated the eggs with chloroform or strychnine (1728).
Jacques Loeb (DE-US) induced artificial parthenogenesis in
annelida, frog, and sea urchin eggs by mechanically stimulating them (954-958).
Leonard Doncaster (GB) found that in the parthenogenetic ova of
certain insects, e.g. Rhodites rosae
(Henking) and Nematus lacteus,
reductive division does not occur, although two polar bodies are formed (471).
Alexander Ivanovitch Petrunkevitch (RU-US) gave the first
statistically adequate cytological demonstration of the truth of Dzierzon’s
hypothesis that worker and queen bees are developed from fertilized eggs, while
drones are developed from unfertilized eggs by parthenogenesis. He
found mosaic polyploidy in the honeybee. There are only sixteen chromosomes in
the first division of the nucleus of the drone-egg, but 64 in cells of the
blastoderm of the later embryo (1205).
Friedrich
Meves (DE) showed that while the diploid number (counted in the oogonia of the
honeybee queen) is 32 and the haploid 16, more than 60 chromosomes are present
in the follicle-cells of the testis (1060).
Jean-Eugène Bataillon (FR) succeeded in
causing the fertilization of amphibian eggs (frogs) without the intervention of
spermatozoa, by means of the pricking of a needle (95).
Phillip C. Watts (GB), Kevin R. Buley (GB), Stephanie
Sanderson (GB), Wayne Boardman (GB), Claudio Ciofi (IT) and Richard Gibson (GB)
used genetic fingerprinting to identify parthenogenetic offspring produced by
two female Komodo dragons (Varanus
komodoensis) that had been kept at separate institutions and isolated from
males; one of these females subsequently produced additional offspring
sexually. Parthogenesis, the production of offspring without fertilization by a
male, is rare in vertebrate species (1770).
Demian D. Chapman (US), Beth
Firchau (US), and Mahmood Shivji (US) confirmed the second case of a
"virgin birth" in a shark. DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a
female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science
Center contained no genetic material from a male (287).
Warren Booth (US), Charles F. Smith (US), Pamela H. Eskridge
(US), Shannon K. Hoss (US), Joseph R. Mendelson (US), and Gordon W. Schuett
(US) collected pregnant copperhead and cottonmouth females from fields where
males were present. When the snakes gave birth, the researchers documented the
physical and genetic characteristics of the litters. Tests showed that 1 of the
22 copperhead mothers had given birth parthenogenetically, as had 1 of the 37
cottonmouth snakes collected (182).
Peter Artedi; Petrus Arctaedius (SE) was one of the great
ichthyologists of all time. Artedi's work is the basis on which Linnaeus built
his section of the Systema Naturae
dealing with fishes. Nearly every species in the work of Linnaeus refers to the
Ichthyologia of Artedi, which is
outstanding in its precise detail, and very useful in determining the real
identity of Linnaean species. Artedi contributed to Linnaeus's refinement of
the principles of taxonomy. Furthermore, he recognized five additional orders
of fish: Malacopterygii, Acanthopterygii, Branchiostegi, Chondropterygii, and
Plagiuri. Artedi developed standard methods for making counts and measurements
of anatomical features that are modernly exploited (55).
A smallpox (red plague) epidemic struck Charleston, South
Carolina. Of the 441 people who were variolated, almost 4% died, while eighteen
percent of people who were naturally infected died. The results encouraged
advocates of variolation. Meanwhile, the same epidemic reportedly killed half
of the Cherokee Indian population in the vicinity (1050).
1740-1742
England and Scotland experience a smallpox (red plague) epidemic.
1740
The 1706 Yale College graduating class of three contained a
minister/physician who possessed exceptional powers of observation. In 1740,
Jonathan Dickinson, later appointed the first President of the College of New
Jersey (now Princeton University), wrote a medical work of the first order,
entitled, Observations on that terrible Disease
vulgarly called the Throat Distemper with advices as to the Method of Cure.
"This distemper,” Dickinson related, "began in these Parts, in
February, 1735. The long Continuance and universal Spread of it among us, has
given me abundant Opportunity to be acquainted with it in all its Forms."
"The first Assault was in a Family about ten Miles from me,
which proved fatal to eight of the Children in about a Fortnight. Being called
to visit the distressed Family, I found upon my arrival, one of the Children
newly dead, which gave me the Advantage of a Dissection, and thereby a better
Acquaintance with the Nature of the Disease, than I could otherwise have had."
"It frequently begins," he wrote of the throat
distemper, "with a slight Indisposition, much resembling an ordinary Cold,
with a listless Habit, a slow and scarce discernable Fever, some soreness of
the Throat and Tumefaction of the Tonsils: and perhaps a running of the Nose,
the Countenance pale, and the eyes dull and heavy. The patient is not confined,
nor any Danger apprehended for some Days, till the Fever gradually increases,
the whole Throat, and sometimes the Roof of the Mouth and Nostrils are covered
with a cankerous Crust … When the lungs are thus affected, the Patient is first
afflicted with a dry hollow Cough, which is quickly succeeded with an
extraordinary Hoarseness and total Loss of the Voice, with the most distressing
asthmatic Symptoms and difficulty of Breathing, under which the poor miserable
creature struggles, until released by the perfect Suffocation, or Stoppage of
the Breath. This last has been the fatal Symptom, under which the most have
sunk, that have died in these parts. And indeed, there have been few recovered
whose Lungs have been thus affected. All that I have seen get over this
dreadful Symptom … have by their perpetual Cough expectorated incredible
Quantities of a tough whitish slough from their Lungs, for a considerable Time
together. And on the other Hand, I have seen large Pieces of the Crust, several
inches Long and near an Inch broad, torn from the Lungs by the vehemence of the
Cough…" (461)
Emanuel Swedenborg (SE) deduced that different brain functions had
to be represented in different anatomical loci at the level of the cortex (1554).
Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (FR) presented cases of loss of speech (aphasia) associated with lesions to the
frontal area of the brain. This led to his localization of the speech center in
the anterior lobes of the brain (187; 189). Bouillaud
presented the classic account of aphasia
and was the first to suggest that injuries of the frontal lobe are a cause of
aphasia (188).
Marc Dax (FR), in 1836, read his unpublished paper at Montpellier
University detailing a series of clinical cases of aphasia demonstrating that disorders of speech were constantly
associated with lesions of the left hemisphere (394; 395). This gave
rise to the idea of domain-specificity, which has been central to psychology,
neuroscience, and neurology. Note:
Gustave, author of the 1865 reference, is the son of Marc Dax.
Bartholomeo Panizza (IT) traced the optic pathways in birds and
fishes to their terminations in the occipital lobes. He determined the crossing
of optic fibers at the chiasma and showed that a lesion on one side of the
brain affects the eye on the opposite side. Panizza became convinced that the
visual projection involved the thalamus and the posterior cortex (639; 1177; 1487).
Pierre Paul Broca (FR) was one of the first to demonstrate a
connection between specific ability and a specific cerebral point or area. He
showed that damage to the third convolution of the left frontal lobe is
associated with the loss of the ability to speak. Broca knew more about the
skull than anyone in his time. His opinion was important in convincing the
scientific community that the Neanderthal (Neandertal) skull was very old and
had belonged to a normal man. He wrote a classic 900-page monograph on
aneurysms, experimented with hypnotism on a series of surgical cases, and
helped introduce the microscope in the diagnosis of cancer. He is best known
for the concept of functional localization by cerebral convolution. He
concluded that the integrity of the left frontal convolution is responsible and
necessary for articular speech (122; 213-220).
David Ferrier (GB) is responsible for naming this region Broca’s convolution- the motor speech area (530).
Gustav Theodor Fritsch (DE) and Eduard Hitzig (DE) electrically
stimulated restricted regions of the frontal lobe of a dog and elicited
movement of the face or limb on the opposite side of the body. This is the
discovery of a specific motor area of the cerebral cortex (584).
Sanger Brown (US) and Edward Albert Schäfer (GB) provided
conclusive proof that the occipital lobe is the center for vision in animals (229).
Hermann Munk (DE) reported on the visual abnormalities after
occipital lobe ablation in dogs and monkeys (1110-1114). This was
compelling evidence for the visual center being in the occipital lobe of the
brain.
Edward Albert Schäfer (GB) performed extirpation and electrical
excitation experiments on the cortex of monkeys, which strongly supported the
idea that the occipital lobes of the brain play a vital role in vision (1388-1392).
Salomon Eberhard Henschen (SE) localized vision to the calcarine
fissure of the occipital lobe of the brain. He recognized that the left
hemisphere receives its input from the right visual field and the upper bank of
the calcarine fissure from the upper retina, hence the lower visual field (731; 732).
Tatsuji Inouye (JP) gave the earliest clear understanding of the
representation of the peripheral-central visual field representation. Using his
analysis of war casualties, he produced a map of the representation of the visual
fields on the cortex. The central fields were placed in the caudal part of the
striate cortex, with the peripheral visual fields represented anteriorly (836).
Gordon Morgan Holmes (IE-GB) and William Tindall Lister (GB)
produced a more accurate and detailed map of the visual fields on the striate
cortex (768; 769).
Samuel
Armstrong Talbot (US) discovered a second visual area in the cat, which is
mapped on the cortex like a mirror image of the primary representation (1567).
Margaret
Clare (US) and George Bishop (US) described another visual area that is located
on the lateral suprasylvian gyrus of cats (299).
John M.
Allman (US) and Jon H. Kaas (US), studying the owl monkey Aotus, and Semir Zeki (US), studying Old World macaques, identified
more extrastriate visual areas, each of which appeared to be specialized for
analyzing color, motion, or form (31; 1845).
Leslie G.
Ungerleider (US) and Mortimer Mishkin (US) determined that the visual areas of
the parietal lobe are principally concerned with spatial localization in the
visual field (1612).
Mitchell
Glickstein (GB) and Jack G. May (GB) determined that the visual areas of the
parietal lobe are also used during visual guidance of movement (614).
Kao-Liang
Chow (US) showed that lesions of the inferotemporal cortex cause a specific
impairment in the acquisition and retention of visual discrimination learning (295).
Mortimer
Mishkin (US) demonstrated that the essential input to the inferotemporal cortex
is by a series of corticocortical connections originating in the striate cortex (1071).
Charles-Marie de La Condamine (FR) accomplished the first
scientific exploration of the Amazon River by a European. During the four-month
trip he made ethnographic observations of the regions through which he passed (890). He
introduced the use of the Amazonian drug curare in Europe.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (DE), in c.
1802, was also one of the first Europeans to witness the production of the
arrow poison (curare). Natives of British Guayana using the plant Bejuco de
Mavacure made it. Von Humboldt transferred curare to Europe in 1803 (1731).
1741
Abraham Vater (AT) discovered what was later called Vater-Pacini bodies (Pacinian corpuscles) in the skin of the
fingers in 1717. He called them the papillae
nervae and they were drawn by his student, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, in 1741 (1681).
Filippo Pacini (IT) rediscovered and described a large – between 2
and 3 mm – ovoid, sensory end organ consisting of concentric layers or lamellae
of connective tissue surrounding a nerve ending. The most complicated of the
nerve endings, they are present in tendons, intermuscular septa, connective
tissue membranes, and sometimes internal organs. Pacini was the first to
describe the distribution of the corpuscles in the body, their microscopic
structure, and their nerve connections; he also interpreted the function of the
corpuscles as being concerned with the sensation of touch and deep pressure. The
work was done in 1831 (1170).
Friedrich Gustav Jacob Henle (DE) and Rudolf Albert von Kölliker
(CH) named them Pacinian corpuscles (726).
Abraham Trembley (CH) showed that the freshwater polyp (hydra) was
not a plant (as Leeuwenhoek had believed) since the tentacles could grab
objects and bring them to a primitive stomach. He also observed hydra to move
by a primitive foot if disturbed. After observing hydra to reproduce by
budding, he cut a hydra in half and got two new hydras. He next cut other hydra
in multiple pieces and got many new hydras. He even turned one inside out,
where it quickly readjusted to its new worldview and continued functioning
normally. He stained them by feeding them on various pigmented organisms and
was able to see extensions of the enteron. The hydra, Trembley believed, was
the missing link between animal and vegetable (932; 1596).
Antoine Ferrein (FR) started modern voice research with an
experiment, which showed that vocal folds are needed for voice production and
that the glottis is the focus of the research on the singing voice. Ferrein
made a remarkable finding: loudness of voice increased as the size of the
glottal chink was decreased and/or when subglottic pressure was increased (434; 972).
The term yellow fever began to be used in the 1740s for the
disease we now know by that name. Previously, doctors had referred to the
disease, and others that were similar to it, by a variety of names, such as pestilential
fever, malignant fever, putrid bilious fever, and the like.
The new term would be used along with some of the older names for many years.
The name comes from the yellowed appearance of the skin and eyes
that results from damage to the liver: toxic materials build up in the blood
and cause the tell-tale color to appear (1050).
1742
Anders Celsius (SE) presented the idea of the centigrade
thermometer; now called Celsius in his honor (284; 1149).
John Turberville Needham (GB) found nematode infestation in corn (1125).
Joseph Lieutaud (FR) described the anatomy of the urinary bladder,
its trigonum vesicae now referred to
as Lieutaud’s trigone. He described
the structure of each ductless gland in detail, especially the pituitary.
Lieutaud recognized the pituitary-portal system of veins running between the
hypothalamus and the hypophysis (pituitary gland). He described the peripheral
and central nervous systems drawing attention to the third ventricle in which a
deep midline fossa passes anteriorly toward the base of the pituitary stalk. He
emphasized that the stalk of the pituitary is solid and composed of grey matter
covered by pia mater with small vessels on the surface connecting with the
pituitary below. Lieutaud coined the term tige
pituitaire, i.e., pituitary stalk (940; 1855).
William Hunter (GB) gives a detailed description of cartilage and
the arrangement of synovial membranes. He notes the devastating effect of
purulent material on cartilage, and that repair of cartilage is a very
troublesome disease; that it admits to a cure with more difficulty than a
carious bone; and that, when destroyed, it is never recovered.
Much in this paper is likely based on the work of his associate James Douglas
(GB) (811).
Hunter
concluded that tendons are devoid of a nerve supply, which they are near their
insertion, but not at their origin.
James Douglas (GB) first described the synovium and deduced its
secretions were responsible for lubrication of the joints (1469).
Fielding Ould (IE), a Dublin man-midwife, was explicitly opposed
to manual detachment of the placenta. Sadly, his proposal went largely unheeded (1158).
Europe experiences a pandemic of influenza (grippe). ref
1743
Counsellor Barth (DE) made the dye Saxon blue or indigo
sulfonate or indigocarmine by sulfonation of natural indigo with strong sulfuric acid (565). This dye
is used medicinally in a test of kidney function, as a cloth stain, and as a
biological stain.
Thomas Schwencke (NL) was the first to use the word hematology (159). This has
also been claimed for others.
Jean-Louis Petit (FR) performed the first successful
cholecystotomy (removal of gallstones) after he had mistakenly opened the gall
bladder when attempting to drain what he thought was an abdominal wall abscess (1203).
Nicolas Andry De Bois-Regard (FR) coined the word orthopaedia (orthopedic) in its medical context, deriving it from the Greek
words straight and child (42).
Yellow
fever
struck New York again. A correlation with the dockyard areas was noticed, but
mosquitoes were still not recognized as the vector (875).
Plague hit the
island of Sicily, killing 40,000 inhabitants in the city of Messina (892).
1744
Herman C. Hornbostel (DE) reported that beeswax is not collected
but produced by the bees themselves (785).
Francois Huber (CH) determined that bees fed on a diet of sugar
could make beeswax (791). This was a
very controversial finding.
Louis Dreyling (DE) described the process by which bees make
beeswax (474; 475).
Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (FR), in 1755, detailed a case of hysterical
blindness which was cured with three applications of electric shock (689).
Ugo Cerletti (IT) and Lucino Bini (IT), in 1938, performed the
initial clinical trial of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The patient was a
40-year-old schizophrenic (285).
Georg Ernst Stahl (DE) was the first to report the cardioactive
properties of chinchona, when he observed that patients with an excessive
intake of the bark developed edema due to reduced cardiac performance (1505).
Jean-Baptiste de Sénac (FR) successfully treated heart palpitations
with chinchona bark (440).
1745-1799
Diphtheria (Boulogne
sore throat) spreads from Spain through Europe to England and America.
1745
Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari (IT) used the term gluten (L. gluten, glue)
to name the gelatinous material remaining when bread dough was washed free of
starch. He noted that this material was similar in quality to some animal
materials and quickly underwent putrefaction (102; 104).
The first recorded epidemic of infectious
hepatitis occurred in Minorca, Spain (1854).
Edward Alfred Cockayne (GB), in 1912, described epidemic catarrhal jaundice and
concluded that an infectious agent causes it and related diseases. He
suggested, infective hepatitis would
be a more appropriate name for the disease (304).
Thomas Cadwalader (US) described a case of what would later be
called osteomalacia (261). This
vitamin D deficiency is called osteomalacia
in adults and rickets in children.
Louis Arthur Milkman (US) would later refine the description of osteomalacia (1068).
Giovanni Maria Lancisi (IT) presented over 60 studies of cardiac dilatation, with complete
clinical histories, analyses of the relation of symptoms to the findings upon
examination, and detailed descriptions of the autopsies (900).
Jacques Henri Daviel (FR) introduced modern cataract
surgery, in which the cataract is extracted from the eye by removal of
the lens through the cornea. The operation went well but the eye was lost to
infection (387). He also
removed a lachrymal fistula through the nasal passage.
1746
August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof (DE) clearly shows parasitoids in
his four volumes on paintings of insects and their larval stages (1741). He
produced many beautiful paintings of insects, amphibians, reptiles, and
invertebrates, which are collected into books. Roesel's bush-cricket Metrioptera
roeseli was so named in his honor.
Richard Brocklesby (GB) was able to show, in experiments on cats,
that curare allows the heart to beat up to two hours following the apparent
death of the animal (222).
Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (IT), speaking of his
experiments with curare noted, "The action of the substance is such that
it destroyed the irritability of the voluntary muscles but not that of the
heart." (561)
Benjamin Collins Brodie (GB) rediscovered Brocklesby’s findings,
yet went a step further when he used artificial ventilation of the lungs he
kept a curare treated cat alive (223; 224).
Benjamin Collins Brodie (GB) and Sewell (GB), at the Royal
Veterinary College in 1814, injected a donkey with curare, which had been
brought to England by Charles Waterton (GB). Within 10 minutes the donkey
appeared dead. They cut a small hole in the animal’s throat and inserted a
bellows and pumped to inflate the lungs for two hours until the effects of
curare had worn off. The donkey survived, thus demonstrating that the heart
continues to beat in an animal paralyzed by curare. The Amazonian native name
for curare is uirary which in their languages meant uira, a bird,
and ary, to kill. The vine, Strychnos toxifera, is the source of curare (500). Note: There is dispute as to who
performed this experiment.
John Andree (GB) wrote the first monograph on epilepsy (40).
1747
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (DE) announced to the Royal Academy of
Sciences in Berlin his discovery of sugar
in beets and a method using alcohol to
extract it (1013).
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (FR) proposed the theory that
molecules from all parts of the body are gathered into the gonads and
speculated on the causes of evolution. He challenged the preformation theory of
genetics advocated by Jan Swammerdam (NL), arguing that it could not account
for the existence of hybrids or congenital monsters.
He argued instead that the embryo goes through several distinct developmental
stages, rather than simply increasing in size over time, i.e., epigenesis (429).
Charles Robert Darwin (GB) would later refer to the gathering of
gemmules from throughout the body into the germ cells. He called this the theory of pangenesis (382).
Vincenzo Menghini (IT) reported that erythrocytes contain iron
whereas plasma does not (1051).
Albrecht von Haller (CH) advocated the myogenic theory of the heartbeat, emphasized that the bile played a
role in the digestion of fat, that pressure on the brain may cause coma, and
demonstrated that irritability is a specific property of all muscular tissues
and that sensitivity is the exclusive property of nervous tissue. This became
known as the doctrine of irritability
for which he was later called the father
of modern nerve physiology. Von Haller also confirmed that the pleural
space is airless, and when opened, caused the collapse of the lungs and their
withdrawal from the chest cage (1718; 1720; 1721). See, Glisson, 1672 on irritability.
Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann (DE) demonstrated that the heartbeat of
the frog is initiated within the heart, i.e., myogenic. He also established
that the heart muscle acts as a syncytium and that injured myocardium heals
over (509).
A ship with yellow fever on-board was quarantined off-shore
in the harbor of Philadelphia, PA (1050).
1748
Benoît de Maillet (FR) argued that the earth was originally
covered in water. Powerful currents in the water formed mountains and as the
waters receded mountains eroded and laid down debris on the seabed to form
sedimentary rocks. He concluded that vast tracts of time elapsed before human
civilization appeared and that life must have begun in the oceans. Man existed
prior to Adam (426). First
published in 1748 but likely written circa 1700.
Jean Antoine Nollet (FR) discovered and explained osmotic pressure (1144).
John Turberville Needham (GB) and other vitalists complained that
experiments on spontaneous generation using heated infusions, flasks, and air
destroyed the vital force which is necessary to initiate life spontaneously (1126).
John Hill (GB) in volume 3 of his A General Natural History coined the name paramecium (752).
Johann Friedrich Meckel (called the Elder) (DE) presented his
dissertation containing the discovery of the sphenomaxillary ganglion (Meckel's
ganglion) and of the recess in the dura that lodges Gasser's ganglion (Meckel's
cave) (1042).
Jacques
Daviel (FR), in 1748, presented as a treatment for cataracts the technique of
removing the inner contents of the lens and leaving the posterior lens capsule
and the attached zonules that held it in place (386).
1749-1764
In Sweden, between 1749-1764, more than a quarter of a million
children died, 43,000 from whooping cough and 144,194 from smallpox (red
plague) (1478).
1749
Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (FR) suggested that living
organisms are composed of molécules
organiques. He wrote Histoire
Naturelle in which he asserted that species were mutable; drew attention to
vestigial organs and wrestled with the similarities of humans and apes and even
talked about common ancestry of Man and apes (310; 311).
Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (FR) saw similarities
between some regions of the earth which led him to believe that at one point
continents were connected and then water separated them and caused differences
in species. He argued that varying geographical regions would have different
forms of life (310).
Martino Ghisi (IT) gave the first description of diphtheria (Boulogne sore throat) to be
complete and valid both clinically and anatomicopathologically. He clearly
showed that bronchial and pulmonary edema caused by diphtheria strained the right side of the heart (610).
Jean-Baptiste de Sénac (FR) discussed the relation between cardiac
size and its "force," attributing cardiac hypertrophy to valvular
disease (440).
P.C. Antoine Louis (FR) was one of the earliest neurosurgeons on
record. He studied and reported on brain tumors, usually meningiomas, and used
his skill as a well-trained neurologist to localize the tumor (962). He was
also interested in contrecoup (injury caused by a blow on the opposite side, as
the skull) injuries and was instrumental in advising other neurosurgeons to
discontinue bloodletting for treatment of these injuries (486).
1750
Griffith Hughes (GB) tells about the use of the fruit from the
papaya or pawpaw tree, Caryca papaya,
to tenderize meat (now known to contain the proteolytic enzyme papain). He was the first to use the
phrase yellow fever during his
description of an outbreak in Barbados (795).
1751
Jean de St. Cosme Baseilhac; Frère Côme (FR) invented the
lithotome-caché for entering the urinary bladder. It possessed a cutting blade
that disappeared into a groove on the rod-shaped instrument (92).
London
recorded a record 3,538 smallpox (red plague) deaths for the year (1050).
1752
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (FR) studied the solvent power
of gastric juice in birds, dogs, and sheep. He established that gastric juice
is salty and sour to the taste, acidic, and capable of dissolving meat and
bones. He noted that gastric digestion is antagonistic to putrefactive change (438).
John Pringle (GB) in a paper entitled, Experiments and Observations upon Septic and Aseptic Substance,
published as an appendix to his book, Observations
on the Diseases of the Army, in which he laid down the true principles of
military sanitation, emphasized the importance of antisepsis in medicine, and
described the effect of various chemicals in halting putrefaction. He is
credited with coining the word antiseptic (1257). Serving
with the British forces during the War of the Austrian Succession, he suggested
in 1743 that military hospitals on both sides should be regarded as
sanctuaries; this concept eventually led to the establishment of the Red Cross
organization in 1864. See, Henri
Dunant, 1861.
William Smellie (GB) disproved the widely held idea that a baby stands on its feet in the mother’s womb,
tumbling over on its head a month or two before birth (1472). Note:
He also helped develop the delivery forceps which by the late eighteenth
century were a well-known standard obstetrical instrument
Sauveur Francois Morand (FR) was the first to perform surgical
drainage of a brain abscess when he successfully operated for a temporosphenoidal
abscess. The patient, a monk, had otorrhea followed by a mastoid abscess,
which Morand drained (1086).
London experiences many cases of smallpox (red plague).
1753
Carl Linné; Carl von Linné; Carolus Linnaeus (SE) was the first to
begin the systematic nomenclature of most of the algae, placing them with the
pteridophytes (ferns, horsetails, and club-mosses), mosses, and fungi in a
single class, the Cryptogamia (948).
Samuel Sharp (GB) introduced the concept of intracapsular cataract
surgery by using pressure with his thumb to remove the entire lens intact
through an incision (1462).
1754
Charles Bonnet (CH) noted that submerged, illuminated leaves
produce bubbles. He did not know the gas to be oxygen (178).
William Hunter GB), in 1754, described retroversion of the
human uterus which he later published (818).
Horace Walpole (GB), in a letter of January 28, 1754, coined the
word serendipity based on his reading of the 1722 edition of a fairy tale, The Travels and Adverntures of Three Princes
of Serendip (297). Serendip
has also been called Ceylon or Sri Lanka. The princes had the faculty of making
unexpected happy discoveries by accident. Serendipity is an important aspect of
the sciences.
Diphtheria (Boulogne
sore throat) and typhoid fever are
epidemic in New England. ref
c.
1755
Nicolas Desmarest (FR) was an amateur geologist and contemporary
of James Hutton. He was the first to maintain that the streams that ran through
them had formed valleys. He discovered that basalt is volcanic in origin and
helped popularize the ideas of Jean-Etienne Guettard (FR) who maintained that
many rocks were volcanic in origin. At this time the most popular idea was that
all rocks were sedimentary (459).
Hilaire Marie Rouelle (FR), the cadet, was the first to suggest
the chemical dissection of vegetable and animal substances by applying
successively various organic solvents to the sample, and in order of the
poorest solvent first, the next poorest solvent second, etc., to obtain
different constituents from the complex mixture in the plant (1581).
1755
August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof (AT) produced
an early drawing of an organism resembling Amoeba. He named it der
kleine Proteus (the little Proteus"), after Proteus, the
shape-shifting sea-god of Greek Mythology (1741). Note: Carlous Linnaeus
(SE) later named it Chaos chaos.
Otto Müller (DK) described and illustrated a
species he called Proteus diffluens, which was likely the organism known
today as Amoeba proteus (844). Note: Pseudopodia are
formed by the coordinated action of microfilaments within the cellular cytoplasm
pushing out the plasma membrane which surrounds the cell (23).
Mathieu Tillet (FR) demonstrated that “bunt” of
wheat was contagious and that it can be partly prevented by seed treatment (1586).
Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (IT) and Giovanni
Targioni-Tozzetti (IT) independently concluded that cereal rust diseases are
caused by microscopic plants (fungi) (564; 1569; 1570).
Isaac-Bénédict Prévost (FR) provided proof that fungi cause rust,
bunt, smut, and other diseases of wheat and of oats and found that soaking the
seeds in copper sulfate could control the disease (1244; 1245).
1756
Jean-Etienne Guettard (FR) showed by dissection that naked snails
belong to the same group as shelled ones (650).
Philipp Pfaff (DE) gave the first description of a
direct capping over of the vital pulp of teeth with a curved piece of gold. He
also described how to use a wax impression of teeth to manufacture dentures (1209).
Felix Étienne Pierre Mesnil (FR) together with Charles Louis
Alphonse Laveran (FR), in 1903, showed that the parasite responsible for the visceral
leishmaniasis (or kala-azar, a fever in India), first described by
William Boog Leishman (GB) and Charles Donovan (IE), was a protozoan new to
science, different from Trypanosoma, the agent of the sleeping sickness,
and from Plasmodium, the agent of paludism (malaria). They
temporarily named it Piroplasma donovani and Ronald Ross (GB) proposed
the Leishmania genus name for it (911).
1757
Benjamin Franklin (US) was the first to call attention to the
cooling effect of evaporation of liquids. He described the sudden fall in
temperature when the mercury in a thermometer was moistened with alcohol and
the fluid allowed to evaporate. This discovery showed that heat was required to
evaporate liquids, and that in the process of evaporation of liquids heat is
absorbed (578).
John Hill (GB) noted the effects of light on plant movement (753).
Leopoldo Marc’ Antonio Caldani (IT) noted that when a Leyden jar
was discharged in the direction of a mounted and dissected frog's leg with the
nerve attached it caused the leg to twitch (262).
John Huxham (GB) observed paralysis of the soft palate, which
attends diphtheria (Boulogne sore throat) (829).
Francis Home (GB) transmitted measles from infected
patients to healthy individuals via blood thus demonstrating that an infectious
agent caused measles. He attempted to vaccinate against measles and was likely
the first to do so (507).
Albrecht von Haller (CH) wrote the first comprehensive treatise on
human physiology: Elementa Physiologiae
Corporis Humani (1720).
William Hunter (GB) distinguished the true from the false
aneurysm. For him true aneurysms, formed by dilatation of the whole arterial
wall, really existed. He termed a localized tear in the wall of a fusiform
aneurysm as a mixed aneurysm (812). See, Galen c. 175.
William Hunter (GB) was the first to describe arterio-venous
aneurysm (813).
Carl Linné; Carl von Linné; Carolus Linnaeus (SE) coined the genus
Homo to refer to varieties of living mankind (1738).
1758-1762
Dysentery (bloody
flux) is epidemic in England. ref
c. 1758
Francois Paul Lyon Poulletier de la Salle (FR), c.1758, was the
first to find what would later be named cholesterol. He isolated it from
gallstones (982).
Michel E. Chevreul (FR), in 1815, named the non-saponifiable lipid
from gall stones cholesterine (solid bile in Greek: chole for
bile and stereos for solid). ref
Friedrich Reinitzer (AT) determined the exact molecular formula of
cholesterol (1302).
Otto Paul Hermann Diels (DE), in 1902, ignited a
volley of interest into the determination of cholesterol molecular structure by
identifying dicarboxylic acid as the end-product from reaction of cholesterol
with NaOBr; and cholestenone derived from catalytic dehydration of cholesterol.
ref
Konrad Bloch (US), Nancy L.R. Bucher (DE), Peter Overpath (DE), Feodor
Felix Konrad Lynen (DE), John W. Cornforth (GB), and George Popjaák (GB) worked-out
most of the crucial steps in the complex cholesterol synthesis pathway,
involving 30 enzymatic reactions (160; 250; 324; 975; 1232). See,
Altschul, 1955.
1758
Georg Christian Reichel (DE) and Karl Christian Wagner (DE) reported
using hematoxylin (logwood) without a mordant to stain
vessels in plant tissues prior to microscopic observation (202; 1289; 1290).
Carl Linné; Carl von Linné; Carolus Linnaeus (SE) authored the
10th edition of his Systema Naturae
which mentions 86 mammals. It can be considered the beginning of mammalogy as
well as the beginning of the modern binary system of nomenclature (947). Here is
recorded the first description of the parasitic nematode Enterobius vermicularis (Oxyuris
vermicularis, pinworm, threadworm) as the causative agent of enterobiasis.
Influenza (grippe) is
epidemic in Scotland (Whytt). ref
1759
Kaspar Friedrich Wolff; Caspar Frederick Wolff (DE-RU) wrote Theoria Generationis in which he
proposed an epigenetic theory of
embryonic development opposing preformationism and laying the basis for modern
embryology. The epigenetic theory
introduced the idea that initially unspecialized cells later differentiate to
produce the separate organs and systems of the plant and animal body. Wolff
applied the microscope to the study of animal embryology and remarked,
"The particles which constitute all animal organs in their earliest
inception are little globules, which may be distinguished under a
microscope." Several anatomical terms bear his name, the Wolffian body, an embryonic kidney, and
the Wolffian duct (ureter primordalis) (1826; 1827). See, William Harvey, 1651.
Robert Bakewell (GB), Charles Collings (GB), Robert Collings (GB),
Thomas Bates (GB), and others improved British livestock breeds through a
thirty-year program of selection and inbreeding.
Bakewell demonstrated with his Leicester sheep and his long-horned
cattle that animals of close relationship could be mated, and if rigid culling
was practiced, desirable characteristics could thereby be fixed much more
rapidly than by mating unrelated animals (4; 1470).
Johann
George Leopoldt (DE) recorded one of the earliest clinical descriptions of scrapie, "Some sheep also suffer
from scrapie, which can be identified
by the fact that affected animals lie down, bite at their feet and legs, rub
their backs against posts, fail to thrive, stop feeding and finally become
lame. They drag themselves along, gradually become emaciated and die. Scrapie is incurable. The best solution,
therefore, is for a shepherd who notices that one of his animals is suffering
from scrapie, to dispose of it
quickly and slaughter it away from the manorial lands, for consumption by the
servants of the nobleman. A shepherd must isolate such an animal from healthy
stock immediately because it is infectious and can cause serious harm to the
flock" (933). Scrapie is a spongiform encephalopathy
known to occur primarily among sheep.
Edward Hyde (GB) described prostatism
as follows: “He was very often, both in the Day and the Night, forced to make
Water, seldom in any Quantity, because he could not retain it long enough” (832).
John Bard (US), in 1759, reported three cases of laparotomy for
extra-uterine pregnancy (78).
William Baynham (US) performed two successful operations for
extra-uterine pregnancy (101).
Jean-Etienne
Guettard (FR) wrote the earliest essentially paleoecologic paper on record (651).
Giovanni Arduino (IT), in a letter of 30 March 1759 to his friend
Antonio Vallisnieri, Jr.; Antonio Vallisneri, Jr. (IT), divided
the history of the Earth into four ordini (units): Primitive (Primary), Secondary, Tertiary and Volcanic, or
Quaternary comprising
the Atesine Alps, the Alpine foothills, the sub-Alpine hills and the Po plain,
respectively (53).
Giovanni Battista Brocchi (IT) reintroduced Tertiary as an appropriate name for the geological formation older
than the Alluvial but younger than
the Chalk (221).
Jean
Desnoyers (FR), in 1829, popularized the term Quaternary (Quaternaire or Tertiaire récent) previously proposed by
Arduino. Desnoyers applied it to marine sediments in the Seine Basin (460).
Charles Lyell (GB), in 1833, used Tertiary as a name for a geological period (974).
At the suggestion of his friend Benjamin Franklin (US), William
Heberden (GB) wrote a pamphlet called "Some Account of the Success of
Inoculation for the Small-Pox in England and America: Together with Plain
Instructions By which any Person may be enabled to perform the Operation and
conduct the Patient through the Distemper." In it he encouraged parents to
inoculate their children against smallpox (red plague), detailing how they
could do so themselves. Franklin added an introduction documenting the success
of the process in Boston, and distributed the pamphlets in the American
colonies for free (1050).
1760
Martin Frobenius Ledermüller (DE) suggested the name Infusoria for the microorganisms common
to infusions (924).
Peter Simon Pallas (DE) was the first to describe the human
infection, fascioliasis, caused by
the liver fluke Fasciola hepatica. He
observed worms in the hepatic ducts of a female patient during an autopsy in
Berlin, recalling it in a later publication (1172).
Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (DE) while dissecting some snails from a
fresh-water pond noticed that cercariae crept out of sacs in the viscera of the
snails and concluded that they were probably generated within them. He and his
editor speculated that there might well be a connection between cercariae and
flukes (175).
Filippo de Filippi (IT) named these forms Redia in honor of Francesco Redi (400).
Friedrich Heinrich Christian Creplin (DE) showed that the eggs of Fasciola hepatica hatched ciliated larva
(miracidia) (341).
Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold (DE) theorized that the adult
trematode worms produce eggs from which the larvae hatch, swim around to find
an appropriate snail, penetrate the tissues of the new host, then die releasing
cercariae-sacs (redia, rediae pl.) (1742; 1744).
Antoine Charles de Lorry (FR) reported that animals lost their
sense of equilibrium following surgical removal of the cerebellum (424).
Antoine Charles de Lorry (FR) removed the cerebrum and the
cerebellum of dogs and found that they maintained a normal pulse and
respiration for a few minutes. He took this to mean that the medulla is the
site controlling these vital functions (425).
César Julien Jean Legallois; César Julien Jean Le Gallois (FR), in
1812, was able to remove all
the brain rostral to the medulla oblongata along with the cerebellum in rabbits
and noted that inspiratory movements
persisted until the area of the medulla at the level of the eighth pair of
cranial nerves was removed. At this point all respiratory movement ceased. He
thus localized the respiratory center in a specific portion of the medulla
oblongata and not in the spinal cord as had previously been believed (925).
This was the first time that an area of brain substance within a
major subdivision of the brain had been accurately defined by experiment to
have a specific function.
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (FR) referred to the medulla oblongata
as the noeud vital. He refined the
location of the respiratory center to a very small portion of the medulla
oblongata adjacent to the eighth pair of cranial nerves (547-549).
1761
Domenico Felice Antonio Cotugno (IT) was the first to describe the
fine anatomy of the inner ear. He identified the aqueduct of the inner ear (Cotunnius’ aquaduct) and the columns in
the osseous spinal lamina of the cochlea (Cotunnius’
columns) (330).
Réne-Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (FR) described his experiments
on digestion in birds of prey. These articles probably contain the very first
systematic observations on what we now call an enzyme (436).
William Hunter (GB) pointed out the distinction between the
adipose tissue and the common reticular or cellular membrane. “Wherever there
is fat in the human body I apprehend that there is a particular organization,
or glandular apparatus, superadded to the reticular membrane, consisting of
vesicles or bags, for lodging the animal oil, as well as vessels fitted for
secretion; so that I would compare the marrow in the bones to the glandular or
follicular parts of the fat or adipose membrane, and the network of bony fibers
and laminae, which supports the marrow to the reticular membrane which is mixed
with and supports the adeps.”
He notes that pus of all kinds is preceded by inflammation (814).
Jean
Blancou (FR) noted that In Europe, the first report of canine distemper virus
occurred in Spain in 1761 (155). Edward Jenner (GB) described
the disease in 1809, and French veterinarian Henri Carré determined that the
disease was caused by a virus in 1905 (44; 843).
Robert A. Lamb (US),
Griffith D. Parks (US), Marlen Martinez-Gutierrez (CO) and Julian Ruiz-Saenz
(CO) reported
that orbilliviruses are distinguished for causing moderate-to-severe
respiratory, gastrointestinal, immunosuppression, and/or neurological diseases
in a wide range of hosts, including humans (measles virus), carnivores (canine
morbillivirus formerly canine distemper virus), cattle (rinderpest virus),
dolphins and porpoises, and other wildlife-endangered species (896; 1021).
Johannes Georg Roederer (DE) described the worm that causes
whipworm infection or trichuriasis.
He named it Trichuris meaning
hair like tail (1330). Note: Rodents are the natural host of
this worm.
Leopold Joseph Auenbrugger (AT) is usually credited with being the
first to promote precussion as a diagnostic procedure in medicine. Ahead of his
time, Auenbrugger's work was criticized and ignored forcing him to retreat to
private practice and other interests (61; 62). “I here
present the Reader with a new sign I have discovered for detecting diseases of
the chest. This consists in the Percussion of the human thorax, whereby,
according to the character of the particular sounds thence elicited, an opinion
is formed of the internal state of that cavity.” Thus, percussion of the chest
could, in a rough way, determine the heart size and the presence of hydrothorax (62).
Giovanni Battista Morgagni;
Giambattista Morgagni (IT), professor at Padua, was one of the first to make
exhaustive studies of the structure of diseased tissue both during life and
postmortem. He pioneered the investigation of disease by tracing its symptoms
back to the organ(s) affected then demonstrating the disease in the organ concerned.
In his great book, De Sedibus et Causis
Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis, Libri Quinque (The Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy, in Five Books),
his very considerable pathological findings are arranged and indexed with symptoms
listed, treatment indicated, relationship between clinical picture and autopsy
findings noted, and a history of each disease included. He described, among
other things, the first clear account of: acute liver failure, the Adams-Stokes syndrome, regional ileitis, coarctation of the aorta, the tetralogy
of Fallot, coronary sclerosis, pulmonary stenosis, aortic insufficiency, mitral
stenosis, syphilitic aneurysms, acute yellow atrophy of the liver, pneumonia with consolidation of the lungs,
meningitis due to acute otitis, hyperostosis frontalis, cancer of the stomach, gastric ulcer, gall stones, endocarditis
(linking it to infection), and for the first time cerebral gummata and heart
block. He would not autopsy people who died of tuberculosis, smallpox (red plague), or rabies because he believed in contagion. Morgagni introduced and
insisted that the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease must be based
on an exact understanding of the pathologic changes in the anatomic structures (1091; 1092). Morgagni
is rightly considered one of the founders of pathologic anatomy.
Rudolph Ludwig Karl Virchow the great German pathologist said,
“With him [Morgagni] begins modern medicine” (1698).
John Hill (GB) noted that persons taking snuff through the nose
were especially susceptible to nasal cancer (754).
1761-1762
Influenza (grippe) is
pandemic (350).
1762
Jacob Christian Gottlieb von Schäffer (DE) published Fungorum qui in Bavaria et Palatinatu Circa
Ratisbonam Nascuntur Icones Nativis Coloribus Expressae, one of the first
books on the fungi (1393).
Marcus Anton Plenciz; Marcus Anton Plencic (Yugoslavian) wrote Opera Medico-Physica… in which he
formulated the view that infectious diseases are caused by a living agent which
is often microscopic (1223).
Pierre Lyonet (NL) and Maurice Herold (DE) were the first to note
the presence of insect tissues, which would come to be known as imaginal disc material. They did not
appreciate its role in insect metamorphosis (736; 976).
John Hunter (GB) named the gubernaculum
testis because it connects the testis with the scrotum, and directs its
course in its descent (796).
Johann Ulric Bilguer (AT/HU) may have been the first to resect the
wrist (599).
Influenza (grippe) is
epidemic in Europe. ref
1763
Edmund Stone (GB) presented the first scientific study of willow
bark extract to the Royal Society in London. He had tested it on 50 feverish
patients (1532).
A French chemist isolated salicin
(named for the plant genus Salix in which it is common, especially Salix alba) from queen-of-the-meadow Spiraea ulmaria. Decoctions of willow
had for centuries been used for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, neuralgia, toothache, earache, and
other pains. In 1838, salicylic acid (spirsäure) was made directly from
salicin. While salicylic acid has many medical uses in treatment of such things
as wart removal, fungal infections of the skin, hair, and nails neither it nor
salicin could be taken internally for pain.
Charles Frédéric Gerhardt (FR) added acetyl
chloride to a sodium salicylate mixture to yield acetylsalicylic acid which can
be taken internally (608).
Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe (DE) discovered a reaction process by
which he could synthesize salicylic acid. The process was named the Kolbe
synthesis or the Kolbe-Schmitt reaction. This soon led to the cheap production
of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) (876; 1422).
In 1897, in Germany, Felix Hoffmann (DE) synthesized
acetylsalicylic acid from salicylic acid. His employer, Farbenfabriken vormals
Friedrich Bayer & Co., named it aspirin.
The prefix ‘a-’ stands for the acetyl group… The root, ‘spir,’ stands for
spirsäure (salicylic acid) distilled from the flowers of the
queen-of-the-meadow (Spiraea ulmaria).
Salicylic acid was also derived from willow bark and oil of wintergreen.
Aspirin became one of the most widely used drugs in history. An application for
a German patent was rejected, because in fact acetylsalicylic acid was not a new substance, having been first
synthesized in 1853 by Gerhardt (FR), in impure form, and later in crystalline form
by Carl Johann Kraut (DE). Note:
Arthur Eichengrün (DE) first claimed to have invented aspirin in a 1944 letter
from Theresienstadt concentration camp, addressed to IG Farben (of which Bayer
was a part), where he cited his many contributions to the company (which was highly
influential in the concentration camps), including the invention of aspirin, as
reasons for why he should be released.
Michel Adanson (FR) proposed the first natural classification of
flowering plants. He advocated an empirical approach to taxonomy based on
shared characters rather than evolutionary relationships. In his Familles des Plantes he described taxa
more or less equivalent to modern orders and families (17). Adansonia,
the Baobab tree genus, is named in his honor. He introduced the use of the term
family to designate closely related
genera.
John Hunter (GB) prepared the first catalog of his museum
specimens in 1763. “The specimens were arranged in three main groups, viz., to
demonstrate structures developed for the survival of the individual, those for
the preservation of the race, and a third group demonstrating a great variety
of pathological conditions” (1269).
John Morgan (US) studied medicine in Paris, Italy, and Edinburgh
graduating from the medical school of the University of Edinburgh with a Doctor
of Medicine degree. His doctor’s thesis, De
Puopoiesi [Concerning the Formation of Pus], maintained that pus was
produced from the blood vessels (994).
Francois Boissier de Sauvages (FR), Rudolph Augustin Vogel (DE),
and William Cullen (GB), in the 18th century, reintroduced
into medicine the term paranoia to
indicate morbus mentis in general (349; 1379; 1700; 1701).
Note: The
origin of the term, "paranoia", was in the Greek word
"par-a-noy'a", derived from the verb "para-noeo", with the
literal meaning of "derangement", or "departure from the normal"
("para") in "thinking" ("noeo").
Smallpox (red
plague) hit Boston once again, with about 170 deaths. This epidemic was less
serious than previous ones, probably because of inoculation (875).
1764
William Hunter (GB) reported that he and his brother John
discovered, by the injection of mercury, that the vas deferens, epididymis, and
the tubuli within the testes are connected (815; 816).
Domenico Felice Antonio Cotugno (IT), in 1764, first demonstrated
in a patient with acute dropsy that the urine, when heated, appeared to
coagulate to produce a material like egg white (332; 1407).
William Cruickshank (GB) showed that protein in urine could be
demonstrated by adding concentrated nitric acid.
John Adams, 2nd President of the United States, received
variolation (16).
1765
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT) was one of the first to dispute the
doctrine of spontaneous generation (1488).
Anton Balthasar Raymund Hirsch (AT) described the large flattened
sensory ganglion of the trigeminal nerve, which he named the Gasserian
ganglion. It is an intercranial structure, which is located, just proximal and
lateral to the foramen ovale and has
three branches: the ophthalmic, maxillary and mandibular (759). Note: Hirsch named it to honor Johann
Laurentius Gasser (AT).
The medical school established at the College of Philadelphia, in
Pennsylvania, was the first founded in the United States of America. John
Morgan (US), who had received extensive medical training abroad, was the
driving force for the creation of this medical school. The college trustees
appointed him professor of the theory and practice of physic, the first medical
professorship in North America. William Shippen served as the first professor
of anatomy, surgery and midwifery. In 1768, the degree of M.B. was conferred on
eight graduates (994). It is now
the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
Francis Home (GB) described the false membrane of diphtheria (croup) at autopsy, "When
the trachea was opened the whole internal surface was covered with a membrane
for three inches downward from the glottis. This membrane was complete all
around, did not adhere to the trachea, and came off in the shape of a hollow
tube. The natural coats of the trachea seemed entire and not ulcerated. The substance
of the lungs was quite sound; but the vesicles of the left lobe were filled
with yellow, thick pus, which sunk in water. The new-formed membrane had some
degree of tenacity, and when steeped in milk-warm water for two days did not
dissolve but preserved some degree of cohesion. No fibers could be observed in
it." (778)
1766
Henry Cavendish (GB) described inflammable
air, produced by the action of acids on metals and fixed air (carbon dioxide) produced during yeast fermentation and
absorbed by sope leys (aqueous sodium
hydroxide). Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) would name this inflammable air
hydrogen from the Greek words hydro
and genes meaning water and
generator. Cavendish observed that when inflammable
air was mixed with air an explosive mixture was formed. After exploding
such a mixture in a flask, he noted that the walls were covered with moisture;
and drew the correct conclusion that this water was formed by the union of fire air (oxygen) with inflammable air (hydrogen) (279; 280). Note: Hydrogen makes up two of the three
atoms in water and water is essential to life. Hydrogen is present in all
organic compounds. A form of water in which both hydrogen atoms are replaced by
deuterium (2H, or D) is called "heavy water" (D2O) and is toxic to
mammals. Some bacteria are known to metabolize molecular hydrogen (H2).
Michael Christoph Hanov (PL) wrote Philosophiae Naturalis Sive Physicae Dogmaticae: Geologia, Biologia,
Phytologia Generalis et Dendrologia. This book contains the first use of
the word "biology" in its modern sense
(686).
Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (DE) and Jean Baptiste Pierre
Antoine de Monet Chevalier de Lamarck (FR) helped popularize the term after its
introduction (419; 1597).
Albrecht von Haller (CH) suggested that the thyroid, the thymus
and spleen were glands without ducts, pouring special substances into the
circulation .
Johan Ernst Gunnerus (NO) described Calanus finmarchicus, a marine planktonic copepod that is the
predominant herbivore in Atlantic water south of the Polar Front (658; 659). It is the
principle food of herring and the rorqual whale.
Peter Simon Pallas (DE) was the first to depict the relationships
between animals in the form of a family tree (1174).
John Bartram (GB-US) was referred to by Linnaeus as "the
greatest natural botanist in the world." He was surely the best in North
America during this time (90). John was
the father of William Bartram (US) the first significant American-born
naturalist. William wrote Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia,
East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, etc. in the late 1780s. It was
considered at the time one of the foremost books on American natural history.
Many of Bartram's accounts of historical sites were the earliest records,
including the Georgia mound site of Ocmulgee. In addition to its contributions
to scientific knowledge, Travels is noted for its original descriptions
of the American countryside (91).
1767
Peter Simon Pallas (DE) may be the first naturalist who observed
and described the regenerative power of a freshwater planarian species (1175).
John Graham Dalyell (GB) performed experiments demonstrating
planarian regeneration (370).
The Medical Faculty of King’s College, New York was establishment
in1767. It was suspended 1776, re-organized 1784, then re-established in 1807
as the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York, now the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. It is the second
oldest medical school in the U.S.A.
Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (IT) supported Albrecht von
Haller’s concept of contractility as a property of muscle, noting that
contraction only follows a stimulus. He clearly observed and described the
physiological state in the heart later known as the refractory period and noted
that fatigue is a phenomenon occurring within the muscle fiber itself. He
observed that stretching and compressing muscle causes it to lose
contractility. He gives the first accurate description of the nerve fiber. His
analogies between the spark-gunpowder and stimulus-contraction relationships
anticipated the all or none law (518; 559; 560; 1012).
John Harvie (GB) advocated external expression of the placenta
instead of traction of the cord, anticipating Carl Siegmund Franz Credé’s (DE)
method by almost a century (702).
Robert Whytt (GB) was the first to describe tuberculous meningitis, distinguishing definite stages during the
disease (1803).
Frédéric Rilliet (FR) and Antoine Charles Ernest de Barthez (FR)
differentiated simple meningitis from
the tuberculous form. They proved that simple
meningitis develops invariably upon the convexity of the brain, while tuberculous meningitis is almost always
localized at the base (1318).
John Huxham (GB) was the first use the term influenza (grippe) in English. He was discussing the vernal catarrh
of 1743 (830).
Europe experiences an influenza
(grippe) pandemic. ref
1768
James Cook (GB) set sail on the H.M.S. Endeavour bound
for the South Pacific. Accompanying Cook was the naturalist Joseph Banks (GB),
who collected tens of thousands of plant and animal specimens and initiated the
exchange of flora and fauna between Europe, the Americas, and the South Seas.
The voyage was from 1768-1779.
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT) described regenerative capacities of
remarkable complexity and repetitiveness in the land snail, salamander, toad
and frog, establishing the general law that an inverse ratio obtains between
the regenerative capacity and age of individual. He includes an account of
regeneration of the decapitated head of the snail (1489).
Johan Gottlieb Gahn (SE) discovered that the principal part of the
inorganic matter of bones is calcium phosphate. He and Carl Wilhelm Scheele
(DE-SE) discovered that phosphorus is essential for bone formation (589; 1406).
William Heberden (GB) was the first to clearly demonstrate that chickenpox is different from smallpox (red plague) (711). Note:
The disease is called Varicella,
meaning little smallpox (Variola).
The name chickenpox possibly derives
from the patient’s skin resembling that of a plucked chicken.
Benjamin Rush (US) while a student at Edinburgh, performed
experiments on himself and fellow students to understand human digestion (1348). He
published, in the newspaper, Cyananche
trachealis, which was one of the first medical papers in the New World.
In his 30 years experience in charge of mental patients at the
Pennsylvania Hospital he noted that heredity, injuries, malformation of the
brain, diseases of the body, and drugs were important in mental illness. He
subsequently wrote, Medical Inquiries and
Observations, Upon the Diseases of the Mind, the first American textbook on
psychiatry (1357).
It was Rush who in describing yellow
fever coined the name yellow fever (1353). See, Griffith Hughes, 1750.
Rush wrote against slavery, assisted Thomas Paine in the
production of his pamphlet—even suggesting the name Common Sense. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a
signatory of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 (1350-1352; 1354; 1355; 1357; 1358). Rush
Medical College in Chicago was named for him in 1834.
William Heberden (GB) wrote, Commentaries
on the History and Cure of Diseases, in which he gave clear accounts of hydrocephalus, aphasia, angina pectoris,
Heberdon’s nodes (nodes on the
fingers in advanced life), nyctalopia (nightblindness),
chickenpox which he distinguishes
from smallpox (red plague), and Herpes (zoster) called the shingles
(from cingulum). He gave an excellent
description of the symptoms attendant to stone in the bladder, "The signs
of a stone in the bladder are, great and frequent irritations to make water, a
stoppage in the middle of making it, and a pain with heat just after it is
made; a tenesmus, pain in the extremity of the urethra, incontinence or
suppression of urine, together with a quiet pulse, and the health in no bad
state." He also noted that failure to urinate for a period in excess of
six to seven days is usually fatal (711-713). He coined
the phrase angina pectoris.
Edward Jenner (GB), in the 1770’s, had discovered that angina pectoris is caused by obstruction
of blood flow due to disease of the coronary arteries. He did not publish this
discovery, rather it was published in 1799 by Caleb Hillier Parry (GB). See, Parry under Fothergill, 1776.
William Hunter (GB) reported that in his opinion the bones of a
large elephant-like creature found in Ohio came from an extinct animal (817). This work
is most significant because it defied the Great Chain of Being concept.
1769
Edward Bancroft
(US) suggested that the torpedo fish (Torpedo sp.) can deliver a shock of electricity and advanced the theory
that flies transmit disease(74).
1770-1771
Smallpox (red
plague) kills three million people in the East Indies. ref
1770
John Hill (GB) introduced new techniques for macerating,
preserving, and staining woody materials. He employed alum, alcohol, and
cochineal dyes (carmine extracted from female scale insects, Croccus spp.) in preparing specimens for
microscopic study. This paper records the first use of carmine to dye objects
for microscopic examination.
Alexander Cumming (GB), in 1770, produced the first cutting
machines (microtomes) for preparing thin soft tissue sections for John Hill. It
could cut sections as thin as 130 micrometers (755; 756).
Andrew Pritchard (GB), c. 1835, produced a similar device attached
to a table for stability (1258).
Charles Chevalier (FR), in 1839, named these tissue cutting
instruments microtomes (293).
Wilhelm His (CH) made significant progress in perfecting the
microtome (760).
Spencer Lens Co., in 1901-1910, manufactured the first clinical
microtome and a larger more accurate laboratory microtome (133).
John Rutty (GB) gave a clinical description of relapsing fever (1361).
Gottfried Wilhelm Schilling (DE) described yaws (Indian pox) (1410).
Mongin (FR) provided the first definitive record of Loiasis (Eye Worm) caused by Loa loa. He described the worm passing
across the eye of a woman in Santa Domingo, in the Caribbean, and recounts how
he tried unsuccessfully to remove it (1078).
Francois Guyot (FR), in 1778, noted that slaves in transit from
West Africa to America suffered from recurrent ophthalmia and successfully
removed a Loa loa worm from one of
them (792). He named
this parasitic worm.
Stephen McKenzie (GB) discovered microfilariae in 1890 and sent
them for identification to Patrick Manson (GB), who speculated that these might
be the larvae of Loa loa (1010).
Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll-Robertson (GB) gave a detailed
description of a case of Loa loa in
which the parasite was removed from under the conjunctiva (54).
Robert Thompson Leiper (GB) determined that biting flies of the
genus Chrysops transmit Loa loa
microfilariae (926).
Domenico Felice Antonio Cotugno (IT) differentiated arthritis from nervous sciatica (Cotugno’s
disease), and concluded that the sciatic nerve is responsible for the
latter, and in discussing it for the first time gives a detailed description of
the cerebrospinal fluid, and showed that the congealed protein (albumin) in the
heated urine of a nephrotic patient (a person afflicted with dropsy) is a
diagnostic sign (331; 333). See, Magendie, 1825
King’s College, New York conferred the first medical degree
awarded in the United States upon Robert Tucker.
A
little-known 1770 epidemic that killed 15,000 people in Saint-Domingue (modern
Haiti) was probably intestinal anthrax.
The epidemic spread rapidly throughout the colony in association with consumption
of uncooked beef (1090).
1771-1772
New York experiences a diphtheria
(Boulogne sore throat) epidemic. ref
1771
Peter Woulfe (GB) made the dye picric acid as an accidental
by-product of the action of nitric acid on the dye indigo (1832).
Hieronymus
David Gaubius (DE-NL) isolated menthol from oil of peppermint (551).
Percivall Pott (GB) was the first to report a correlation between
exposure to a chemical and incidence of cancer. He studied chimney sweeps who
had been exposed to soot and exhibiting scrotal tumors. The cancer was called soot-wart
(1236-1238). Pott’s
name has been perpetuated in three other diseases that he described: a tumor of
the scalp (1234); a fracture
of the leg (1235); and gangrene
in the legs of the aged (1237).
See,
Katsusaburo Yamagiwa and Koichi Ichikawa, 1915 and 1918.
Josephus Theophilus Kölreuter; Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter; Joseph
Gottlieb Koelreuter (DE) was the first to clearly distinguish acanthocephalan
worms from other intestinal worms. He coined the name Acanthocephalus (Gk. akantho, spiny, kephalo, head) (878). These
worms are commonly called hookworms.
William Hewson (GB) discovered the lymphatic system in birds,
fish, and amphibians and gave the best early description of erythrocytes and
leukocytes. He also discovered that coagulable lymph (fibrinogen) is essential
for blood clotting and that following sedimentation the coagulum property
resides in the upper liquid part of the blood, above the red cells. Hewson
proposed that leukocytes are progenitors of erythrocytes in the
blood—hematopoietic stem cells circulate— (744-748). See, Gulliver, Henle, Vogel, and Hewson,
1838
Benjamin Guy Babington (GB) concluded that blood contains a
soluble precursor to fibrin (fibrinogen) (65).
John Hunter (GB) wrote the first thorough scientific treatise on
dentistry in English. In it he recommended that diseased pulp must be removed
before filing and correctly guessed that a tooth might be moved some distance
within the mouth if the move was by slow degrees. He coined the words cuspids,
bicuspids, and molars (798; 802; 808; 809).
1772
Joseph Gillies Priestley (GB-US), in 1772, discovered nitrous
oxide, which he called nitrous air, and hydrochloric acid gas. He observed that
growing plants could restore air in which candles had burned out and
rediscovered oxygen by heating mercuric oxide until it separated into mercury
and a gas. He called the gas dephlogisticated
air and noted that combustibles burned more brilliantly in it than in air (1252). See, Mayow, 1668
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) named this gas principe oxygène (oxygen) (917; 918).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) also discovered oxygen at about this
same time. He called it empyreal and
noted that it supported a fire. He observed that it is fundamental to the
respiration and growth of plants (1396; 1399). There is
some evidence that Scheele preceded Priestly in the rediscovery of oxygen.
Joseph Gillies Priestley (GB-US) and William Hey (GB) observed
that animals, including man, were stimulated by inhaling this gas and concluded
that green plants restore freshness to air by producing this gas. He
demonstrated that blood readily absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere (1252; 1253; 1255; 1256).
Daniel Rutherford (GB) is credited with discovering nitrogen by
allowing air to support combustion until it lost this ability, then bubbling
the treated air through strong alkali to remove any carbon dioxide. The air
that remained was foul smelling and noxious. Rutherford called it phlogisticated air, Carl Wilhelm Scheele
(DE-SE) also discovered it and called it foul
air, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) named it azote (without life), and Jean Antoine Claude Chaptal (FR) called
it nitrogen (from the Greek words nitron
genes meaning nitre and forming and the Latin word nitrum) (288; 465; 913; 915; 1360; 1396; 1406; 1772). Note: Nitrogen is a key component of
biological molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. The nitrogen cycle in
nature is very important.
Joseph Gillies Priestley (GB-US) described a method for locating
the eye’s blind spot (1251).
Antonio Scarpa (IT) gave an accurate and complete description of
the osseous labyrinth of man, the
pig, and the hen. He demonstrated the true function of the round window within
the ear (1380).
1773
Hilaire Marin Rouelle (FR), the cadet, discovered hippuric acid in
the urine of cows. He thought it was benzoic acid (677).
Hilaire Marin Rouelle (FR), the cadet, found that green leaves
contain protein (1343).
Hilaire Marin Rouelle (FR), the cadet, was the first to report the
presence of sodium chloride in the blood (1342; 1344).
Otto Friedrich Müller; Otto Friedrich Mueller (DK) placed all
bacteria in a single species Monas termo
believing that these organisms were highly variable in shape (pleomorphic) but
essentially the same in all other properties (1106). Later he
decided that a second genus, Vibrio,
was justified.
Müller is credited with inventing the naturalist’s dredge and
being the first to describe diatoms (1108).
Johann August Ephraim Goeze (DE) discovered the tardigrades (waterbears or moss piglets). He called them kleiner wasserbär (Bärtierchen today), meaning 'little
water bear'. They are water-dwelling, segmented, micro-animals, with eight
legs (180). Note: they are renowned for their tolerance of harsh living
conditions such as anhydrobiosis.
Lazzaro Spallanzani coined the name Tardigrada, meaning "slow walker" (1490).
John Walsh (GB) wired the electric ray, Torpedo marmorata, to a series of bowls
of water, interlinked by people placing a hand in each bowl. When the wire was
led back to the fish and the circuit completed a palpable shock was felt by
all, proving that the phenomenon was electrical and could be transmitted
through conducting objects (1759). Electric
fish had been known from antiquity.
Richard D. Keynes (GB) confirmed that the electric organ does not function
spontaneously and that it is always under the control of the central nervous
system (859).
Charles White (GB) succeeded in tracing transmission in puerperal fevers (childbed fever) to the
practices of certain midwives and obstetricians. He insisted on absolute
cleanliness during delivery and was thus a pioneer in aseptic midwifery. White
proposed almost complete non-interference with the second stage of labor. He
advised against grabbing the infant’s head and pulling when it crowned and
thought it unnecessary to pull on the child’s armpits to deliver the shoulders (1799).
Aubrey Eccles (US) suggested that White’s work stands as a major
turning point in the history of obstetrics (497).
Edward Strother (GB) had introduced the phrase puerperal fever in 1716 (1542).
Alexander Gordon (GB), in 1793, demonstrated the contagiousness of
puerperal fever (childbed fever).
"This disease seized such women only as were visited or delivered by a
practitioner or taken care of by a nurse who had previously attended patients
affected with the disease. In short, I had evident proof of its infectious
nature" (632).
Robert Collins (IE), in 1835, discussed in his Treatise on Midwifery the reasons for
his excellent record in preventing the spread of puerperal fever (childbed fever) while he was Master of the Rotunda
Hospital in Dublin.
Because of the puerperal
fever (childbed fever) in 1829, "it was deemed advisable at once to
recommend that no patients, except as were destitute, should be admitted; …
until the entire wards of the hospital should be thoroughly purified. We then
had all the wards in rotation filled with chlorine gas in a very condensed
form, for the space of 48 hours, during which time the windows, doors and
fireplaces were closed so as to prevent its escape as much as possible. The
floors and all the woodwork were then covered with the chlorine of lime, mixed
with water to the consistence of cream, which was left for 48 hours more. The
woodwork was then painted, and the walls and ceilings washed with fresh lime. The
blankets, etc. were in most instances scoured, and all stored in a temperature
between 120° and 130°. From the time this was completed until the termination
of my mastership in November, we did not lose one patient by this disease." (307)
Oliver Wendell Holmes (US), in 1843, deduced from the reports of
many physicians that, "The disease known as Puerperal Fever is so far contagious as to be frequently carried
from patient to patient by physicians and nurses.” He further stated, “1. A
physician holding himself in readiness to attend cases of midwifery should
never take any active part in the postmortem examination of cases of puerperal fever. 2. If a physician is
present at such autopsies, he should use thorough ablution, change every
article of dress, and allow twenty-four hours or more to elapse before
attending to any case of midwifery. It may be well to extend the same caution
to cases of simple peritonitis. 3. Similar precautions should be taken after
the autopsy or surgical treatment of cases of erysipelas, if the physician is
obliged to unite such offices with his obstetrical duties, which is in the
highest degree inexpedient. 4. On the occurrence of a single case of puerperal fever in his practice, the
physician is bound to consider the next female he attends in labor to be in
danger of being infected by him unless some weeks at least have elapsed, and it
is his duty to take precaution to diminish her risk of disease and death. 5. If
within a short period two cases of puerperal
fever happen close to each other in the practice of the same physician, the
disease not existing or prevailing in the neighborhood, he would do wisely to
relinquish his obstetrical practice for at least one month, and endeavor to
free himself by very available means from any noxious influence he may carry
about with him. 6. The occurrence of three or more closely connected cases in
the practice of one individual, no others existing in the neighborhood, and no
other sufficient cause being alleged for the coincidence, is prima facie
evidence that he is the vehicle of contagion. 7. It is the duty of the
physician to take every precaution that the disease shall not be introduced by
nurses or other assistants, by making proper inquiries concerning them, and
giving timely warning of every suspected source of danger. 8. Whatever
indulgence may be granted to those who have heretofore been the ignorant causes
of so much misery, the time has come when the existence of a private pestilence
in the sphere of a single physician should be looked upon, not as a misfortune,
but a crime; and in the knowledge of such occurrences the duties of the
practitioner to his profession should give way to his paramount obligations to
society." (770; 771)
Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis; Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (HU), working in
Vienna, was involved in daily care of women in childbirth, many of whom died of
puerperal fever (childbed fever). He
carried out painstaking postmortem examinations on puerperal fever deaths, including one on his most intimate friends,
Kolletschka, a fellow physician. Kolletschka died a few days after a small
scalpel wound of his finger occurred while performing an autopsy on a case of puerperal fever. The lesions in
Kolletschka’s and the women’s cases were so similar that Semmelweis’ eyes were
opened to the tragic truth. He showed that in the First Maternity Clinic with
its death losses of 9.9%, the physicians and students were carrying cadaverous
material on their hands directly from the postmortem rooms to the lying-in
wards where they were making vaginal examinations, frequently without even
washing their hands. Enforced cleanliness and required scrubbing of the hands
in a solution of chlorinated lime (CaOCl2) reduced the death losses
promptly, eventually to the amazingly low figure of 0.39%. Semmelweis met with
jealous opposition; he was bitterly attacked by his superiors and was denied
the appropriate obstetrical appointment. He died disappointed and disoriented
in 1865 (1444-1448; 1722; 1723). Note: Chlorinated lime was produced
primarily to disinfect and deodorize sewage. Von Hebra wrote the 1847 and 1849
articles for Semmelweis.
Johann Baptist Chiari (AT), Carl von Fernwald Braun (DE) and
Joseph Späth (DE) wrote the first textbook ever to present the theories of
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis on hand washing as a means of preventing the spread of
puerperal fever (childbed fever) (294).
William Bromfield (GB) invented an artery-retractor, and the
double gorgeret (226).
1774
"Oh, how
happy I am! No care for eating or drinking or dwelling, no care for my
pharmaceutical business, for this is mere play to me. But to watch new
phenomena this is all my care, and how glad is the enquirer when discovery
rewards his diligence; then his heart rejoices." Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in
a letter to Johann Gahn, December 26, 1774 (1584)
Friedrich Casimir Medicus
(DE) introduced the term lebenskraft
(vital force) to animal chemistry (1046).
Perhaps the
first use of lebenskraft can be found
in the German translation of Albrecht von Haller’s De Partibus Corporis Humani Sensilibus et Irritabilibus (1753) in
1772 (1719).
Joseph Gillies Priestley (GB-US) discovered ammonia (1254).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) was the first to make chlorine, a
member of the halogen (salt-forming) group of metallic elements. He
produced it by heating pyrolusite (MnO2)
with hydrochloric
acid and obtaining a greenish-yellow gas, which he failed to recognize as an
element (1403; 1406).
Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau (FR) described the
disinfecting powers of chlorine, and of hydrochloric acid gas which he had
successfully used at Dijon in 1773 (431; 432).
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR), Louis Jacques Thénard (FR) and
Humphry Davy (GB) were the first to recognize the true elemental nature of
chlorine gas. See, Gay-Lussac, 1809
and Humphry Davy, 1809.
Bonaventura Corti (IT), from his observations in the cells of
water plants such as Chara and Nitella, was the first to report cytoplasmic
streaming (cyclosis) (325).
Ludolph Christian Treviranus (DE) would rediscover cyclosis (1598).
Johann Friedrich Meckel (DE) presented indirect evidence for an
association of the adrenal glands with sexual function. He also cited
abnormalities of the adrenal glands in cases associated with sexual
abnormalities (castration, syphilis,
etc.) (1043).
William Hunter (GB) completed his greatest medical work, Anatomia Uteri Humani Gravidi Tabulis
Illustrata [Anatomy of the Human
Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures] In the preface he wrote: "... in
the year 1751 the author met with the first favorable opportunity of examining
the human species, what before he had been studying in brutes. A woman died
suddenly, when very near the end of her pregnancy; the body was procured before
any insensible putrefaction had begun; the season of the year was favorable to
dissection; the injection of blood vessels proved successful; a very able
painter, in this way, was found; every part was examined in the most public
manner, and the truth well authenticated..." (819).
Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (DE) dealt with the
appearance of the human embryo during the first half of pregnancy (1484). William
Hunter (GB) had already done so for the last half of pregnancy. See, above.
Jean-Louis Petit (FR) invented the screw tourniquet, devised
herniotomy without opening the sac, reported the first successful operation for
mastoiditis, and demonstrated the mechanism of the occlusion of arteries in
wounds. Here is described the operation where Petit became the first, in 1736,
to open the mastoid process (1204).
William Kerr (GB), in 1774, amputated at the hip joint in the case
of a consumptive girl of eleven or twelve years, who had coxalgia with lumbar
abscess and extensive caries of the acetabulum, and of the adjacent parts of
the ossa innominatum. The patient
survived for seventeen days. This is the first authentic instance of a true
amputation at the hip joint (854).
Walter
Brashear (US), in 1806, treated a seventeen-year-old boy with a fracture of the
thigh by successfully
amputating his leg at the hip joint (649).
Valentine Mott (US) successfully amputated at the hip-joint (1099).
George James Guthrie (GB), in 1815, successfully amputated at the
hip joint (663).
1775-1782
"Variola's story is
necessarily a story of connections between people. As it ravaged North America
in the years 1775-82, the virus showed that a vast web of human contact spanned
the continent well before Meriweather Lewis and William Clark made their famous
journey to the Pacific in 1804-06.
Variola
ravaged
the greater part of North America, from Mexico to Massachusetts, from Pensacola
to Puget Sound…and took many more American lives than the war with the British
did. The Native American Indians also suffered great loss of life to smallpox
(red plague) during this period." (527).
1775
“Why do you ask me a question, by the way of solving it. I think
your solution is just; but why think, why not try the experiment?” John Hunter.
Letter to Edward Jenner (810; 1599)
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) demonstrated that combustion and
the calcination of metals always
involves combination with oxygen (912).
Mathieu Tillet (FR) gave experimental proof that bunt of wheat
(caused by the smut fungus Tilletia
caries, named for Tillet) is contagious. This may well be the first proof
that a fungus could cause a plant disease (1585).
Johann Christian Fabricius; Johann Christian Schmitt (DK)
originated the maxillary or cibarian system of classification of insects in
which mouth parts were used to separate the orders. This system recognized
thirteen orders of which only one, the Odonata, survives today (520).
Johan Christian Fabricius (DK) wrote Systema Entomologiae (1775),
Genera Insectorum (1776), Philosophia Entomologica (1778),
Entomologia Systematica (1792–1794,
in six vols.), and later publications (to 1805), to make Fabricius one of the
world's greatest entomologists.
Peter Christian Abildgaard
(DK) described ventricular fibrillation induced in a hen. "With a shock to
the head, the animal was rendered lifeless, and arose with a second shock to
the chest; however, after the experiment was repeated rather often, the hen was
completely stunned, walked with some difficulty, and did not eat for a day and
night; then later it was very well and even laid an egg." (8)
Charles Blagden (GB) performed experiments testing the human
body’s response to extreme heat. He noted the importance of perspiration in
maintaining the body at a constant temperature (151).
Mr. Squires (GB) performed the first known cardiac defibrillation.
"…a 3-year-old child named Catherine Sophie Greenhill, who had fallen from
an upper story window onto flagstones and been pronounced dead. The society
member, an apothecary named Squires, was on the scene within twenty minutes,
and history records that he proceeded to give the clinically dead child several
shocks through the chest with a portable electrostatic generator. This
treatment caused her to regain pulse and respiration, and she eventually (after
a time in coma) recovered fully." (1501)
William Henly (GB) advocated the use of electrical stimulation for
cardiac resuscitation (727).
John Hunter (GB), in 1776, proposed that electricity be tried when
other methods have failed to revive a drowning person. He noted that the first
action should be to ventilate the lungs (801; 808). Note: At this time, bleeding followed by
application of salt and strong volatiles was the widely accepted treatment for
a drowning person.
Walter Hayle Walshe (GB) and Stanton A. Friedberg (GB) described
the significance of electrical stimulation in the treatment of cardiac arrest (1760).
John A. McWilliam (GB) documented the effect of electrical
stimulation on contraction of the heart of a cat. He concluded that it had to
be possible to treat bradycardia and cardiac arrest with electrical stimulation
in humans also. He noted that the heart could be stimulated to adhere to a
certain frequency by regular impulses, which were controlled by a metronome (1041).
Mark Cowley Lidwill (AU), in 1928, was able to use electrical
stimulation of the heart to save the life of a child born in cardiac arrest (1076).
Claude Schaeffer Beck (US), Walter H. Pritchard (US), and Harold
S. Feil (US) performed the first successful defibrillation of a surgical
patient, with the chest opened, and the paddles applied directly to the heart (105).
Théophile de Bordeu (FR) speculated that each gland, organ,
tissue, and cell of the body produces secretions that pass into the blood stream
and influence other glands and tissues. He suggested that secondary sex
characteristics and behavior might be influenced by secretions (humors) of the
gonads (398; 399). This may
be considered the beginning of modern endocrinology.
Franz Anton Mesmer (DE) introduced animal magnetism (later called hypnosis) (1058; 1059).
There was an influenza (grippe)
pandemic. Ref
New England had a diphtheria
(Boulogne sore throat) epidemic. ref
George Washington’s siege of Boston was complicated by smallpox
(red plague) infection inside the city. British troops occupying Boston had
been variolated or exposed to smallpox in the past. But Washington’s
Continental Army troops were more vulnerable. Most had never been exposed to smallpox
and were not previously variolated. Washington himself had survived a case of smallpox
while on the island of Barbados in 1751 (1050).
1776-1805
There was a scarlet fever
pandemic.
1776
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) made the dye murexide (1406).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) and Torbern Olof Bergman (SE)
independently discovered uric acid (121; 1394; 1395). Scheele
called it “acid of calculus”. Bergman found it in a stone from the bladder.
Hilaire Marin Rouelle (FR), the cadet, in 1776, published the
results of some experiments on the blood
and on the fluid formed in dropsies, and he showed that their alkaline nature is principally owing
to the presence of soda (1344).
Henry Bence
Jones (GB), a physician at St. George’s Hospital in London, recognized the relationship
between blood alkalinity and stomach acid secretion (846).
Blood becomes neutral to alkaline following a meal (alkaline tide) while
secretion of acid into the stomach rises.
Friedrich
Walter (LV) discovered that the value of the carbon dioxide
concentration of blood could be used as an index of its alkalinity. This made
it possible to study acidosis and alkalosis by extracting from and quantifying
the carbon dioxide in blood (1761).
Erik Wainø Andersen (DK), Bjørn Ibsen (DK), Poul Bjørndahl Astrup
(DK) and John W. Severinghaus (US), during a polio epidemic in Copenhagen, determined
that in patients with respiratory insufficiency, a high blood CO2
content, and
alkalosis, are not related (38; 59).
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT) was a master of experiment and performed
many well-designed experiments, which indicated that heating prevents the
appearance of animalcules in infusions although the length of heating time
necessary to sterilize was variable. He noted that animalcules were constant in
their times of appearance, progression, and displacement by others. His
experiments show that after infusions remain barren for a long time a small
crack on the neck of the flask is sufficient to allow the development of
animalcules in the infusions. He concluded that it is not sufficient merely to seal
the flasks hermetically. It is not enough merely to boil the infusions. To
render an infusion permanently barren or sterile it is necessary, in addition,
that the included air in the flask should contain no animalcules.
Spallanzani showed clearly that hot air is a much less effective
means of sterilization than actual contact with hot or boiling water.
While studying the efficiency of heat for killing animalcules he
discovered that animalcules could be divided into two groups based on their sensitivity
to heat. One group is killed by boiling at 212°F for 30 seconds. The other
group is killed only after 212°F boiling for up to 45 minutes.
In 1776, he observed that animalcules could grow in a high vacuum (1490; 1496).
John Walsh (GB), in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (FR),
reported that he had obtained a visible spark from an electric fish, the eel of
Surinam (Gymnotus) (922). This
experiment was very important because it promoted fresh interest in the
possible involvement of electricity in the animal physiology.
Emanuel Mendes Da Costa (PT-GB) anonymously wrote Elements of Conchology, or, An Introduction
to the Knowledge of Shells while in jail for embezzlement from the Royal
Society of London. In this publication the word conchology appeared for the first time (364).
Matthew Dodson (GB) published the first experimental evidence
demonstrating that diabetes is a
systemic disorder rather than, as had been previously thought, a primary
disease of the kidneys. In a series of experiments, he re-discovered a
sweet-tasting substance not only in the urine of diabetics but in their serum
as well. He went on to prove that this substance was sugar (468).
John Fothergill (GB) gave one of the first descriptions of coronary artery disease as seen on
autopsy. "The two coronary arteries, from their origin to many of their
ramifications upon the heart, were become one piece of bone." (568)
Caleb Hillier Parry (GB) presented, An inquiry into the Symptoms and Causes of the Syncope Anginosa
Commonly Called Angina Pectoris, Illustrated by Dissection before the
Gloucester Medical Society in 1788. This work is based upon experiments with
sheep and is the first correct explanation for the mechanism of angina. It was not published until 1799 (1179). See, Edward Jenner under Heberden, 1802.
Matthew Baillie (GB) related angina
pectoris and coronary artery blockage in this way, "Ossification of
the coronary arteries would seem to produce, or to be intimately connected
with, the symptoms which constitute angina
pectoris. These consist of a pain, which shoots from the middle of the
sternum across the left breast and passes down the left arm to near the elbow." (72)
Adam Hammer (GB) reported a myocardial
infarction confirmed by autopsy. He established that angina pain can be attributed to interruption of coronary blood
supply and that heart attacks occur when at least one coronary artery is
blocked (684).
John Hunter (GB), in 1776, assisted the first known artificial
insemination. Hunter instructed the husband to use a warm syringe containing
his epididymal sperm to impregnate his wife. The operation worked, and
pregnancy ensued. Fearing criticism, this event was reported posthumously (776; 808).
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT), in 1779, reported performing artificial
insemination by injecting dog sperm into the vagina of a female dog, which, "sixty-two
days after the injection of the sperm, became mother of three little vivacious
children, two males and the third female." He also demonstrated that frog
semen is necessary if frog eggs are to be fertilized (1491).
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (RU), in 1898, succeeded in developing
techniques for obtaining, preserving, and disinfecting semen, in addition to
devising a procedure for artificial insemination that could be used for all
types of livestock. In 1901 he developed a practical procedure for the
artificial insemination of horses. This process allowed one stallion to
fertilize up to 500 mares. He founded the world's first center for
the artificial insemination of
horses (498). By 1936 it
was estimated that some 6 million cattle and sheep were artificially
inseminated in the Soviet Union.
Ilya Ivanovich
Ivanov (RU) pioneered the practice of using artificial insemination for
obtaining various interspecific hybrids. He was the first (or one of the first)
scientists who obtained and studied a Zeedonk (hybrid of zebra and donkey),
Żubroń (a hybrid of wisent (European bison) and domestic cow), a
hybrid of an antelope and cow, of mouse and rat, of mouse and guinea pig,
guinea pig and rabbit, rabbit and hare and many others. The most controversial
of Ivanov's studies was his unsuccessful attempt to create a human-ape hybrid (1341; 1858).
John Hunter (GB) delivered six Croonian lectures on muscular
motion from 1776-1782 (they were not printed at the time) in which he described
how to assess muscle power in a weak muscle. With joint injury and disease, he
states that voluntary movement should not be permitted until inflammation has
settled otherwise contracture is promoted. He believed that healing depended on
the body's innate power, and that the surgeon's task was to aid this. Hunter
believed that bone disease often required mechanical assistance. He was the
first to demonstrate the muscularity of arteries and noted that every part of
the vascular system is not equally endowed with muscles (808).
Henry Pillore de Rouen (FR), in 1776, surgically created an
artificial anus by making an opening into the cecum. The patient, a wine
merchant, was suffering from a large carcinoma located at the colo-rectal
junction. The operation was a success, but the patient died 28 days later of
mercury poisoning. Large amounts of mercury had been used in an attempt to
treat the patient without surgery (1215).
William Ernest Miles (GB) carried out the first abdominoperineal
resection for cancer of the rectum; that is, the cancer was attacked both from
the abdomen and from below through the perineum (the area between the anus and
the genitals) (1067).
Abbé Jacques-François Dicquemare (FR) described reptilian fossils
in Journal de Physique but refrained
from speculating about their sources (462).
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (DE) wrote his dissertation De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa [On the Natural Varieties of Mankind]
that made him famous and marked the beginnings of physical anthropology. He
classified mankind into four races, based on selected combinations of head
shape, skin color and hair form. In the second edition he found it necessary to
expand this division into five races, but his famous terms "Caucasian,
Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan" were not used until the third
edition of 1795 (163).
“Our misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt the heart of stone.
The smallpox is ten times more terrible than the British, Canadians and Indians
together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from Quebec.” John
Adams (US) (620). Note: Of a force of
10,000 Continental Army soldiers in Quebec, about 5,000 fell ill with smallpox
(red plague).
c.
1777
Joseph Banks (GB) was the first to show that almost all the Australian
mammals are marsupials and more primitive than the placental animals (75).
John Hunter (GB) injected various materials into the veins of
living animals. He concluded that many substances introduced directly into the
blood produce much more violent effects than when taken into the stomach and
can even cause death. He also discovered that air kills immediately and
therefore one must be very careful when injecting substances into the veins,
that air does not enter with the substances (808).
1777
Pierre Joseph Macquer (FR) is his book, A Dictionary of Chemistry, wrote that reduction is an ancient term
and originally used to describe the revivification
of a metal from its ore and could mean the removal of oxygen or the addition of
hydrogen (982).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE), one of the greatest chemists of all
time, was among the first to isolate many chemicals including several organic
acids, tartaric acid, citric acid, benzoic acid, malic acid, oxalic acid,
gallic acid, lactic acid, and uric acid. He isolated benzoic acid and uric acid
from urine and discovered oxygen before Joseph Gillies Priestley (GB-US). Due
to a publishing problem he did not receive credit for the discovery of oxygen.
He distinguished two constituents of the atmosphere by allowing air to stand in
contact with several substances in closed vessels. Liver of sulfur (a mixture
of potassium polysulfides and potassium thiosulfate) absorbed about one-fourth
of the volume of air exposed to it, and the residual air would not support
combustion. Similar results were secured in experiments in which air stood in
contact with linseed oil, or iron filings moistened with water. Scheele called
the residual air foul air (nitrogen),
and the constituent, which supported combustion he called empyreal or fire air
(oxygen). In 1772, he produced oxygen by heating red oxide of mercury and from
black oxide of manganese and saltpeter. Combustible objects burned vigorously
in this gas. In 1777 he discovered hydrogen sulfide (die stinckende schwefel
luft, i.e., the stinking sulfur air) (1396). (1397; 1403-1406). He
isolated tartaric acid from cream of tartar. Anders Jahan Retzius (SE), on
behalf of Scheele, reported this to the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm in
1770 (1311).
Johann August Ephraim Goeze (DE) gave an early account of
protozoal feeding, possibly including phagocytosis (623).
Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen (DE) recounts experiments in which
he observed infusorial creatures ingest carmine particles. The description does
not include obvious phagocytosis (1714).
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) concluded that during respiration,
as in the combustion of charcoal, oxygen is removed from the air and is
converted into carbon dioxide; he suggested that this process occurs in the
lungs, and that oxygen combines with the blood to give the latter its arterial
red color. He concluded that the nitrogen fraction remained unchanged (913; 915).
William Cullen (GB) coined the word neuroses (348).
Philipp Friedrich Theodore Meckel (DE) proposed that the inner ear
is filled with fluid, not air (1045).
Carlo Mondini (IT), in 1777, discovered and described the frilled
ovary of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) and proved that they are fish (1077).
Simone de Syrski (PL), in 1874, found a sexually mature male
European eel (442).
Giovanni Battista Grassi (IT) discovered that the
common eel (Anguilla vulgaris) needs salt
water for development of its reproductive organs and the deep sea is its
spawning place. In autumn it migrates to the sea and the dull yellow of its
skin changes to silvery glitter; the eyes enlarge, the pectoral fins become
black and change in shape, and the ova ripen (638).
Ernst Johannes Schmidt (DK) was the zoologist who solved the
problem regarding the origin of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) by proving
that its spawning takes place in the deep waters of the Sargasso Sea (1415; 1416). He is
commemorated by Heteromesus schmidtii
Hansen, 1916.
Joseph Huddart (GB) described red-green
color-blindness in a man with two brothers who were similarly affected.
Neither the parents nor other siblings were color-blind (794).
James Scott (GB) and Michael Lort (GB) reported the peculiar
(sex-linked) inheritance of human color-blindness in James Scott’s family (1438). The
condition was fully formulated 40 years later by Christian Friedrich Nasse (DE)
in Nasse’s law, which states that hemophilia usually occurs only in males and
is passed on by unaffected females (1119).
John Dalton (GB) is often credited (incorrectly) with the first
description of color-blindness. He and his brother exhibited color-blindness of
the red-green type (also known as protonopia
/ deuteranopia). This condition
is sometimes called daltonism (367). Dalton's
paper was read to the society in 1794.
Thomas Young (GB) suggested that Dalton’s color blindness was
probably due to the absence of the retinal resonator for red (1839).
Smallpox (red plague) became
an important issue during the American Revolutionary
War. When the troops of the Continental Army (but not the British
forces) were ravaged by this disease General George Washington, at
Valley Forge, decided to "variolate" all susceptible troops; an act
which probably saved the war effort (526; 527).
c.
1778
"If I set out to prove something, I am no real scientist—I
have to learn to follow where the facts lead me—I have to learn to whip my
prejudices." Lazzaro Spallanzani (318)
1778
Adair Crawford (GB) constructed a calorimeter in which he could
measure the heat produced when a given quantity of oxygen was altered by
burning charcoal, burning a candle, or respiration of a guinea pig. He
concluded that the quantity of heat produced when a given quantity of oxygen
was altered by animal respiration was nearly equal to that yielded when the
same quantity of oxygen was altered by combustion of wax or charcoal. He
concluded that the heat thus derived had its source in the conversion of oxygen
into fixed air (carbon dioxide) or into water (340).
John Scott Haldane (GB), W. Hale White (GB), and John Wichenford
Washbourn (GB) produced an improved animal calorimeter (669).
Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen-Russworm (DE) described the
technique of staining phagocytes, studied nutrition in ciliates by observing
their uptake of carmine stained water into food vacuoles, and was possibly the
first to stain bacteria for observation. He used indigo and carmine (1715).
Martinus Slabber (NL) was the first to recognize larval
polychaetes. He described larvae of syllids emerging from their brood (1471).
The copper pheasant, Syrmaticus
soemmeringii, is named in his honor.
Anselme Louis Bernard Bérchillet Jourdain (FR) wrote the first
specialist book on oral surgery (848).
1779-1783
Europe experiences a pandemic of dysentery (bloody flux).
ref
1779
Jan Ingen-Housz; Jan Ingenhousz (NL-GB), in a remarkable book,
discusses his discoveries of photosynthesis and plant respiration. He states
that only the green part of a plant can restore (produce oxygen) the air, and
that it does this only when illuminated by sunlight and that the active part of
the sun’s radiation is in the visible light and not in the heat radiation. He
describes how plants, like animals, exhibit respiration, that respiration
continues day and night, and that all parts of the plant—green as well as
non-green, flowers and fruit as well as roots—take part in the process. He
determined that plant respiration produces carbon dioxide, a discovery made in
animals by Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (IT) (563; 833)}.
This work laid the foundation for the
concept of the balance and economy of the living world.
Jan Ingen-Housz; Jan Ingenhousz (NL-GB), in 1798, declared that
carbon dioxide in air is the source of carbon in plants, thus explaining the
disappearance of the gas and the production of oxygen in photosynthesis. He
stated that during photosynthesis the carbon of carbon dioxide is assimilated
for the benefit of the plant (834).
Johann Hedwig (RO-DE) showed that in mosses the much smaller and
less conspicuous antheridia (which he called anthers) are the true male organs
and the minute cells emitted from them are the male gametes and fertilize the
archegonia (pistilla of Hedwig).
He observed germination of the spores and the growth from them of
the filamentous protonema (cotyledons of Hedwig), which is the juvenile form of
the moss plant or gametophyte. He observed sperm cells being discharged from
the antheridia of the moss Grimmia
pulvinata. The 1782 work contains a taxonomic treatment (715; 716). Hedwigia
de Beauvois is a genus of mosses.
Casimir Christoph Schmidel; Casimir Christoph Schmiedel (DE) had
realized earlier that antheridia are the male organs in the liverwort
Fossombromia, thus Schmidel and Hedwig demonstrated the true functions of the
antheridia and spores in bryophytes (1414).
Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (IT) distinguished the axon with
myelin sheath and endoneural sheath. He clearly noted the fluid nature of the
axoplasm. He also recognized the fluidity of the axoplasm through accurate
micromanipulation. He demonstrated in 1778-1779 that the restoration of the
interrupted nerve trunk might be traced to a real and actual regeneration of
primitive nerve cylinders, or rather, of nerve fibers (207; 562; 763; 1843).
Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (DE) discovered nerve ganglion cells
in vertebrates and invertebrates. In the 1836 reference he proved the existence
of the central nerve fiber (501; 502).
Gabriel Gustav Valentin (DE-CH) identified elements common to all
parts of the nervous system (globular units in the cortex as well as isolated,
continuous primitive fibers). In cells from the cerebellar cortex he identified
parenchyma (a term he coined), appendages, nucleus and nucleolus (karyosome) (1615). Note: At this time, it was still not
appreciated that cell bodies and nerve fibers were connected.
Robert Remak (PL-DE) recognized that the sympathetic fibers are
grey because they are nonmyelinated (Remak’s fibers), and that the medullary
nerve fibers are not hollow, as had been supposed, but rather surround a
translucent substance – a central core, which Johannes Evangelista Purkinje
(CZ) called the axis cylinder. Remak’s work indicated that the axon is not
continuous with the nerve cell body but that it arises from it (1303-1305).
Johann Peter Frank (DE) wrote, System
Einer Vollstandigen Medicinischen Polizey, the first comprehensive treatise
on public health (574). He has
been called the father of public health.
Antonio Scarpa (IT) described Scarpa's ganglion of the vestibular
system. It is a ganglion in the internal auditory canal within the vestibular
portion of the eighth nerve. He discovered the membrane labyrinth and its
endolymph (Scarpa’s fluid), presented the first illustrations of the human
olfactory nerves, olfactory bulbs, and the olfactory tracts, as well as the
sphenopalatine ganglion and of the interior nasal nerves. He discovered the
human nasopalatine nerve and made comparative anatomical illustrations of the
olfactory apparatus in the dogfish, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
He was the first to distinguish the spinal from the sympathetic
ganglia and to demonstrate that the spinal ganglia are formed only on the
dorsal roots of the spinal nerves. He observed that the ganglia of the
thoracic-lumbar sympathetic nerves connected to the ventral roots of the spinal
nerves only (1381; 1384).
David Bylon; David Bijlon (NL) described a 1779 outbreak
of dengue fever while in Batavia
(Jakarta), Dutch East Indies. He called it knokkel-koorts (knuckle or joint-fever). Its name comes from denga, a Swahili word meaning "cramp-like
attack" (260; 1195). Some
suggest that this was an outbreak of chikungunya.
Benjamin Rush (US) described a 1780 outbreak of what was
undoubtedly dengue fever in
Philadelphia, PA (1349).
1780-1785
"The best of all medicines are rest and fasting."
Benjamin Franklin (US), (499)
Epidemic catarrhal fever
occurred in London.
A pandemic of dysentery
(bloody flux) takes place. ref
1780
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) discovered glycerol. It was obtained
by heating several oils and fats with lead oxide. He called it glycerine from
the Greek glykeros meaning sweet (1397; 1401; 1403; 1405; 1406).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE), in 1780, isolated and identified the
acid of sour milk (later named lactic acid) (1398; 1404).
Jöns Jakob Berzelius (SE) found lactic acid in fluid extracted
from meat in 1808 (129; 131).
Johann Joseph Scherer (DE) first demonstrated the occurrence of
lactic acid in human blood under pathological conditions after death (1408; 1409).
Johann Justus von Liebig (DE) proved that lactic acid is always
present in muscular tissue of dead organisms (1736).
Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond (CH-DE) published several articles
on the influence of lactic acid on muscle contraction (476-480).
Trasaburo Araki (JP) and Hermann Zillessen (DE) found that if they
interrupted oxygen supply to muscles in mammals and birds, lactic acid was
formed and increased (47-50; 1847).
Armand Séguin (FR), Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR), and Pierre
Simon de Laplace (FR) compared the combustion of charcoal with respiration of a
guinea pig. They measured the amount of heat that both processes produced and
were able to show that life was very like combustion in that respect. They
concluded, … "Respiration is therefore a combustion, very slow it is true,
but otherwise perfectly similar to that of charcoal; it occurs in the interior
of the lungs, without producing perceptible light, because the liberated matter
of fire is immediately absorbed by the humidity of these organs." (914; 919; 1440). See, Adair Crawford, 1778
John Hunter (GB) noted that a mother with smallpox (red plague) very likely passed the infection to her child
in utero (803; 808).
Meinard Simon du Pui (NL) proposed that there might be two
distinct minds in man, each associated with a hemisphere. "Man’s nervous
system is just as bipartite as the rest of his body, with the result that
one-half of it may become affected while the other half continues to carry out
its proper functions." (487)
Henry Holland (GB), in 1840, wrote an essay, which emphasized the
ability of the two hemispheres to function noncompetitively. He drew attention
to the corpus callosum as a region
for transmission between the two sides of the brain (767).
Jirí Procháska; Georg Procháska (CZ) introduced the concept that
the central nervous system contains a region, he called it sensorium commune, which reflects (hence reflex) sensory input
received by the brain to the motor nerves (1259; 1260; 1756).
Charles Darwin (GB) (uncle of Charles Robert Darwin of evolution
fame) did an early study on the action of decoction (boiled down) of foxglove
on the heart.
He suggested that the absorbent
vessels (lymphatics), which carry foodstuffs to the blood stream, also
carry fluids when these are accumulated in excessive amounts in tissues and
return them to the circulating blood (380).
John Hunter (GB) read a paper before the Royal Society of London
on the structure of the human placenta in which he explained, for the first
time, certain aspects of utero-placental circulation. The paper was first
printed in 1786 (804; 808).
1781-1782
Europe experiences a severe influenza
(grippe) pandemic, which also reaches North America and South America (350).
1781
Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (IT) described the nucleolus
after finding it in the slime from an eel's skin
(562; 874). Some have
questioned this discovery.
Rudolph
Wagner (DE) discovered the nucleolus (keimfleck or macula germinativa) in
oocyte germinal vesicles (1751; 1752).
Gabriel
Gustav Valentin (DE-CH) discovered the nucleolus then subsequently named it the
nucleolus or kernkörperchen. "In every cell, without exception there
exists a somewhat darker-appearing and compact nucleus of a round or nearly
round shape. Mostly it is in the centre of the specific cell, composed of a
finely granular material and containing in its interior an exactly spheroidal
body which in this way forms a kind of secondary nucleus within the first one." (1615-1617)
Peter Simon Pallas (DE) provided the first descriptions of several
new species of cestodes. Among them Caryophyllaeus
laticeps, Cyathocephalus truncata,
Triaenophorus nodulosus, Fimbriaria fasciolaris (1176).
Felix Vicq-d’Azyr (FR) fixed brain tissue in alcohol to improve
its dissection. He systematized brain nomenclature
and
was one of the first to section the brain horizontally and is credited with
rediscovering the white line in the calcerine cortex. He created a classic
anatomic folio of the brain, identified for the first time many of the cerebral
convolutions (noting that they are dissimilar in the two hemispheres), as he
did the deep gray nuclei of the cerebrum and basal ganglia. The mamillo
thalamic trait was also described by him and bears his name (1690; 1692).
John Warren (US), in 1781, amputated at the shoulder joint (1768).
William C. Bowen
(US), in 1813, amputated, at the shoulder joint, the right arm of a patient with a
disabling and rapidly progressing enlargement of
his right arm. Convinced that the disease was a fungus haematodes (an obsolete
term denoting a soft, fungating, easily bleeding malignant
tumor). The patient went back to his farm work in one month but succumbed to
his disease fourteen months after the operation (191).
Andrew Jackson, future U.S. president, contracted smallpox (red
plague) at age 14 while being held prisoner by the British during the War of
Independence. His brother Robert, taken prisoner with him, died of the disease (1050).
1782
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) heated a chemical called, Prussian
Blue or Berlin Blue, with diluted sulfuric acid and obtained a flammable gas
that when dissolved in water created an acidic solution. Scheele called his new
acid "Berlin Blue Acid" or just blue acid (1400). Today it
is called hydrogen cyanide. The main target of this poison is cytochrome C oxidase, the terminal oxidase of the respiratory chain
and involves interaction with the sferric ion of cytochrome a3 (637).
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR), in 1811, determined that the
molecule of hydrogen cyanide contains one atom each of hydrogen, carbon, and
nitrogen (603).
Jean Senebier (CH) established the necessity of carbon dioxide for
plant growth (photosynthesis) and proved that the oxygen evolved by green
plants is proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide present, up to the point
where an excess of carbon dioxide begins to injure the plants. He found that it
is the light and not the heat of the sun that is effective in photosynthesis (1449-1451).
Otto Friderich Müller; Otto Friderich Mueller (DK) discovered the
zygospores of Spirogyra. He did not
know their function (1107).
Johann Hedwig (RO-DE) speculated that the zygospores of Spirogyra were formed as the result of a
sexual act (719).
Charles De Geer (SE) described what was undoubtedly an Empusa muscae (phycomycete) infection of
the housefly (1576).
Johann Hedwig (RO-DE) recognized sexual organs of mosses. The
father of bryology: the present delimitation of the bryophata was established
by him in 1782 (716; 717).
Francesco Buzzi (IT) briefly described the portion of the eye
later called the macula lutea (259).
Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (DE) discovered
the limbus luteus (macula lutea) in the human eye. This is an
oval lemon-yellow area of the sensory retina. He observed a central depression
in the macula, which he called the foramen centrale (fovea centralis) (1482; 1483; 1485; 1486).
These observations were made in 1791.
Francesco Gennari (IT) was the first to demonstrate the laminar
structure of the cerebral cortex when he published work on the lineola albidior. These are fibrous
lines in the cortex of the brain (605). Gennari
made this observation in 1776.
Felix Vicq d'Azyr (FR) independently made the same discovery a few
years later (1692).
Heinrich Obersteiner (AT) would, in 1888, name this white line the
stripe of Gennari (1147).
Marcus Elieser Bloch (DE) published a 12-volume, beautifully
illustrated comprehensive work on fishes. The first three volumes describe
fishes in Germany and were entitled Oeconomische Naturgeschichte der Fische
Deutschlands, the remaining volumes dealt with fishes from other parts of
the world and were entitled Naturgeschichte der ausländischen Fische (161). Acanthurus blochii is a fish named in
his honor.
Epidemic influenza (grippe)
is present in England and Scotland. ref
Epidemic typhus (camp fever) is reported at Carlisle
in England (Heysham).
1783
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) and James Watt (GB) were among the
first to determine that water is not an element but rather a compound (916; 1769).
Johann Gottlieb Walter (DE) presented several excellent
copperplate tables of the thoracic and abdominal nerves, which have become
famous for accuracy and careful preparation. He presented the best tables of
the sympathetic nerves up to his day. It appears that Walter was the first who
represented in his cuts the cervico-uterine ganglia, i.e., lateral ganglia of
the uterus.
Walter was the first who presented a ganglion on the lateral
borders of the cervix uteri. Hence these nerve masses or nodes should be known
by the eponym "Walter's cervico-uterine ganglion" (1762).
Alexander Monro secundus
(GB) discovered the sensory ganglia on the posterior roots of the spinal nerves
and described the connection between the lateral and third ventricles of the
brain—since called the foramina of Monro.
He hypothesized that the quantity of the blood circulating within the
cranium must always be constant (1081; 1082).
George Kellie (GB) proved Monro correct. This would become known
as the Monro-Kellie doctrine (852).
George Burrows (GB) questioned the accuracy of the hypothesis of
fixed blood volume and introduced into the concept a third element—the
cerebrospinal fluid, however, he was in general accord with the major thesis
that the intracranial volume is at all times fairly constant, accepting the
view that the bony containers of the central nervous system are rigid, thus
preventing alteration in the total volume of the tissues and fluids within them
(255).
Axel Key (SE) and Gustaf Retzius (SE) emphasized that the
cerebrospinal fluid of the spinal subarachnoid space communicated freely with
that of the cerebral ventricles and cranial subarachnoid space (857).
Leonard Erskine Hill (GB) concluded that "the volume of the
blood in the brain is in all physiological conditions but slightly variable."
(757)
Lewis Hill Weed (US) notes, "Thus there exist local
reciprocal volume-adjustments within the cranio-vertebral system on change in
posture—not reciprocal pressure-adjustments. This physiological arrangement may
possibly be the saving mechanism which allowed the four-footed horizontal
mammal to become a vertical, erect organism, for in spite of an apparent
dislocation of a long column of cerebrospinal fluid, with its accompanying
pressure-changes about the nervous system, the intracranial venous system
retains an effective pressure capable of returning blood to the systemic
circulation. But was not there a great physiological hazard when the first
vertebrate, with a horizontal nervous system, developed mobility of neck and
head, so that the head could be raised above the rest of the nervous system,
thus occasioning a dislocation of cerebrospinal fluid from the head-end of the
organism and altering so markedly the pressure and volume-relationships about
the neural axis? Fortunately, nature saw to it that a rigid skull and vertebral
column were provided: even to-day we should be thankful that we stand erect
under the protection and aegis of a Monro-Kellie doctrine." (1771)
Jean-Baptiste de Sénac (FR) correlated gross irregularities
(palpitation) with mitral valve disease (441).
Claude Pouteau (FR) noted that there is a relationship between tuberculosis and curvature of the spine (1241).
1783- 1792
Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (PG-BR) undertook biological
exploration, primarily in the Amazon basin of Brazil. He described flora,
fauna, and native humans within this region (529).
1784
René Just Haüy (FR) hypothesized that an identity or difference in
crystalline form implied an identity or difference in chemical composition.
This was the beginning of the science of crystallography (707).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) discovered citric acid (1402).
Thomas Jefferson (US) wrote Notes on the State of Virginia (1784)
that refuted some of Buffon's mistakes about New World fauna (841). As U.S. President, he
dispatched the Lewis and Clark expedition to the American West (1804).
Antonio Scarpa (IT) was a pioneer in the study of hermaphroditism (1382).
John Hunter (GB) in his article "Observations on the
inflammation of the internal venous layer" drew attention to thrombosis
detected after venipunctures, complex fractures, and surgeries. Thereafter,
Hunter observed venous inflammation and regarded it as the cause for concomitant venous thrombosis. Later, he
found thrombosis without suppuration of vessel walls, and called it spontaneous venous wall inflammation (805; 808). This paper
was written in 1784.
Jirí Procháska; Georg Procháska (CZ) described the thalamus of the
brain as a relay station of sensory and motor impulses that result in reflexion. This provided the first link
between afferent and efferent limbs in the reflex arc. It was John Augustus
Unzer (DE) who coined the term reflex
to describe the sensory-motor reaction (1613). It was
Galen who coined the term thalamus.
Felix Vicq-d'Azyr (FR) discovered the substantia nigra in 1784 (1691).
Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (DE) alluded to this structure (1748). Note: The substantia nigra (black substance)
is a brain structure located in the mesencephalon (midbrain) that plays an
important role in reward, addiction, and movement.
Michael Underwood (GB), in 1784, was the first to describe what
later became known as infantile paralysis (1610; 1611).
Jakob Heine (DE) was the first to recognize poliomyelitis as a clinical disease entity. He separated the
disease from other forms of paralysis, recognized
the spinal cord localization of the
pathology,
and termed it infantile spinal paralysis (722).
Karl Oskar Medin (SE) was the first to
note the epidemic character of polio when he observed
an outbreak of 44 cases in Stockholm in 1887. The disease
was sometimes called Heine-Medin's
disease before it became generally known as poliomyelitis (1047).
Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (FR), in 1855, localized
the lesion in polio to the anterior
horn cells (489; 490).
Ivar Wickman (DE) was the first to produce evidence confirming the
infectious nature of poliomyleitis (1805).
Karl Landsteiner (AT-US) and Erwin Popper (DE) demonstrated that a
filterable agent (virus) from a human case of poliomyelitis would cause paralysis if injected intraperitoneally
into monkeys (902; 903). This was
considered proof that poliovirus is the etiological agent of poliomyelitis.
Constantin Levaditi (RO-FR) and Karl Landsteiner (AT-US) were the
first to isolate the poliomyelitis virus and were among the first to use
monkeys in polio research (935).
1785
"Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells." William Cowper (337)
James Hutton (GB) communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh
his Theory of the Earth, which laid
down the general principles of geology, and in so doing, stated that the earth
is very old. He maintained that there were three main geological processes at
work in the world: (1) sediments that are deposited, mainly in the oceans,
become the layers of stratified sedimentary rocks, or strata, (2) volcanic
action uplifts strata to form mountains, and (3) once strata have been elevated
they are subject to erosion by wind, rain, and rivers. "There seemed to be
no sign of a beginning, and no prospect of an end," he wrote (824-827). The idea
that the earth is very old was essential to Darwin’s concept of evolution. Note: Hutton's writing was so difficult
to understand that the greatness of his insights was not appreciated until John
Playfair (GB) wrote a book explaining them (1222). See, Shen Kuo, 1088.
Count Claude-Louis Berthollet (FR) noted that when animal
materials are exposed to nitric acid a considerable amount of azote (nitrogen) is released. He
concluded that nitrogen is common to organisms and its presence explains why
ammonia is formed during the putrefaction of plant or animal material.
Berthollet discovered methane and ethylene (125).
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) found a discrepancy between the
amounts of oxygen removed from the air and the carbon dioxide exhaled during
respiration. He concluded that some of the oxygen combines with the blood or a
portion of hydrogen to form water (919).
Peter Christian Abildgaard (DE) first described Borna disease, in Southeastern Germany,
as a fatal neurologic affliction of horses (9).
Otto Alexander Siedamgrotzky (DE) and Mathias Schelegel (DE)
described the disease in 1896 when horses were the only known victims (1466).
Wilhelm Zwick (DE), Oskar Seifried (DE), and Jürgen Witte (DE)
injected a certifiably bacterium-free filtrate from horses with Borna disease into the brains of
rabbits--and thereby gave them Borna
disease. They found they could infect rats, guinea pigs, and rhesus monkeys
too. Apparently, the virus was highly flexible, though in nature it was still
known only as a scourge of German and Swiss horses and sheep (1859; 1860).
Liv Bode (DE), Sabine Riegel (DE), Hanns Ludwig (DE), Jay D.
Amsterdam (DE), Werner Lange (DE), Hilary Koprowski (US), Ron Ferszt (DE),
Gerald Czech (DE), Ralf Durrwald (DE), and Fedik A. Rantam (DE) presented
evidence to support the hypothesis that Bornavirus infection might contribute
somehow to the syndrome of major
depressive illness by altering neuronal cells in the limbic system of many
animals including man (165-167).
1786
"The history of child lead poisoning in the past century in
this country is a good example of how powerful economic interests can prevent
the implementation of a 'useful Truth.'" Benjamin Franklin in Letter to a
Friend need details
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (DE-SE) showed sulfur to be a constituent of
proteins (1403).
Otho Fridericus Müller; Otto Friderich Müller; Otto Friderich
Mueller (DK) studied the bacteria and succeeded in discovering many of the
details of their structure. He left drawings so accurate that the bacteria he
showed can be identified today as belonging to one or another of the chief
divisions. He was the first person to seriously attempt to divide them into
categories and classify them after the fashion of Linnaeus. He introduced the
terms bacillum and spirillum
(1109).
William Cumberland Cruikshank (GB) described the lymphatic vessels
in man and discussed their function (346).
John Hunter (GB) wrote Observations
on Certain Parts of the Animal Oeconomy, which contains his studies on the
descent of the testis into the scrotum, the structure of the placenta, the
mechanism of digestion, the air sac in birds, the secondary sexual
characteristics of the freemartin and pheasant, and his original description of
the olfactory nerves (804).
Armand Marie Jacques de Chastenet Puysegur (FR), a disciple of
Franz Anton Mesmer (AT), realized that Mesmer’s method of treating the sick
tapped into the power of suggestion and the intense desire by some to believe
in a cure. He realized that this closely paralleled what was known as artificial somnambulism (hypnosis) and
developed a methodology for producing it. Mesmerism,
animal magnetism, and hypnotism
became virtually synonymous (1266).
Felix Vicq d'Azyr (FR) discovered the locus caeruleus (a pigmented eminence in the superior angle of the
floor of the fourth ventricle (1692).
James Sims describes a scarlet
fever epidemic in London.
1787
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR), Claude Louis Berthollet (FR),
Louis Bernars Guyton de Morveau (FR), and Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR)
authored Methode de Nomenclature Chimique
in which they established the principles whereby every substance is assigned a
definite name based on the elements of which it is composed (433).
Adamo Fabbroni (IT) wrote a book on fermentation and pointed out
that air is not necessary for fermentation to proceed. He did not regard
alcohol as a constituent of the grape nor a product of the fermentation, but
the product of reciprocal action of the two reagents that cause fermentation (518).
Johann Hedwig (RO-DE) established with certainty the existence of
fungal asci (he called them theca) and ascospores. He described and illustrated them in 20 members of the
genus Octosporus (718).
Christian Godfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (DE) coined the terms ascus in 1817 and spore somewhat later (1711).
George Adams (the younger) (GB) and others devised microtomes
capable of cutting tissue sections, as thin as 1/2000 of an inch thick (15).
Antonio Scarpa (IT) studied the connection between the vagus nerve
and its accessory showing that the accessory fibers arise from the medulla
oblongata (1383).
1788-1789
Europe experienced an influenza
(grippe) pandemic. ref
1788
Charles Blagden (GB) discovered that the depression of the
freezing point of water by inorganic salts is in proportion to the amount
dissolved (152; 153).
Olof Swartz (SE) wrote Nova
Genera et Species Plantarum and Flora
Indiae Occidentalis I-III in which he included nearly 900 species of plants
new to science at the time (1551; 1552).
Thomas Cawley (GB) published the first evidence of a link between diabetes and the pancreas. He observed the
development of diabetes in people who
had sustained injury to the pancreas (283).
1789
"When by
exercise and movement one increases the consumption of oxygen gas in the lungs
the circulation accelerates, of which one can easily convince oneself by the
pulse rate, and, in general, when a person is breathing without hindrance, the
quantity of oxygen consumed is proportional to the increase in the number of
pulsations multiplied by the number of inspirations." Antoine
Laurent Lavoisier (917)
Despite the
inaccuracy of this original statement it links the uptake of oxygen during
exercise to cardiac and pulmonary function. It is this statement that is the
basis of modern cardiopulmonary exercise testing, the heart, the lungs and the
circulation becoming inexorably linked in function.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) named the inflammable gas discovered by Henry Cavendish (GB) hydrogen,
because it forms water when it is burned in the presence of oxygen (919).
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) in speaking of chemical reactions
noted, "that there is the same quantity of matter before and after the
operation." He established that organic compounds consist of carbon,
hydrogen, and oxygen. He named oxygen and led the way to the eventual overthrow
of the theory of phlogiston. He stated that vinous fermentation separates the
elements of sugar into two portions. One part he believed to be oxygenated at
the expense of the other so as to form carbon dioxide, while the other part,
being deoxygenated in favor of the former, is converted into the combustible
substance alcohol. If it were possible to reunite alcohol and carbon dioxide we
ought, in Lavoisier’s opinion, to be able to reconstruct sugar (917; 918).
Olof Rudbeck the elder (SE) was honored by having a genus of
plants, Rudbeckia, named for him (1474).
Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (FR) made the first real progress
toward grouping the genera of angiosperms into natural families. This is his
most famous and important work, in which he sets forth his classification
system for the phanerogams, which overthrew that of Linnaeus (416). He was the
founder of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris that became the largest
herbarium in the world. Jussieu was the first to recognize the nature of
liverworts and separate them from mosses.
Guillaume Antoine Olivier (FR) wrote Entomologie, or Histoire Naturelle des Insectes (1152).
Gilbert White (GB) was the first to use bird song to distinguish
birds which otherwise look very much alike. He described the field, house, and
mole crickets, the parasitic behavior of the cuckoo, migration of swallows, and
Britain’s harvest mouse. He discovered the nocturnal bat (Nyctalus noctula) and
explained that the blindworm (Anguis
fragilis)
is not a snake because it produces viviparous young (it is a legless lizard).
Many of White’s thorough and beautiful descriptions of natural phenomena have
never been improved upon (1800).
Richard Owen (GB) reported that John Hunter (GB), in 1785, was
performing experiments to determine the blood-supply for the growing antler of
a deer when he discovered collateral
circulation of the blood, one of the most important rediscoveries in
surgery (1163). This led
directly to his invention of the Hunterian
operation for popliteal aneurism. On
December 12, 1785, he ligated the superficial femoral artery high in the thigh
in the area now known as Hunter's canal to treat a popliteal aneurysm. The
patient did well; the aneurysm shrunk to a hard knot, and the limb survived.
His report of this operation was made for him by his brother-in-law Everard
Home (GB) (773).
The principle of collateral circulation had been known at least
from the time of Celsus in the first century.
Robert Darby (GB) is credited with the earliest medical use of
cod-liver oil; he used it in the treatment of rheumatism (664).
A widespread epidemic of influenza
(grippe) hit New England, New York and Nova Scotia in the fall of 1789. Most
deaths appear to have been from secondary pneumonia (875).
c.
1790
Henry Cavendish (GB) discovered that water is composed of hydrogen
and oxygen (281).
Jan Ingen-Housz; Jan Ingenhousz (NL) discovered Brownian motion
before Robert Brown did. While studying algae under a coverslip he noted their
random motion (1627). See, Robert Brown, 1828.
1790
"The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer lies here, food for
worms; but the work shall not be lost, for it will appear once more in a new
and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author." Benjamin
Franklin (US) Epitaph on his tombstone
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (DE) wrote Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu Erklären [An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of
Plants] in which he coined the word morphology
and advanced the theory that all plant structures are modifications of one
fundamental organ, the leaf (1716).
Anders Adolf Retzius (SE) is the person most responsible for
placing the hagfishes in their proper taxonomic location among the primitive
fishes (1308-1310).
Robert Hamilton (GB) wrote of orchitis
in mumps and suggested that the central nervous system was involved (679).
James Lucas (GB) described the first case of post-measles encephalomyelitis (971).
Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (DE) later named this acute disseminated encephalitis (1794).
Thomas Barlow (GB) and Francis G. Penrose (GB) described the
pathologic changes attendant to early-disseminated
myelitis or acute disseminated
encephalitis (ADEM) (79).
E. Weston Hurst (AU) improved the pathological description of ADEM
and differentiated it from acute
hemorrhagic leukoencephalitis (820).
Note: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
(ADEM) is a brief but intense attack of inflammation (swelling) in the brain
and spinal cord and occasionally the optic nerves that damages the brain’s
myelin (the white coating of nerve fibers). Other names used to refer to ADEM
include post-infectious encephalomyelitis
and immune-mediated encephalomyelitis.
John Hunter (GB), in 1790, introduced artificial feeding using a
flexible tube inserted to the stomach (806).
Robert Willan (GB) relates the first recorded case of anorexia
nervosa in a man. This was the medical history of a young man of a studious
and melancholic turn, who, because of pains in his stomach and a constant
sensation of heat internally began a severe course of abstinence lasting sixty
days due also to some mistaken notions in religion. Both the young man and his
sister subsequently died of their affliction (1808).
Johann Peter Frank (DE), professor at the University of Pavia
(modern Italy), in the graduation address stressed that poverty is the chief cause
of both disease and crime (575). This talk
is a landmark in the history of public health.
c.
1791
Francois Beeldsnijder (NL) built the first achromatic lens for a
compound microscope. He used a flint-glass negative lens sandwiched between two
crown-glass positive lenses to produce an objective of 21mm focal length
capable of resolving 0.01mm without color halos (1624). Spherical
aberration remained a serious problem. See,
Lister, 1830.
1791
Jean Senebier (CH) stated that the presence of air, specifically
oxygen, accelerated the development of rancidity in fats (1452).
Joseph Louis Comte Lagrange (IT-FR) disagreed with Lavoisier’s
deduction that during animal respiration all the heat of combustion is released
in the lungs. Lagrange stated that the heat is probably released in all parts
of the body where the blood circulates.
He concluded, "…that the blood in passing through the lungs dissolved
the oxygen of the respiratory air, and that this dissolved oxygen was carried
by the blood in the arteries and thence to the veins; that during the flow of
the blood, the oxygen gradually left its dissolved state to combine partially
with the carbon and hydrogen of the blood and form water and the carbonic acid
which is released from the blood as soon as the venous blood leaves the heart
to enter the lungs." (704)
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT) had reached a similar conclusion (1497).
George Fordyce (GB) was the first to publish the results of animal
experiments in which a control was used. He studied chickens and concluded that
they required stones in their gizzard for grinding seeds. He also studied
canaries and concluded that they required a calcareous substance in their diet
at the time of egg laying otherwise the hen was frequently killed by the eggs
not passing forward properly (566).
Luigi Galvani; Luigi Aloisius Galvani (IT) and Alessandro Volta
(IT) argued over the twitching of frogs' legs. This led to an interest in
investigating the electrical phenomena of animals. Luigi Galvani (IT) is
credited with discovering animal electricity and its effect on muscular motion.
Quoting Galvani, "…I think it is sufficiently established that there is
electricity in animals, which … we may be permitted to call by the general name
of animal electricity." (595-597). See, Caldani, 1757
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (DE) confirmed
Galvani’s experiments on animal electricity (1730).
Jean-Guillaume Bruguière (FR) revived the name Echinodermata and
included it along with Infusoria, Intestina, Mollusca, Testacea, and Zoophyta
as an order of Vermes (244).
Pieter Camper; Petrus Camper (NL) invented craniometry and an
elastic truss for hernia (267; 268). Camper
made comparative studies of the ear in fishes, reptiles, and mammals,
discovered the significance of the air sacs in the bones of birds, and compared
the skeletal and muscular systems of the orangutan and man (266; 1079).
Georg Joseph Beer (AT) wrote the first monograph ever published
dealing with ocular signs of systemic disease. It includes: lacrimal fistulas, trichiasis, adhesions of the
lids, lid ulcers, epiphora, and ocular inflammations. He illustrates how smallpox (red plague),
measles, venereal afflictions, gout,
rheumatic diseases, scrofula, and dietary deficiencies affect the eyes
(107).
The following year he described the symptoms of glaucoma and noted the luminosity of the
fundus in aniridia; presented for the
first time the general principles of treating post-traumatic inflammations, including penetrating and perforating
injuries as well as injuries to the orbit, and described the first use of the
loupe for the examination of the living eye (108).
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (AT) very likely died of epidemic acute post-streptococcal
glomerulonephritis (537; 981).
Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (DE) was one of the first people to
describe achrondoplasia (1480).
1792-1799
Yellow
fever
ravaged cities all along the east coast of the United States, including
Charleston, Philadelphia, New Haven, New York, and Baltimore. The outbreak in
Philadelphia in the summer of 1793 was the most severe, and most memorable. The
disease was probably introduced from ships carrying French refugees who were
fleeing turmoil in Santo Domingo, and then spread by mosquitoes that bred in
stagnant water that in years with more rain had been waterways and canals. Ten
percent of the population in that city died, about 5,000 people altogether. The
new city of Washington DC was under construction at the time, and Philadelphia
was the interim capital. Most of the government officials fled the city, including
George Washington and the members of his cabinet. Various treatments were
tried, none of them very effective, and controversy raged over the best way to
prevent and treat the disease. Cold weather finally brought an end to the
outbreak, in late October (875).
During a
three-month period 10,000 people died of yellow
fever in Philadelphia, PA (270).
1792
William Gullen (GB) discussed peritonitis,
meaning, not only the inflammations affecting the peritoneum lining the cavity
of the abdomen, but also those affecting the extensions of this membrane in the
omentum and mesentery (657).
Vrachevnie
Viedomosti,
the first Russian medical periodical was founded.
1793
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (FR) and Armand Séguin (FR), in a
majestic example of deductive reasoning, wrote, "In general, respiration
is nothing but a slow combustion of carbon and hydrogen, which is entirely
similar to that which occurs in a lighted lamp or candle, and that, from this
point of view, animals that respire are true combustible bodies that burn and
consume themselves.
In respiration, as in combustion, it is the atmospheric air which
furnishes oxygen and caloric; but since in respiration it is the substance
itself of the animal, it is the blood, which furnishes the combustible matter,
if animals did not regularly replace by means of food elements that which they
lose by respiration, the lamp would soon lack oil, and the animal would perish,
as a lamp is extinguished when it lacks nourishment.
The proofs of this identity of effects in respiration and
combustion are immediately deducible from experiment. Indeed, upon leaving the
lung, the air that has been used for respiration no longer contains the same
amount of oxygen; it contains not only carbonic acid gas but also much more
water than it contained before it had been inspired. Now since the vital air
can only convert itself into carbonic acid by the addition of carbon; since it
can only convert itself into water by the addition of hydrogen; since this
double combustion cannot occur without the loss, by the vital air, of a portion
of its specific caloric, it follows that the effect of respiration is to
extract from the blood a portion of carbon and hydrogen, and to deposit there a
portion of its specific caloric which, during circulation, distributes itself
with the blood in all parts of the animal economy, and maintains that nearly
constant temperature observed in all animals that breathe.
One may say that this analogy between combustion and respiration
has not escaped the notice of the poets, or rather the philosophers of
antiquity, and which they had expounded and interpreted. This fire stolen from
heaven, this torch of Prometheus, does not only represent an ingenious and
poetic idea, it is a faithful picture of the operations of nature, at least for
animals that breathe; one may therefore say, with the ancients, that the torch
of life lights itself at the moment the infant breathes for the first time, and
it does not extinguish itself except at death.
In considering such happy agreement, one might sometimes be
tempted to believe that the ancients had indeed penetrated further than we
think into the sanctuary of knowledge, and that the myth is nothing but the
allegory, in which they hid the great truths of medicine and physics.
We conclude this memoir with a consoling reflection. To be
rewarded by mankind and to pay one’s tribute to the nation, it is not essential
to be called to those public and brilliant offices that contribute to the
organization and regeneration of empires. The physicist may also, in the
silence of his laboratory and his study, perform patriotic functions; he can
hope, through his labors, to diminish the mass of ills that afflict humanity,
to increase its happiness and welfare; and if he has only contributed, through
the new avenues he has opened, to prolong the average life-span of human beings
by a few years, even by a few days, he could also aspire to the glorious title
of benefactor of humanity." (919; 1440) The final
paragraph of this memoir is particularly poignant in light of the fact that on
the 8th of May 1794, in one of the great excesses of the French Revolution,
Lavoisier was guillotined.
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR) discovered that brain tissue
contains both proteins and lipids (401).
Thomas Young (GB) and Richard Brocklesby (GB) were the first to
discover the way the lens of the eye changes shape (accommodation) in focusing
on objects at different distances. They described the reason for astigmatism
—fuzzy vision— as irregularities of the curvature of the cornea of the eye.
They concluded that there are three primary colors out of which all others can
be created, and these must correspond to three distinct receptors in the eye.
They were among the first people to calculate the wavelength of visible light.
They contributed to the understanding of surface tension and elastic
substances. Some consider this the origin of the wave theory of light (1838; 1840).
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (DE) supported Young’s work
and according to the Young-Helmholtz (trichromatic) theory, vision depends on
the three different sets of retinal fibers responsible for perception of red,
green, and violet. The loss of either red, green, or violet as color perceptive
elements in the retina causes an inability to perceive a primary color or any
color of which it forms a part (1726; 1727).
Selig Hecht (PL-US) developed a trichromatic theory for color
vision in which there were three types of cones with very close spectral
sensitivities (714).
Matthew Baillie (GB) established morbid anatomy as an independent
branch of the medical sciences. He suggested a relationship between rheumatic fever and valvular heart disease, gave the first description of chronic obstructive pulmonary emphysema,
the first clear description of the morbid anatomy and symptoms of gastric ulcer, and one of the earliest
and best descriptions of pulmonary
lesions of tuberculosis (70-72). This book is
the first English contribution to correlate clinical observations with
pathology. See, Marcello Donati, 1586
Matthew Baillie (GB) gave the first report of a deadly bowel
disease which corresponds to what is now known as ulcerative colitis (70). See, Samuel Wiks 1859.
John Hunter (GB) studied loose bodies in joints, pseudoarthroses
and fracture healing, where he described the transformation from fracture
hematoma to fibrocartilaginous callus to the deposition of new bone,
trabeculation, reestablishment of the medullary canal and the resorption of
excess bony tissue (774; 808).
Yellow fever returned to
Philadelphia, killing thousands of city residents over a span of several
months. As the then-capital and largest city of the United States, Philadelphia
was home to both local and federal governments, most of whose members
(including President George Washington) fled to escape the disease. The total
number of cases was estimated to be approximately 11,000; the final mortality
rate for the city was 10% (1050). Note: In 1799, the
Philadelphia Lazaretto Quarantine Station on Tinicum Island was built largely
in response to the city's 1793 yellow fever epidemic.
c. 1794
Tobias E. Lovits; Tovy Yegorovich Lowitz (DE-RU) was a master of
the techniques for forming crystals having himself discovered super cooling,
super saturation and others. He isolated strontium independently of A.
Crawford; isolated acetic acid, anhydride alcohol, and pure sulfur ether;
discovered dichloracetic and trichloracetic acid; was the first to isolate glucose
from honey; and discovered activated charcoal and its adsorptive properties (963).
1794
"This operation of the body, termed inflammation, requires
our greatest attention, for it is one of the most common and most extensive in
its causes, and it becomes itself the cause of many local effects, both
salutary and diseased." John Hunter (807)
Elizabeth Fulhame (GB) published
ideas that are recognizable today as the first suggestions of catalysis (586).
Erasmus Darwin (GB), the grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin,
wrote Zoönomia; or, The Laws of Organic
Life in which he proposed the gradual evolution of animals and plants. Zoönomia has been called the first
consistent all-embracing hypothesis of evolution
(384).
Lazzaro Spallanzani (IT), in 1793, caught several wild bats,
blinded them, marked, and released the bats to recapture a few days later.
Spallanzani recaptured these bats and upon examining the stomach contents "discovered
that the blind bats had been just as successful at catching insects as their
sighted brethren". It was then that he discovered that bats are not
dependent on eyesight, and their ears are what guide the bat throughout the
night. In his journal, he concluded: "thus, blinded bats are able to use
their ears when they hunt insects... this discovery is incredible." (1495)
Louis Jurine (CH) repeated Spallanzani’s experiments concluding
that ears are the all-important organs in the bat’s perception. "The organ
of hearing appears to supply that of sight in the discovery of bodies, and to
furnish these animals with different sensations to direct flight and enable
them to avoid obstacles which may present themselves." (1199; 1200)
Hiram Stevens Maxim (GB) advanced the idea that bats use reflected
low-frequency sounds generated by their wing beats to detect objects (1028).
Hamilton Hartridge (GB) hypothesized that bats emit sounds of high
frequencies and short wavelengths (ultrasonic sounds) to avoid objects during
flight (694).
Donald Redfield Griffin (US) and Robert Galambos (US) discovered
that bats use sonar echolocation to navigate, locate food, and orientate
themselves in space. Griffin coined the term echolocation (646; 647).
Antonio Scarpa (IT) illustrated the human glossopharyngeal, vagus,
hypoglossal, and cardiac nerves, being the first to demonstrate cardiac
innervation (1385).
John Hunter (GB) discovered: 1) an elevated erythrocyte
sedimentation rate in inflammatory blood, 2) that the blood vessels in the
embryo of red-blooded animals originally contain colorless blood, and 3) that a
subnormal blood supply is one of the most important endogenous factors
contributing to wound infection. He appreciated that a patent ductus arteriosus and an atrial
septal defect are life threatening, described a case of Fallot’s tetralogy, and observed that
the ultimate cause of cardiac failure in a case of aortic valve incompetence may be in the myocardium rather than in
an associated valvular lesion. Hunter believed that trauma was the cause of
suppuration in wounds, i.e., bruises, mortifications, sloughs, whether the
violence is due to a gunshot wound or to a surgical trauma. He wrote, "…it
is impossible that such a sore can heal while there is a slough to separate."
(807; 808)
John Hunter (GB) stated the principle of reciprocal innervation of
antagonistic muscles— "Whatever becomes a stimulus to one set of muscles,
becomes a cause of relaxation to those which act in a contrary direction." (807; 808)
Charles Scott Sherrington (GB) developed a theory of reflex
behavior of antagonistic muscles which helped explain the way the body, under
the coordinating guidance of the nervous system, behaved as a unit (Sherrington’s law =
The law of reciprocal innervation: when one set of muscles is stimulated,
muscles working against the activity of the first will be inhibited) (1465).
John Hunter (GB) introduced the doctrine of phlebitis and an
appreciation of pyemia in his classic paper on inflammation of the internal
coats of the veins. In 1794, defined inflammation as: "This
operation of the body, termed inflammation, requires our greatest attention,
for it is one of the most common and most extensive in its causes, and it
becomes itself the cause of many local effects, both salutary and diseased. "Inflammation
in itself is not to be considered as a disease, but as a salutary operation,
consequent either to some violence or some disease." (807; 808) See, Celsus in c. 30 B.C.E.
Hunter rediscovered the system of vessels known as lymphatics.
Through careful dissection and injections, he established their anatomy and
physiology as a separate system. He demonstrated that milk and fluids colored
with indigo were absorbed by the lacteals but not by the veins. He taught that
the function of these vessels was absorption and that they were not
continuations of the arteries, a suggestion made by his brother, William Hunter
(GB). He was one of the first to show that lymphatic flow eventually empties
into the blood circulation at the left subclavian vein. Prior to this it was
thought that the flow was the other way—out of the blood and into the
lymphatics (797; 805; 807; 808). See, Thomas Bartholin; Bartholinus, 1653
and Olof Rudbeck, 1655.
John Hunter (GB) made studies of tendons, which laid the
foundation for the cure of clubfeet. He discovered the branches of the
olfactory nerves, the branches of the fifth nerve, the course of the arteries
in the gravid uterus, and the presence of lymphatic vessels in birds. He coined
the phrase sexually transmitted disease.
(808).
Johann Peter Frank (DE) described patients characterized by “long
continued abnormally increased secretion of nonsaccharine urine which is not
caused by a diseased condition of the kidneys” and introduced the term diabetes
insipidus derived from the french word “insipide” (576).
Alfred Erich Frank (DE) showed that the posterior lobe of the
pituitary gland produces vasopressin, an antidiuretic hormone, which
controls diabetes insipidus (573).
Reinhard von den Velden (DE), A. Farini (IT), B. Ceccaroni (IT)
Walter Frey (DE), K. Kumpiess (DE), Artur von Konschegg (DE), and Ernest Joseph
Schuster (DE) discovered the antidiuretic effect of posterior lobe pituitary
gland extract (vasopressin). Each had patients with disease or damage to
the pituitary accompanied by polyuria and, interpreting this to be due to the
gland’s impaired ; function, they easily controlled the excessive water loss by
administration of extracts of the posterior lobe
(522; 582; 1710; 1734).
Percival B. Bailey (US), Frédéric Bremer (US) and Stephen Walter Ranson
(US) described a supraoptico-hypophyseal tract in animals that connects the
hypothalamic supraoptic nuclei to the posterior pituitary and showed that an
injury to this tract produced diabetes insipidus (69; 1272).
1795
"The matter of this world is formed by necessity and chance."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1717). See, Democritus (GR), c. 500 B.C.E. (894)
The French government adopted the metric system. The
concept originated with Gabriel Mouton (FR) who proposed
a decimal system of measurement in 1670. In 1790, the French
Revolutionary National Assembly asked the French Academy of
Science to "deduce an invariable standard for all the measures and all
the weights."
Joseph Louis Comte Lagrange (IT-FR) headed the French commission,
which created the metric system of weights and measures (708).
William Cruickshank (GB), in 1795, introduced chlorine into
Woolwich Military Hospital as a disinfectant. "It is observed that the
oxygenated muriatic acid gas was found to destroy the offensive smell of sores,
that it destroyed specific contagion, and could be easily obtained, and very
safely used. We had, therefore, given it a preference to other things; and in
order that it may be more generally tried, we must insist on Mr. Cruickshank's
manner of procuring and using it in the wards of the hospital." Based on
the description of how it was produced, the active disinfectant was doubtless
sodium hypochlorite. (1335)
Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (FR) constructed
a very modern concept of the mollusks. He divided invertebrates into
mollusques, crustacés, insectes, vers, échinodermes, and zoophytes. Mollusques
were subdivided into Céphalopodes, Gastéropodes, which included both naked and
shelled forms and parasitic copepods, and Acéphales, under which were arranged
not only bivalves, but also tunicates, brachiopods, and barnacles (354-356).
Marcus Elieser Bloch (DE) wrote Systema Ichthyologica, which listed approximately 500 species of
fish. Of these, 267 were presented as new to science or needing new names. Many
of his suggested names are still valid and in use. In addition, he introduced
19 new generic names, many of which were accepted (162). He is one
of the most important ichthyologists of the 18th century.
Thomas Andrew Knight (GB) was a pioneer in the grafting of fruit
trees (868; 872).
Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (DE) noted that, "Carcinoma of the
lips occurs most frequently where men indulge in pipe smoking; the lower lip is
particularly affected by cancer when it is compressed between the tobacco pipe
and the teeth." (1481)
Thomas Beddoes (GB) and his assistant, in 1795, experimented on
themselves to demonstrate that nitrous oxide has anesthetic powers (106).
Humphry Davy (GB) inhaled nitrous oxide and described the
exhilarating effect as well as its anesthetic property and suggested that it
might be useful in surgery. He developed a method for its synthesis (393).
Horace Wells (US) and Gardner Q. Colton (US), in 1844,
administered nitrous oxide gas and performed the operation of extracting a
tooth painlessly (52). This predates Morton’s use of
ether by two years but postdates the use of ether by William E. Clark in 1842.
Pinckney W. Ellsworth (US), in 1848, amputated the leg of Henry A.
Goodale, age 14, as Horace Wells (US) anesthetized him with nitrous oxide (1582). See: Priestley, 1772
Philip Syng Physick (US), in a
footnote in a medical journal, is credited with performing the first
human-to-human blood transfusion, although his work was not published (1544).
Johann Christian Reil (DE) founded the first German journal dealing
with physiology, Archiv für die
Physiologie, which was to present works in physics, chemistry, histology,
biology, and comparative anatomy.
1796
Pierre André Latreille (FR) introduced the “natural method,” in
which numerous characters are considered during the classification of insects,
arachnids, and crustaceans. It was he who introduced the
family as a rank intermediate between order and genus (909).
Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (DE) was the founder of
homeopathy; a concept expounded in his work Organon
der Rationellen Heilkunde (667). Homeopathy
is characterized by three concepts; first, the doctrine of similars, namely
that diseases are curable by those drugs which produce effects on the body
similar to the symptoms of the diseases; second, that the effect of drugs is
increased by giving them in minute doses and; third, the notion that most
chronic diseases are only a manifestation of suppressed itch or psora.
Johann Christian Reil (DE) described the insula (island of Reil). This is a triangular area of the cerebral
cortex, which forms the floor of the lateral cerebral fossa (1294).
John Abernethy (GB) performed the first successful ligation of the
external iliac artery for aneurysm. It was not reported until later (7).
Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (FR) read two
papers in 1796. The first paper, Note on
the Species of Living and Fossil Elephants, put forward for the first time
a formal theory of extinctions. Cuvier's belief was that from time to time the
Earth experienced global catastrophes in which groups of creatures were wiped
out. He wrote, "All of these
facts, consistent among themselves, and not opposed by any report, seem to me
to prove the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of
catastrophe." This paper was first published in 1800 under
the title Mémoires sur les espèces d'éléphants vivants et fossiles (358).
In the second paper, Sur le
megatherium, published in 1804, he described and analyzed a large skeleton
found in Paraguay, which he would name Megatherium
americanum. Cuvier concluded that this skeleton represented yet another
extinct animal and, by comparing its skull with living species of tree-dwelling
sloths, that it was a kind of ground-dwelling giant sloth (360).
These two papers are a milestone in paleontology and comparative
anatomy.
1797
William Cruickshank (GB) carried out a destructive distillation of
sucrose and determined that it consists entirely of carbon, oxygen, and
hydrogen (345).
William Cruickshank (GB) was the first to prepare purified sugar
from the urine of a diabetic (1335).
William Hyde Wollaston (GB) characterized five chemically distinct
principle constituents of urinary calculi in humans. These were lithic or uric
acid, ammonium magnesium phosphate (triple phosphate), calcium oxalate, calcium
carbonate, and sodium urate, which he had also discovered in gouty joints (1828).
William Cumberland Cruikshank (GB) was the first to observe
mammalian eggs. He saw them in the oviduct of rabbits three days after mating (347). This
observation, for the first time, explained why for a period of time after
mating there was no sign of any conceptus
in the uterus of mammals.
Philippe Pineal (FR), in 1797, coined the word démence (dementia) to describe some
patients at the Bicetre (1589).
Jean-Etienne-Dominique
Esquirol
(FR) divided the dementias into acute, chronic, and senile
varieties (514).
Pierre Fine (FR) was, in 1797, the first to
construct a transverse colostomy by drawing out of a loop of the bowel and
securing the mesentery to the skin to decompress obstructions from carcinoma of
the rectum (532).
The Philosophical Magazine was founded.
1798
"Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher." From the poem, The Tables Turned, by William Wordsworth
Henry Cavendish (GB) calculated a value for gravitational force (1583).
Friedrich Justin Bertuch (DE) in volume 3 of his Das Bilder
Buch fer Kinder published in 1798, contained an illustration of the
Platypus, (Plate LXIV) and inluded a description and used the classified name given
by the German naturalist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s, which had not been
published by Blumenbach at that time. Blumenbach had classified the Platypus as
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus (128).
George Kearsley Shaw (GB) provided an early description of the
duck-billed platypus which he named Platypus anatinus (1463).
Everard Home (GB) reported that the Platypus males had internal
testes—like reptiles and unlike mammals—and that both males and females had a
cloaca, a common opening for the alimentary, excretory, and reproductive tracts
(777).
Edward Jenner (GB) developed a method for protecting against smallpox (red plague) which was far
safer than variolation—the introduction of dried pustular material from an
active case into a healthy person. The statement of a dairymaid, "I cannot
take the smallpox because I have had the cowpox" expressing the current
rural English view, impelled him to make a direct test of its correctness. On
14 May 1796, he transferred matter from a cowpox lesion on the arm of Sarah
Nelmes, a milkmaid, to a healthy boy, James Phipps, and in July followed it up
by exposing him to genuine smallpox virus. The boy failed to develop smallpox.
In a real sense, the history of modern public health started on that day, 14
May 1796.
This preliminary success in causing a harmless lesion to protect
against a similar, but vastly more serious smallpox justified repetition on a
larger scale. The first twenty-three cases were published in 1798, the method
being designated vaccination in
reference to the source (vacca, cow)
of the injected material. In Case IV – page 13 - of the Inquiry Jenner
describes a kind of reaction now known as anaphylaxis
- an allergic hypersensitivity reaction of the body to a foreign protein or
drug. Immediate recognition of the method’s worth led to wholesale vaccination
in Europe and America (842).
Thomas Jefferson (US), as President of the United States, wrote to
Edward Jenner (GB): “Future nations will know by history only that the
loathsome smallpox (red plague) has
existed and by you has been extirpated” (631).
Benjamin Jesty (GB) was belatedly given credit for administering
cowpox to artificially induce immunity against smallpox (red plague). When an
epidemic of smallpox (red plague) came to Yetminster in 1774, Jesty decided to
try to give his wife Elizabeth and two eldest sons immunity by infecting them
with cowpox. He took his family to a cow at a farm in nearby Chetnole that had
the disease, and using a darning needle, transferred pustular material from the
cow by scratching their arms. The boys had mild local reactions and quickly
recovered but his wife's arm became very inflamed and for a time her condition
gave cause for concern, although she too recovered fully in time. This
experiment preceeded that of Edward Jenner by 20 years (1184-1186; 1757).
Jobst Böse (DE) of Göttingen, Germany reported that milkmaids
enjoyed protection from smallpox (red plague) (186; 1224).
John Haslam (GB) appears to have given the first description of
general paralysis of the insane (703).
Antoine Laurent Jessé Bayle (FR) provided a comprehensive
description of general paresis, which
is sometimes referred to as paralytic dementia, general paralysis of the
insane, or "maladie de Bayle." Bayle argued that paralysis was only
one facet of a complex but distinct disorder, which included both mental and
physical symptoms, and which was secondary to a chronic inflammation of the
arachnoid. His report links mental alienation with organic brain disease (99).
Louis Florentin Calmeil (FR) wrote a full
description of general paralysis of the insane, in which he correlated the
pathology with its clinical signs (263).
Friedrich von Esmarch (DE) and Peter Willers Jessen (DE) were
probably the first to say that syphilis caused general paresis (1712). Note: this condition is caused by the chronic meningoencephalitis that leads to cerebral atrophy in
late-stage syphilis.
Alexander Crichton (GB) provided an early description of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
(AD/HD) (342).
Thomas Robert Malthus (GB) published his Essay on Population, which later had a profound effect on the
thinking of Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. In this book he
maintained that population would always outrun the food supply and that in the
end, human numbers would have to be kept down by famine, disease, and war (1009).
1799
William Smith (GB) was among the first to write about rock strata
and was the first to make the point that each stratum contains its own
characteristic form of fossils, not found in other strata. Relying largely on
fossils to identify strata, civil engineer William Smith, in 1815, published a
map of England and Wales, documenting a larger area than any map so far
published (1475-1477). See, Leonardo da Vinci, 1490 and Nicolaus
Steno, 1671.
Thomas Andrew Knight (GB) became more interested in trait
transmission than in the particulars of fruit raising, so he switched to peas,
which offered many desirable traits, a short generation time, and a flower form
that allowed control over breeding. In experiments begun in 1787, Knight
created hybrids in the second generation, and noted reappearance of the
parental traits in the third generation. Others would repeat this observation
in melons. Still, no one had yet sought the mechanism underlying the uniformity
of the hybrids, and the reappearance of traits when the hybrids were crossed.
Thomas Andrew Knight (GB) proposed the Knight-Darwin
law of crossbreeding. It emphasized the value of crossbreeding to produce
better plants. He noted dominance, recessiveness, and segregation in peas but
did not establish their mathematical relationships (869; 871; 872). See, Johann Gregor Mendel, 1865.
Mathew Baillie (GB) published the first pictorial work on
pathological anatomy (71; 1329).
Humphrey Davy (GB) was the first to document the presence of both
oxygen and carbon dioxide in blood. He published the results of his extraction
process (388; 867)}.
Heinrich Gustav Magnus (DE), using quantitative techniques, found
more oxygen and less carbon dioxide in arterial blood than in venous blood, and
he concluded that carbon dioxide must be formed in or added to the blood during
its circulation (989; 990).
Retired U.S. President George Washington (US) died in December of
1799. "In the 215 years since Washington died, several retrospective
diagnoses have been offered ranging from croup, quinsy, Ludwig’s
angina, Vincent’s angina, diphtheria (Boulogne sore throat),
and streptococcal throat infection to acute pneumonia. But, Dr. David
M. Morens’s (US) suggestion of acute bacterial epiglottitis seems most
likely,” said Howard Markel in his article for PBS.com in 2014 (1089). Note: Washington's
medical treatment was counterproductive, although standard for the time. Over a
two day period, he was give an emetic to induce vomiting, had his throat
blistered with a poultice of cantharides, and had 40 percent of his blood
removed by intentional bleeding.
1800
" Smallpox was
always present, filling the churchyard with corpses, tormenting with constant
fear all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared
the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which
the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden
objects of horror to the lover." Thomas Babington Macaulay (GB) (977).
William J. Herschel (GB) discovered and named infrared light (737; 739).
Alessandro Volta (IT) described his discovery of the electric
battery (1702). Humphry
Davy (GB) also described the electric battery although at a slightly later date (389).
Francois Nicolas Appert (FR) developed a method for preservation
of otherwise perishable foods. He placed the material to be preserved in clean,
well-corked bottles and heated it to the boiling point of water for a
considerable period of time. In 1810 he was awarded a prize of 12,000 francs by
Napoleon for his discovery (45). This
discovery served as the foundation for the vast canning industry of today.
Johann Georg Heinrich Zeder (DE) edited the 1800 edition of Erster Nachtrag zur Naturgeschichte der
Eingeweidewurmer [First Addendum to the Natural History of
Intestinal Worms] written
by Johann August Ephraim Goeze (DE). This book presented the first natural
grouping of parasitic worms under the common names of roundworms, hooked worms,
flukes, tapeworms, and bladder worms (626). See, Rudolphi, 1808.
Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, Jr. (FR) divided the reptiles into
the chelonians, saurians, ophidians, and batrachians. He recognized that the
batrachians (amphibians) were quite different from the others (227). See, Pierre André Latreille, 1804.
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR) compared the qualities of blood
serum to those of egg whites and concluded that serum contains albumine. He also examined clotted blood
and used the name fibrine for the
white water-insoluble material left when the red was washed from the clot (402).
The journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London
was founded. It was subdivided into series A and series B in 1905.
Benjamin Waterhouse (US) performed the first U.S. vaccinations, which
were on his children. He went on to put much effort into encouraging public
vaccination, even writing both John Adams and then Vice-President Thomas
Jefferson (1050).
In a letter dated Christmas day, 1800, Jefferson responded:
"Sir:
I received last night, and have read with great satisfaction, your
pamphlet on the subject of the kine-pock, and pray you to accept my thanks for
the communication of it.
I had before attended to your publications on the subject in the
newspapers, and took much interest in the result of the experiments you were
making. Every friend of humanity must look with pleasure on this discovery, by
which one evil more is withdrawn from the condition of man; and must
contemplate the possibility, that future improvements and discoveries may still
more and more lessen the catalogue of evils. In this line of proceeding you
deserve well of your country; and I pray you accept my portion of the tribute
due to you, and assurances of high consideration and respect, with which I am,
Sir,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
Thomas Jefferson." (678)
1801
Johann Wilhelm Ritter (DE) discovered
that the darkening effect of light on silver chloride did not end at the violet
end of the spectrum but continued beyond the violet range of the sun’s
radiation and even increased. This represents his discovery of the ultraviolet
region of the electromagnetic spectrum (1319; 1320).
William Hyde Wollaston (GB) also discovered the ultraviolet region
of the electromagnetic spectrum (1829).
Claude-Louis Berthollet (FR) proposed that chemical reactions are
reversible; noting the ion exchange reaction: 2NaCl + Ca (CO3)2 going to Na2CO3
+ CaCl2 (126; 127).
Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot (FR) and L. Péan de Saint-Gilles
(FR) showed that concentration of chemical reactants influences the
concentration of products in chemical reactions. They found that the formation
of an ester by the interaction of an acid with an alcohol is a reversible or
balanced action, also in the case of the formation of ethyl acetate from ethyl
alcohol and acetic acid, a point of equilibrium is reached, beyond which the
reacting system cannot pass, unless the system be disturbed in some way by the
removal of one of the products of the reaction (124).
Cato M. Guldberg (NO) and Peter Waage (NO) showed that an
equilibrium is reached in chemical reactions, and that equilibrium can be
approached from either direction (653-655).
Jacobus Hendricus van't Hoff (NL) quantified the expression for
the equilibrium of a chemical reaction and showed that it is a function of the
concentration of the various species involved, and that the concentrations
appear as powers corresponding to the stoichiometric number in the balanced
chemical equation (1679).
Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (ZA-DE-FR) was the first to use the
word mycologia (mycology) as applied to the study of fungi (1197). The
nomenclature and classification of the fungi in his Synopsis Methodica Fungorum and his Mycologia Europaea laid the foundation upon which later mycologists
based their work (1197; 1198).
Elias Magnus Fries (SE) authored Systema Mycologicum, which along with Persoon’s books represents a
valuable expansion of fungal nomenclature and classification (583).
Jean Pierre Étinne Vaucher (CH) was the first to observe and
interpret conjugation and spore formation in algae, particularly in Ectosperma, later named Vaucheria by Augustin Pyrame de Candolle
(CH) (1682; 1683).
Johann Hedwig (RO-DE) made a clear distinction between mosses and
liverworts and demonstrated the value of the peristome in classification of
mosses. This book contains all moss species known at the time and is still the
basis of modern scientific nomenclature of mosses (720).
Charles-Francois Brisseau de Mirbel (FR) was the founder of
vegetable histology in France. He proposed that all plant tissue is modified
parenchyma. This work brought him recognition as a founder of plant cytology
and plant physiology (210; 212).
C. Francois Huber (FR) and Jean Senebier (FR) found that
germinating seeds consume oxygen and eliminate carbon dioxide (790).
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR) and Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (FR)
discovered the presence of magnesium in bones (403).
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (FR)
produced works on invertebrates which represent a great advance over existing
classifications; he was the first to separate the Crustacea, Arachnida, and
Annelida from the Insecta. His classification of the mollusks was far in
advance of anything proposed previously; Lamarck broke with tradition in
removing the tunicates and the barnacles from the Mollusca. It was Lamarck who
first used the terms vertebrate and invertebrate and helped popularize the
word biology. Even the great Carl von Linné had avoided attempting any real
invertebrate classification (418; 421; 422).
Jacob Anton Helm (AT) explored gastric function, "I repeated
the experiment [in a 56-year-old woman who had long suffered with a spontaneous
gastric fistula] with milk and noticed that it always turned sour and
coagulated. The sole exception was immediately after the patient had flushed
her stomach [by drinking water]; the milk, which she drank immediately after,
did not coagulate for some time, presumably for the lack of gastric juice. That
[i.e., secretion of gastric juice] could be hastened always by stimulating the
inner surface of her stomach with the finger." (725)
Marie-Francois-Xavier Bichat (FR) was the first to draw the
attention of the anatomist and the physiologist to the organs of the body as a
complex of simpler structures. Though working without the benefit of microscope
he was able to show that each organ was built up of different types of tissues.
Furthermore, different organs might possess some tissues in common. All told,
he identified twenty-one types of tissues. He performed numerous autopsies and
gave detailed descriptions of the tissues of the body in health and in disease.
He was the founder of the science of pathological anatomy (134; 135; 137-139).
Astley Paston Cooper (GB) reported
three cases of eustachian obstruction
deafness relieved by perforation of the membrana
tympani (myringotomy) (319).
This operation was first performed by Eli, a quack, in 1760.
John Bell (GB) was the first surgeon to ligate the gluteal artery (117).
Philippe Pinel (FR) was the first physician to introduce a humane
methodology into the treatment of insane patients. Up to this point they had
often been chained, displayed as public curiosities, and otherwise treated
cruelly (1218; 1219).
1802
Jean-François Derosne (FR) was the first to separate
from opium a white crystalline substance that he named narceine (453).
Pierre-Joseph Pelletier (FR) isolated narceine, a new opium
alkaloid (1191).
William Forsyth (GB) described a combined wash composed of tobacco
(Nicotiana tabacum), sulfur, unslaked
lime, and elder buds to control insects and fungi on fruit trees (567).
Louis Jacques Thénard (FR) observed that during fermentation of
gooseberry juice a deposit occurs resembling brewer’s yeast. Added to a fresh
sugar containing liquid this deposit could start fermentation. The ferment was
insoluble in water. He found that a similar process occurred in cherries,
pears, apples, barley (Hordeum vulgare),
and wheat (Triticum spp.) (1577).
Franz
Andreas Bauer (AT-GB), in 1802, was the first to note syncytia (sing.
syncytium) in plant tissues. They appeared in the style of Bletia tankervilliae (Orchidaceae). This finding was not published
until much later (97).
Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (FR) wrote Lecons D’Anatomie Comparée and Le Règne Animal in which he was the
first to emphasize the comparison of the anatomy of one species with another.
During his comparative studies he realized that in living creatures there is a
unity of structural plan and a correlation of parts. There is a direct
correlation between body parts and the lifestyle of the organism. Once this
correlation is well understood then one body part can often be used to make
predictions about the structure and physiology of the creature from which it
came. This is referred to as the correlation
theory. Although Aristotle knew this he did not tap its predictive power,
as did Cuvier. Cuvier is considered the founder of the science of comparative
anatomy. See, Galen c. 175, Severino
1645, Grew 1681, and Tyson 1699.
He extended and perfected the classificatory system of Carl von
Linné (Linneas) and in the process created the concept of phylum into which he
grouped related classes.
In Le Règne Animal he
was the first to draw a distinction between planarians and nemertines. He
called the nemertines Nemertes (Gr.
sea nymph) (359; 361; 362).
Smallpox (red
plague) killed about two thirds of the Omaha Indians in what is now Northeast
Nebraska (875).
William Paley (GB) in this book, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the
Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature laid out a full exposition
of natural theology, the belief that the nature of God could be understood by
reference to His creation, the natural world. He introduced one of the most
famous metaphors in the philosophy of science, the image of the watchmaker."
. . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive . . . that its several
parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed
and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out
the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped
from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than
that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried
on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served
by it. . . ." The inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must
have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time and at some
place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which
we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed
its use.s Living organisms, Paley argued, are even more complicated than
watches, "in a degree which exceeds all computation." How else to
account for the often-amazing adaptations of animals and plants? Only an
intelligent Designer could have created them, just as only an intelligent
watchmaker can make a watch (1171).
1803
William Henry (GB) formulated what we now call Henry’s Law. The
amount of gas dissolved in a pure liquid, when the system reaches equilibrium,
is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in the mixture of
gases above the liquid (728-730).
André Michaud (FR) wrote Flora
Borealis-Americana, North America's first Flora, describing more than 1,500
species (1065).
Erik Acharius (SE) developed a new system based on structure, as
well as terminology for the morphological description of lichens, which is
still, to a large extent, valid up to this day. Using his own method, he
described a considerable number of new families and species, both Scandinavian
and tropical (11-13).
John Conrad Otto (US) was the first to write an article for a
medical journal on bleeders (hemophilia) (1157).
John Richardson Young (US) studied digestion in the bullfrog Rana ocelot. He confirmed the work of
Edward Stevens and Lazzaro Spallanzani and extended it to show that gastric
juice did not attack living tissue (he placed the leg of a young living frog in
the stomach of a larger frog for five days) and would attack vegetable foods
and dead animal tissues (1837).
A.J. Renoult (FR) gave the first definitive record of schistosomiasis (enemic hematuria) caused by Schistosoma
haematobium when he described an epidemic among Napoleon’s army in Egypt.
He wrote, "A most stubborn haematuria manifested itself amongst the
soldiers of the French army... continual and very abundant sweats diminished
quantity of urine... becoming thick and bloody." Renoult believed that
excessive sweating, forced marches, and riding horses caused it (1306).
Theodor Maximillian Bilharz (DE), in 1851, and Karl Theodor Ernst
von Siebold (DE) discovered Schistosoma
haematobium in the blood of the portal vein during autopsy of an Egyptian
in Cairo. They named it Distomum
haematobium because they thought it had two mouth openings. This disease,
caused by a parasitic flatworm, would become known as bilharziasis or schistosomiasis (143; 144).
Heinrich Meckel von Hemsbach (DE) coined the terms
"bilharzia" and "bilharziosis" in 1856.
David F. Weinland (DE) suggested the name Schistosoma (schistos =
cleft, soma = body) (1777).
Theodor Maximillian Bilharz (DE) and Wilhelm Griesinger (DE) made
the connection with urinary tract disease and Schistosoma (142).
Patrick Manson (GB) reached the conclusion that there were two
species of Schistosoma in humans (1011).
William St. Clair Symmers (IE-GB) reported a new type of liver
cirrhosis, one due to the presence of the ova of Bilharzia haematobia (1563).
Luigi Westernra Sambon (IT-GB) described two new parasites of man
for which he proposed the names of Sparaganum
baxteri and Shistosomum mansoni.
Unlike haematobia the eggs of mansoni are never eliminated through the
urinary tract and its ova are unique (1374; 1375).
Manuel Augusto Pirajá da Silva (BR), in 1908, was
responsible for the identification and complete description of the pathogenic
agent and the pathophysiological cycle of schistosomiasis disease (1220).
Robert Thompson Leiper (GB) established the existence of Shistosoma mansoni as a separate species (926).
Robert Thompson Leiper (GB) worked out the life cycles of the
parasitic trematodes Schistosoma
haematobium and Schistosoma mansoni;
including their intermediate snail hosts (927; 928).
Alan C. Fisher (GB) described and named Shistosoma intercalatum from the Belgian Congo (536).
B.E. Vic-Dupont (FR), E. Bernard (FR), J. Soubrane (FR), B. Halle
(FR), and C. Richir (FR) found and described Shistosoma mekongi in the Mekong river valley of China (1689).
Dominique Jean Larrey (FR) participated in 60 battles as a surgeon
to the French army. He was probably the first to describe trench foot and to indicate that Egyptian ophthalmia (trachoma) is contagious. Larrey
developed a flexible rubber catheter to feed patients with a wound of the
glottis. He was the first to take first-aid treatment to casualties on the
battlefield with the introduction of flying
ambulances and introduced the concept of triage in the evacuation of his patients. He also tried to use
refrigeration as a local anesthetic and is said to have performed more than 200
amputations in 24 hours. Larrey was one of the first to describe the therapeutic
use of maggots and performed one of the first amputations at the hip (1812).
The Clinique Chirugicale was the most
significant of his publications. Larrey's name remains associated with an
amputation of the shoulder joint, Mediterranean
yellow fever, and ligation of the femoral artery below the inguinal
ligament (905-907; 994; 1376).
1804
"Life is the ensemble of functions that resist death."
Marie-Francois-Xavier Bichat (136)
Sigismund Friederich Hermbstaedt (DE) founded Archiv de Agriculturchemie, the first journal devoted to
agricultural chemistry.
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR) and Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich
Alexander von Humboldt (DE) accurately determined the proportions of hydrogen
and oxygen in water, showing the volume ratio to be 2:1 (604).
Joseph Louis Proust (FR) was among the first chemists to
investigate different sugars. He was the first to study the sugar of grapes (glucose)
and prepare it in pure form (1264). His work
also led to the establishment of the chemical principle that chemical compounds
are of fixed proportions, however prepared, i.e., law of definite proportions
or Proust’s Law (1261-1263).
Nicolas Théodore de Saussure (CH-FR) published experiments that
represent the first treatment of the subject of photosynthesis using
quantitative methods and modern chemical terminology. He found that water
enters the photosynthetic production of organic matter and that, in the dark;
plant tissues take up oxygen and release carbon dioxide. This implied that
respiration is a general property of all living tissue. De Saussure developed
the first balanced equation for the process and proved that the inorganic
chemical content of a soil profoundly influenced the inorganic chemical content
of plants growing on it. He also described experiments showing that linseed oil
is able to condense with oxygen (439).
Nicolas Théodore de Saussure (CH-FR), in 1804, mentions an
experiment in which he "placed raquettes of the cactus Opuntia in CO2 enriched atmospheres and
found that CO2 and oxygen were absorbed simultaneously." This can be
considered the discovery of Crassulacean
acid metabolism (439).
Johann Justus von Liebig (DE) reaffirmed the importance of De
Saussures' findings, and used them to critique humus theories. Using more
precise methods of measurement as a basis for estimation, he pointed out that
organic compounds in plants are synthesized from carbon dioxide of the
atmosphere while nitrogenous compounds are derived from precursors in the soil (1735).
Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann (DE) and L. Polstorff (DE), in
1842, would convincingly support these results on photosynthesis (1806).
Benjamin Heyne (GB), in a letter of 1813 to the British Linnaean
Society, reported diurnal changes in the acidity of Crassulacean leaves (146). This was
an early clue to Crassulacean acid
metabolism (CAM) in plants.
Meirion Thomas (GB) and Harry Beevers (GB) rediscovered Crassulacean acid metabolism. It was
Thomas who coined the phrase Crassulacean
acid metabolism (CAM) in a talk before the Society of Experimental Biology
(Edinburgh) in 1947. It appeared in print for the first time in 1947, in
Thomas’ book Plant Physiology (146; 1579; 1580). Note: Three reptilian species named in honor
of Wiegmann above: Liolaemus wiegmanni (A.M.C. Duméril & Bibron,
1837); Otocryptis wiegmanni Wagler, 1830; and Trogonophis wiegmanni
Kaup 1830.
Georg Gottfried Zinke (DE) succeeded in transmitting rabies from
a rabid dog to a normal one, and from dog to a rabbit and a
hen, by injection of saliva (1849). This
proved that the disease is infectious.
Benjamin Smith Barton (US) authored the first American textbook on
botany; including plates drawn by William Bartram (US) (89).
Antonio Scarpa (IT) provided the first accurate
description of the pathological anatomy of congenital
clubfoot (1387).
Antonio
Scarpa (IT) is the first to make a distinction between true and false aneurisms (1386).
Giovanni
Aldini (IT) described alleviating cardiac
syncope through galvanic energy (24).
John Warren
(US), in 1804, excised the parotid gland (1767).
1805
Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (DE), Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link
(DE) and Johann Jacob Paul Moldenhawer (DE) suggested that cells are separable
into individual units. Moldenhawer
differentiated between two basic tissue types, vascular (gefässbündel) and
parenchymatous. He described and illustrated fibers, vessels, vascular bundles,
and identified the cellular nature of the cambium noting that wood was internal
to it and bast external. He correctly interpreted secondary thickening and
annual rings. He observed that stomata were not cells with a hole in them but pores
surrounded by two cells. Moldenhawer
emphasized that every cell has its own wall independent of that of surrounding
cells and guessed that there is a cement that holds them together (943; 1074; 1597).
Charles-Francois Brisseau de Mirbel (FR) concluded from his
numerous observations of plant structure that "the plant is wholly formed
of a continuous cellular membranous tissue. Plants are made up of cells, all
parts of which are in continuity and form one and the same membranous tissue." (211)
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (FR)
investigated the microscopic structure of plants and animals. He remarked, "It
has been recognized for a long time that the membranes which form the envelopes
of the brain, of the nerves, of vessels, of all kinds of glands, of viscera, of
muscles and their fibers, and even the skin of the body are in general the
productions of cellular tissue. But no one, so far as I know, has yet perceived
that cellular tissue is the general matrix of all organization and that without
this tissue no living body would be able to exist, nor could it have been
formed." (420)
This
statement precedes the cell theory of
Schleiden and Schwann by nearly 30 years.
René-Joachim-Henri Dutrochet (FR) further advanced the cell
principle when he stated, "All organic tissues are actually globular cells
of exceeding smallness, which appear to be united only by simple adhesive
forces; thus all tissues, all animal (and plant) organs, are actually only a
cellular tissue variously modified. This uniformity of finer structure proves
that organs actually differ among themselves merely in the nature of the
substances contained in the vesicular cells of which they are composed." (494)
Pierre Jean Francois Turpin (DE) produced possibly the earliest
statement of the "cell theory" when in 1826 he wrote,
"Observations on the origin and first formation of cellular tissue,
on the vesicles composing this tissue, considered as distinct individualities
having their own vital center of vegetation and propagation and destined to
form by agglomeration the composite individuality of all those plants whose
organization is composed of more than one vesicle." (315)
Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen (DE) wrote the first major study of plant
anatomy and gives an early statement of the "cell theory" when he
says, "Plant cells occur either singly, so that each forms a single
individual, as in the case of some algae and fungi, or they are united together
to form greater or smaller masses, to constitute a more highly organized plant.
Even in this case each cell forms an independent, isolated whole; it nourishes
itself, it builds itself up, and elaborates the raw nutrient materials which it
takes up, into very different substances and structures." (1061) Note: The plant genus Meyenia
commemorates his name.
Matthias Jakob Schleiden (DE) elaborated the "cell
theory" for plants. This theory states that all plants are made up of
cells or material formed from cells, and that each cell contains certain
essential components such as a nucleus and a surrounding membrane. His concept
of how cells originate was incorrect. He suggests that cells are totipotent (1411; 1412). See, de Lamarck, 1809.
Theodor Ambrose Hubert Schwann (DE) elaborated the "cell theory" as it applies to
animals. This theory states that all animals are made up of cells or material
formed from cells, and that each cell contains certain essential components
such as a nucleus and a surrounding membrane. He was incorrect about the way in
which cells originate. Schwann pointed out the similarities and differences
between plants and animals then expanded the concept into a general theory of
the cellular basis of life, stating that the cell is the general or universal
unit of all life. "One common principle of evolution is laid down for the
most highly differentiated elementary parts of the organisms, and this
principle of evolution is the cell-formation." (1428) See, de Lamarck, 1809.
Theodor Ambrose Hubert Schwann (DE) after acknowledging his
indebtedness to Matthias Jakob Schleiden (DE) formalized the "cell
theory" of plants and animals.
1. All parts of plants and animals are cellular either in
organization or in derivation.
2. Cells are autonomous living units, and although each cell is
influenced by its neighbours, the life of the whole organism is the
product, not the cause, of the life of its cellular elements.
3. Cells arise inside or near other cells by differentiation of a
homogeneous primary substance called the cytoblastema in a process analogous to
crystallization (1428). See, Schleiden's 1838
paper for his statement of the "cell theory" in plants (1411).
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (FR)
wrote Philosophie Zoologique in which
he emphasized the fundamental unity of life, the capacity of species to vary;
and the importance of environmental influences. Here he elaborated a theory of
evolution based on heritable modification of organs through continued use and
loss through disuse. He affirmed that all species, including man, are descended
from other species (420; 423). Lamarck
was the first biologist of top rank to devise, boldly and straightforwardly, a
scheme rationalizing the evolutionary development of life, and maintaining that
the species were not fixed but that they changed and developed. In 1801 Lamarck
wrote, ". . . time and favorable conditions are the two principal means
which nature has employed in giving existence to all her productions. We know
that for her time has no limit, and that consequently she always has it at her
disposal." (418)
Charles Robert Darwin wrote in 1861: "Lamarck was the first
man whose conclusions on the subject excited much attention. This justly
celebrated naturalist first published his views in 1801. . . he
upholds the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended from other
species. He first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the
probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world,
being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition." (381; 383)
Lorenz Oken (DE) was the first to propose that the body is a
collection of independently viable microscopic units that never arise de novo out of inanimate matter but are
always formed by the division of pre-existing units. He wrote "Nullum vivum ex ovo. Omne vivum e
vivo."
[No living thing from an egg, all living things from other living
things] (1150)
Francois-Vincent Raspail (FR) used the phrase Omnis cellula e cellula (1273).
Rudolph Ludwig Karl Virchow (DE) is often credited with coining
the catch phrase Omnis cellula e cellula [All
cells arise from cells] (1696). As you can
see from the above, Virchow was certainly not the first to reach this
conclusion.
John Dalton (GB), at a meeting of The Philosophical Society of
Manchester, presented evidence sufficient to convince other scientists that
atoms exist (the atomic theory) (368; 369).
Pierre-Jean Robiquet (FR) and Nicolas Louis Vauquelin (FR) were
the first to isolate the amino acid asparagine. The source was asparagus juice (1326; 1685). This was
the first amino acid to be discovered.
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (FR) and Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (FR)
published an elaborate analysis of guano. They state that it
contains a fourth part of its weight of uric acid (404).
Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (DE) isolated from opium a
chemical with dream-inducing properties. He called it morphium and discovered that it is an alkaloid, a substance unknown and even undreamed of at that time (1455-1457).
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR) named it morphine over the objections of Sertürner (1458). The name
is derived from Morpheus, the Roman
God of dreams.
Opium was subsequently found to contain some twenty alkaloids
including codeine, isolated by
Pierre-Jean Robiquet (FR) in 1832 (1327), papaverine, isolated by George Merck
(DE) in 1848 (1052), and heroin, isolated in 1874 by Charles
Romley Alder Wright (GB) (1834). Sertürner
made it possible for physicians, for the first time in history, to prescribe a
measured dose of a pure alkaloid. He was twenty years old at the time of this
great work (1455-1458).
Armand Séguin (FR) communicated to the Académie des Sciences, in
1804, announcing the isolation and characterization of morphine. As this work
was not published until 1814, the discovery of the first of the alkaloids,
morphine, is generally attributed to Sertürner (1439).
Charles Louis Derosne (FR) isolated narcotine, an opium alkaloid (453).
The German company Bayer introduced heroin (diacetylmorphine), the
“heroic drug” which, they said, shared morphine's ability to relieve pain but
was safer. It was widely sold to suppress heavy coughs, to relieve the pain of
childbirth and serious war injuries, as a preliminary to anesthesia, and in
certain mental disorders.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (DE) and Aime
Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (FR) wrote Essai
sur la Géographie des Plantes in which they viewed the plant world on a
gigantic scale and searched for laws that might govern the nature of plant
distribution (1732). This was
one of the first works on plant geography.
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier; Jean Léopold Nicolas
Frédéric Cuvier (FR) first delineated the anatomical structure of the medulla
and cortex of the adrenal gland. He was the first to recognize that the outer
portion of the gland is morphologically distinct from that of the center (363; 931; 1785).
Philip Syng Physick (US) was the first doctor in America to wash
out the stomach with a tube and syringe in cases of poisoning. He introduced
deerskin ligatures, devised a successful operation for an artificial anus,
invented a tonsillotome, and described diverticula of the rectum (473; 1271).
Gaspard Vieusseux (CH), Lothario Danielson (US), and Elias Mann
(US) gave the first accounts of cerebrospinal
meningitis (379; 1694).
Nathan Strong, Jr. (US) gave one of the first and most important
descriptions of cerebrospinal meningitis
(1541).
Typhus (camp
fever) outbreaks occurred during the occupation of Vienna by the French army in
1805, and spread throughout central Europe with Napoleon's army, affecting both
soldiers and civilians (875).
Thomas Bateman (GB), Andrew Duncan, Jr. (GB), and Henry Reeve (GB)
established the Edinburgh Medical and
Surgical Journal.
1806
Jöns Jakob Berzelius (SE) distinguished between the protein
“globulin” and the pigmented “haem” compound contained in the red blood cell,
before correctly identifying that the latter component carried the iron moiety.
He found lactic acid in fluid extracted from meat in 1808 (129; 131).
Heinrich Einhof (DE) discovered a white material having the odor
of cheese and common to peas, lentils, and other leguminous plants (503).
Henri Braconnot (FR) named Einhof’s substance legumin and said it
is no different from the casein of milk (204; 205).
Thomas Andrew Knight (GB) performed the first accurate studies
showing geotropism of plants, i.e., plants' positive and negative responses to
gravity (870; 872).
Johann Christian Reil (DE) described alcohol as a good tissue
fixative (1295; 1297).
Olof Swartz (SE) wrote a very important work on the ferns of the
world (1553).
Pierre André Latreille (FR) took numerous characters into
consideration with the goal of arranging the crustaceans, insects, and
arachnids into a natural order. The result was one of the great books of
zoological classification, Genera
Crustaceorum et Insectorum (910).
Francois Chaussier (FR) was the first to delineate the currently
accepted four lobes of the cerebral hemispheres. He coined the phrase lobus frontalis, or frontal lobe (289).
Richard Owen (GB) introduced the phrase prefrontal cortex (1162).
Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert (FR) gave the first description of sycosis barbae (Alibert’s mentagra) and mycosis
fungoides (28).
Philipp Bozzini (AT) inaugurated endoscopy with a rigid
instrument. He developed a light conductor, which he called lichtleiter, to avoid the problems of
inadequate illumination. This device allowed him to view into body cavities
such as the mouth, nose, ears, vagina, dilated cervix, urethra, female urinary
bladder, and rectum. This early endoscope used an eyepiece and an expandable
cannula for peering into cavities. It used a simple candle for a light source.
Bozzini's invention established the principles that guided the development of
endoscopy, and it inspired others to forge ahead in this new field (200; 201).
Georg Kelling (DE) performed a coelioskope (laparoscopic) procedure on dogs (853).
Hans Christian Jacobaeus (SE) reported a laparoscopic operation in
humans (838).
Heinz Kalk (DE) is considered the founder of laparoscopy
(endoscopy of the peritoneal cavity). Kalk developed a 135-degree lens system
and a dual trocar approach. He used laparoscopy as a diagnostic method for
liver and gallbladder disease. In 1939, he published his experience of 2000
liver biopsies performed using local anesthesia without mortality (851).
H. Courtenay Clarke (US) invented, published, patented, presented
and recorded on film laparoscopic surgery (300).
Juarez C. Tarasconi (BR) reported the first laparoscopic organ
resection (salpingectomy) (1568).
Kurt Semm (DE), in 1981, performed the first laparoscopic appendectomy
(1443).
Anton Weichselbaum (AT) was the first to isolate the agent of bacterial cerebrospinal meningitis, now known
as meningococcus (1773).
Jean-Nicolas Corvisart (FR) wrote the most outstanding book on
cardiology of the time. He classified heart disease based on the anatomical
structures involved—pericardium, heart muscle, endocardium and valves. He
employed the term organic lesion, made a distinction between hypertrophy and
dilatation of the heart, and differentiated between right and left heart
failure. He described mitral and aortic valvular lesions, and tricuspid
stenosis. He referred to carditis as a conception of inflammation of the heart
as a whole (326-328).
1807-1808
A measles epidemic
occurs in England and Scotland.
1807
Thomas Young (GB) was the first to insist that force can no longer
be expressed as a simple mathematical formula of mass times velocity squared
and suggested in its place the term energy
for this arithmetical product, adding that some method must be discovered to
define the proper relation between work and heat. In the same lecture series,
he suggested that Dalton’s color blindness was probably due to the absence of
the retinal resonator for red (1839). Note: The seeds of the theory of
specific nerve energies can be found in Thomas Young’s work. This theory, which
would blossom within the next few decades, stressed the importance of
stimulating specific receptors and nerves for perception. Unfortunately, it is
believed that Young never realized the full significance or the implications of
his theory. Still, it was Young who may have been the first to explain three
primary colors on the basis of visual physiology as opposed to the physics of
light. As he put it, trichromatic theory is based “not in the nature of light,
but in the constitution of man.”
Jöns Jakob Berzelius (SE), in 1807, found elevated lactic acid in
the muscles of hunted stags (130; 1708).
Johann
Joseph Scherer (DE) gave the first description of lactic acid in human blood
after death and the first demonstration of lactic acid as a pathological
finding in septic and hemorrhagic shock (1408; 1409).
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (DE) presented findings
suggesting that lactic acid forms at the expense of glycogen (1725).
Carl
Folwarczny (AT) was the first to demonstrate lactic acid in the blood of a living
patient. The patient was suffering from leukemia
(557; 558).
Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond (CH-DE) reported that following
muscle contraction or death, acid appears in the muscles (476-478; 481).
Rudolf Peter Heinrich Heidenhain (DE), 1864, reported that the
amount of lactic acid increased with the amount of work done (721).
Walter Morley Fletcher (GB) and Frederick Gowland Hopkins (GB)
confirmed Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond’s discovery that lactic acid
accumulates during muscle contraction and Ludimar Hermann’s (CH) conclusion
that lactic acid production in muscle is an anaerobic process (735). They went
on to show that the anaerobic phase is followed by an aerobic phase during
which the acid disappears (540).
Karl Asmund Rudolphi (SE-DE) and Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link (DE)
proved that cells were independent of each other and that they each had their
own cell walls (943). Need Rudolphi reference.
Johann Christian Reil (DE) proposed the name nucleus for a cluster of cells within brain tissue and described
the vermis (the median lobe of the
cerebellum) in man and other animals together with the peduncles (fibrous bands by which the cerebellum is attached to the
brain stem) and the medullary and caudate nuclei. He noted the correlation of
cerebellar complexity with ascent of the phylogenetic scale (1296-1301).
Franz Joseph Gall (DE-FR) declares that insanity results from brain illness or defect (593).
1808
Humphry Davy (GB) discovered potassium and sodium. He named
potassium (390).
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR), and Louis Jacques Thénard (FR)
announced their discovery of boron on 14 November 1808. They called it bore (600).
Humphry Davy (GB), in a memoir read to the Royal Society of London
on 30 June, 1808, described how he ignited boric acid along with potassium in a
gold tube, producing in the process a black substance later recognized as
boron. In his fourth Bakerian Lecture on 15 December 1808 he claimed discovery
of a new element (390; 391; 587). Boron is
probably not required in the diet of humans, but it might be a necessary ultra-trace element. Green algae and
higher plants require boron.
Karl Asmund Rudolphi (SE-DE) created for the roundworms, hooked
worms, flukes, tapeworms, and bladder worms the scientific names Nematoidea,
Acanthocephala, Trematoda, Cestoidea, and Cystica respectively (1346). Contracaecum rudolphii, Rudolphinus, and
Schistomeringos rudolphi delle Chiaje
commemorate him.
William Allen (GB) and William Hasledine Pepys (GB) studied many
human subjects and concluded that the volume of oxygen consumed in respiration
is exactly replaced by the carbonic acid gas generated (29; 30).
Charles Badham (GB) coined the term bronchitis in his monograph on the subject (66).
Robert Willan (GB) and Thomas Bateman (GB), in 1808, wrote a
landmark in the history of dermatology and in medical illustration. It contains
the first use of the word lupus to describe cutaneous tuberculosis.
Willan was the first to classify skin diseases and give the correct clinical
descriptions of many diseases. Both were based predominantly on morphologic
features rather than on the etiologic or pathophysiologic characteristics of a
disease. He identified eight categories of disease: papulae, squamae,
exanthemata, bullae, pustulae, vesiculae, tubercula,
and maculae. He was the first to use the term "wheal" for skin
lesions that occur in nettle rash. The term is now used for skin lesions in urticaria,
serum disease, and other allergic conditions. Willan, who founded
dermatology as a medical specialty, was the first physician to offer a clearly
defined description of psoriasis lesions. He illustrated what different
types of psoriasis, including guttate (which appears as small red, dotty
patches), look like in drawings. This was huge as it helped to introduce a new
way to classify and diagnose the disease. Unfortunately, he used the term lepra
vulgaris rather than psoriasis, which again perpetuated the
confusion between psoriasis and leprosy (96).
Astley Paston Cooper (GB), in 1808, ligated the external iliac to
treat a femoral aneurysm (321).
Astley Paston Cooper (GB) ligated the
common carotid artery on Nov. 1, 1805. The patient died, but a second case on
22 June 1808 proved successful (320; 322).
David Hosack (US), in 1808, performed the first ligation of the
femoral artery for aneurysm in America (994).
John Hahn (US) performed a successful operation to repair a
strangulated femoral hernia ten days after the obstruction occurred (666).
Ralph Cuming (GB), in 1808, performed an interscapular-thoracic
amputation (excision of arm, scapula and clavicle) (822).
1809
"Make it a rule never to be angry at anything a sick man says
or does to you.
Sickness often adds to the natural irritability of the temper. We
are, therefore, to bear the reproaches of our patients with meekness and
silence. It is folly to resent injuries at any time, but it is cowardice to
resent an injury from a sick man, since, from his weakness and dependence upon
us, he is unable to contend with us upon equal terms." Benjamin Rush (893).
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR) announced his law of combining volumes of gases at the 31 December 1808 meeting
of the Société Philomatique in Paris. It appeared in print in 1809. He said,
“gases combine in very simple proportions …and…the apparent contraction in
volume which they experience on combination has also a simple relation to the
volume of the gases, or at least to one of them” (602).
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (FR), and Louis Jacques Thénard (FR)
cautiously announced their discovery of chlorine before the Society d’Arcueil
on 26 February 1809 (601).
Humphrey Davy (GB) is also associated with the discovery of
chlorine (392).
Albrecht Daniel Thaër (DE), in 1802, established on his private
lands the first institute devoted to agricultural experimentation. In 1804
Frederick William III, King of Prussia, appointed him Privy Counsellor and head
of a new State Agricultural Institute at Möglin. He carried out experiments
devoted to fertilizers, crop rotation, agronomy, and the relative nutritional
value of different feed crops. He published his four volumes on Principles of Rational Husbandry between
1809 and 1812 (1575).
Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link (DE) isolated the dimorphic,
yeast-like fungus Geotrichum candidum
from leaf mold. He also described the Aspergillus
species: Aspergillus candidus, Aspergillus flavus and others (944). Geotrichum candidum is associated with a
chronic bronchitis with a persistent cough.
Alexander Walker (GB) insisted that the anterior (ventral) and
posterior (dorsal) roots of spinal nerves were specialized such that posterior
roots were motor and anterior roots sensory (1755; 1756).
Unfortunately, he got it backward, nevertheless his insistence on the division
was important.
Charles Bell (GB) wrote essays on the anatomy of expression in
painting, described the exterior respiratory nerve, discovered the lesion of
the seventh facial nerve causing facial paralysis, and demonstrated that the
nerves of the special senses could be traced from specific areas of the brain
to their end organs. He proposed that motor nerves traverse the anterior roots
of the spinal nerves (113-116). The 1811
pamphlet contains the first reference to experimental work on motor functions
of ventral spinal nerve roots. The eponyms of the respiratory nerve of Bell, Bell’s Palsy, and Bell-Magendie law perpetuate his name. The Bell-Magendie law states that sensory neurons traverse the
posterior (dorsal) root of the spinal cord while motor neurons traverse the
anterior (ventral) root of the spinal cord. The naming of this phenomenon for
Bell is interesting since Francois Magendie (FR) deserves more credit for the
discovery than does Bell. See,
Francois Magendie, 1822 and Johannes Petrus Müller, 1831.
Francois Magendie (FR) deserves the chief credit for the discovery
that the anterior (ventral) nerve roots of the spinal cord are motor; that is,
carry impulses to the muscles and that the posterior (dorsal) nerve roots were
sensory (elicited pain). He described the apertura
medialis ventriculi quarte- the foramen of Magendie (985; 986; 1756). See, Alexander Monro secundus, 1783.
Johannes Petrus Müller (DE) confirmed the findings of Bell and
Magendie concerning the anterior and posterior nerve roots of the spine (1104).
Francois Magendie (FR) presented to the Académie des Sciences and
to the Société Philomatique the results of his first experimental work, which
he carried out in collaboration with the botanist and physician Alire
Raffeneau-Delille (1778-1850). In a series of ingenious experiments on various
animals, the two investigators studied the toxic action of several drugs of
vegetable origin, particularly of upas,
nux vomica, and St. Ignatius’s bean. These experiments mark the beginning
of modern pharmacology. For the first time an experimental comparison was made
of the similar effects produced by drugs of different botanical origin (983; 984).
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (FR)
created the name Annelida (420; 423).
Benjamin Rush (US) pointed out a connection between the extraction
of decayed and diseased teeth (a focal infection) and the cure of general
diseases. He advised their extraction in every case in which they were decayed (1356).
Ludwig Lewin Jacobson (DK), in 1809, announced to the Danske
Videnskabernes Selskab his rediscovery of and researches concerning a hitherto
unknown absorptive organ in the human nose, the vomeronasal organ (later named after him "the Jacobsonian
organ") (839). Note: in most mammals, this organ specializes in the detection of
pheromones, which are molecules carrying innate signals. In humans, this
vestigial organ is located below the inner surface of the nose.
Ephraim McDowell (US) while a young doctor in Danville, Kentucky,
on the American frontier, performed the first successful elective laparotomy.
He removed an ovarian tumor weighing 22.5 pounds from Mrs. Jane Crawford. The
operation took about 25 minutes, was done without anesthesia, the patient
exhibiting a full and uncomplicated recovery. She lived an additional 33 years.
McDowell performed a total of eight ovariotomies (oophorectomies), the last in
1826. He also performed 32 lithotomies with only one death (1038; 1039). Note: He
received medical training in America and in Edinburgh.
Daniel Karl Theodor Merrem (DE), in 1809, performed the first
successful pylorectomy (removal of the pyloric valve); it was on a dog (1056).
James Wardrop (GB) established retinoblastoma as a
specific type of cancer (1764).
Johann Friedrich Meckel (called the Younger) (DE) discovered that
the diverticulum—Meckel’s diverticulum—
is a residuum of the communication between the intestinal canal and the
umbilical stalk. This finding was based upon his observations in three
stillborn, full-term human fetuses (1044).
Luigi Rolando (IT) used galvanic current to stimulate the cortex
of the brain and described the sulcus that separates the precentral and
postcentral gyri. He noted that the most violent convulsions occurred when he
stimulated the cerebellum. If he removed the cerebellum animals acted as though
paralyzed. Lesions impaired motion. When the lesions were on only one side of
the cerebellum, the effects were ipsilateral to the damage (1332-1334).
Francois Leuret (FR) commemorated him in 1839 by naming it the
Rolandic sulcus (934).
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (FR) analyzed the cerebellum and gave a
description of cerebellar ataxia
(failure of muscular coordination). He concluded, "…that all movements
persist after ablation of the cerebellum; all that is missing is that they are
not regular and coordinated. From this, I am led to conclude that production and coordination of movements consist of two essentially distinct
orders of phenomena as well; namely coordination
in the cerebellum, production in the
spinal cord and medulla oblongata." His laboratory studies suggested that
the cerebral cortex plays a role in visual perception (541; 542; 544).
Francois Magendie (FR), in 1824, wrote that he had observed rotary
movements in animals after unilateral cerebellar lesions. This led him to
conclude that the cerebellum is responsible for the maintenance of
equilibration (987).
Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (FR) proved that the cerebellum is a
nervous center which controls diverse acts of standing, of maintaining the
equilibrium, and of locomotion—in brief, the cerebellum coordinates the
functions which help the animal stand and walk upright and move from one place
to another (189).
Franz Joseph Gall (DE-FR) and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (DE)
provided indirect evidence that the lateral geniculate and superior colliculus
are important brainstem nuclei for vision (594).
Karl Friedrich Burdach (DE) found evidence that the brain’s
superior colliculus sends some neuronal projections to the lateral geniculate (253).
Theodore Hermann Meynert (FR-AT) suggested that the lateral
geniculate body, the medial geniculate body, and the pulvinar all send neuronal
projections to the cortex of the brain (1064).
Mieczyslaw Minkowski (CH) provided evidence for a strong linkage
between the different parts of the retina, the lateral geniculate, and the
striate cortex (1069).
Allan Burns (GB) described phrenic nerve palsy, a sign of thoracic
aortic aneurysm and described endocarditis (254).
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