Great Feuds in Medicine

Hal Hellman

Description

"An exciting, well-researched work, which should appeal to anyone with an interest in the nature and progress of the human race."
—American Scientist

The cataclysmic clash of medical ideas and personalities comes to colorful life
In this follow-up to the critically acclaimed Great Feuds in Science (Wiley: 0-471-16980-3), Hal Hellman tells the stories of the ten most heated and important disputes of medical science. Featuring a mix of famous and lesser-known stories, Great Feuds in Medicine includes the fascinating accounts of William Harvey's battle with the medical establishment over his discovery of the circulation of blood; Louis Pasteur's fight over his theory of germs; and the nasty dispute between American Robert Gallo and French researcher Luc Montagnier over who discovered the HIV virus. An informative and insightful look at how such medical controversies are not only typical, but often necessary to the progress of the science.
Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

Harvey versus Primrose, Riolan, and the Anatomists: Circulation of the Blood.

Galvani versus Volta: Animal Electricity.

Semmelweis versus the Viennese Medical Establishment: Childbed Fever.

Bernard versus Chemists, Physicians, and Antivivisectionists: Experimental Medicine.

Pasteur versus Liebig, Pouchet, and Koch: Fermentation, Spontaneous Generation, and Germ Theory.

Golgi versus Ramon y Cajal: The Nerve Network.

Freud versus Moll, Breuer, Jung, and Many Others: Psychoanalysis.

Sabin versus Salk: The Polio Vaccine.

Franklin versus Wilkins: The Structure of DNA.

Gallo versus Montagnier: The AIDS War.

Epilogue.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• Robert Gallo
• William Harvey
• Louis Pasteur
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 27 juillet 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470238585
• Langue: English

Extrait

GREAT FEUDS IN MEDICINE
GREAT FEUDS IN MEDICINE
Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever
Hal Hellman

J OHN W ILEY & S ONS, I NC.
New York • Chichester • Weinheim • Brisbane • Singapore • Toronto
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 2001 by Hal Hellman. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, [phone], fax [phone], email: [e-mail].
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Hellman, Hal
Great feuds in medicine: ten of the liveliest disputes ever / by Hal Hellman.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-34757-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Medicine—History—Miscellanea. 2. Vendetta—Case studies. I. Title. [DNLM: 1. History of Medicine, Modern. WZ 55 H478g 2001]
R133 .H455 2001
610'.9—dc21
00-063349
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
C HAPTER
Harvey versus Primrose, Riolan, and the Anatomists • Circulation of the Blood
C HAPTER
Galvani versus Volta • Animal Electricity
C HAPTER
Semmelweis versus the Viennese Medical Establishment • Childbed Fever
C HAPTER
Bernard versus Chemists, Physicians, and Antivivisectionists • Experimental Medicine
C HAPTER
Pasteur versus Liebig, Pouchet, and Koch • Fermentation, Spontaneous Generation, and Germ Theory
C HAPTER
Golgi versus Ramón y Cajal • The Nerve Network
C HAPTER
Freud versus Moll, Breuer, Jung, and Many Others • Psychoanalysis
C HAPTER
Sabin versus Salk • The Polio Vaccine
C HAPTER
Franklin versus Wilkins • The Structure of DNA
C HAPTER
Gallo versus Montagnier • The AIDS War
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Internet was helpful. I also made personal visits to several sites: for example, Volta’s monument at Lake Como and Golgi’s lab at Pavia, both in Italy; the Semmelweis statue in Budapest; and several Freud exhibits in London and New York. But by far the greatest part of my research was done in libraries. Most helpful have been the wonderful collections of historic materials at the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Public Library, and the newer Science, Industry, and Business Library, all in Manhattan; the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; the American Academy in Rome; and the Burndy Library in Norwalk, Connecticut (now the Dibner Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts).
I would also like to thank the staff at my own local library in Leonia, New Jersey, which is, happily, part of a countywide library system, and through which I was able to reach out and retrieve a remarkable variety of materials from across the country.
A large number of colleagues and friends have been helpful, mainly in answering questions and/or reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript as it was being generated. These include Russell A. Johnson, Archivist and Cataloger, Biomedical Library at the University of California in Los Angeles; Dr. Constance E. Putnam, independent scholar, Concord, Massachusetts; Robert Gallo, M.D., Director, Institute of Human Virology of the University of Maryland in Baltimore; Arthur Peck, M.D., psychiatrist; Dr. Luc Montagnier, Director, Center for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Queens College, City University of New York; Phyllis Dain, Professor Emeritus of Library Science at Columbia University; Morton Klass, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University; Norman Dain, Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University; Dr Edward T. Morman, Associate Academy Librarian for Historical Collections, New York Academy of Medicine; Dr. Larry W. Swanson, University of Southern California; Dr. Sonu Shamdasani, Research Fellow, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine; and Leon Hoffman, M.D., New York Psychoanalytic Association.
Additional and special thanks go to my editor, Jeff Golick, who helped me through some difficult times; to my agent, Faith Hamlin, for her support; and especially, to my wife, Sheila, who read every chapter several times, and whose input was invaluable.
INTRODUCTION
In medieval times doctors had only a few ways to determine what was going on inside a patient’s body. With no laboratory analysis to aid them, they had to depend on their own senses to obtain a diagnosis. One useful technique was visual examination of the patient’s urine. Those who used this method came to be called piss-prophets. Later they would gather additional information by tasting the urine. Sometimes, for obvious reasons, the physician had the patient or even a servant do the tasting.
Uroscopy (diagnostic examination of the urine) eventually went out of fashion. Physicians then did the best they could with other external signs, such as skin and eye color. They also listened to and tried to make sense of the thumping, wheezing, whistling, and crackling sounds sometimes made inside the body, and especially inside the chest and abdomen, which contain the body’s major organs. But the activities going on inside that sanctum sanctorum remained mostly a deep, dark secret.
In 1761, Leopold Auenbrugger, a German physician, suggested a way to turn the listening technique from a passive to an active method. His idea was to rap on the patient’s thorax, and listen to the echo from the chest cavity. That insistent tap remains a basic tool of the examining physician; who among us has not had his or her chest thumped, and wondered not only what the doctor hears, but what the resulting sounds mean.
Auenbrugger spelled out a variety of different sound responses, and what they might portend. A dull sound correlated with chest congestion, for example, and the duller the sound, the more severe the disease.
Although Auenbrugger believed he had made an important advance, he had few illusions about becoming a medical hero. “In making public my discoveries,” he wrote, “I have not been unconscious of the dangers I must encounter, since it has always been the fate of those who have illustrated or improved the arts and sciences by their discoveries to be beset by envy, malice, hatred, destruction and calumny.” 1
We will see examples of each of these in this book. For when any scientist introduces a new theory, he or she is likely to be trampling on someone else’s idea. Depending on how well entrenched the original idea is, or how powerful its holder, the responses can take on the virulence expected by Auenbrugger.
In some cases, the attacks seriously disrupted the discoverers’ lives. Claude Bernard (chapter 4) worked under constant accusations by antivivisectionists that his physiological experiments on animals were a crime against nature and society. He was even disowned by his own family.
Ignaz Semmelweis, who argued that obstetricians should wash their hands before delivering babies, was dismissed from his hospital job, and ended up in a mental hospital (chapter 3).
Some objections, to be fair, were not entirely unreasonable, and our feuds will show some interesting twists. Semmelweis did indeed end up in a mental hospital, but it’s not entirely clear that the actual cause was the treatment meted out by his peers. At least one historian of science argues that his own actions were partly to blame for his sad end.
Another example of not entirely unreasonable objections is seen in the case of René Laënnec. It was Laënnec who had the idea of the stethoscope, which has become another major tool in diagnosis. His idea also faced strong objections, not all of which were foolish; another physician argued: “You will learn nothing by it and, if you do, you cannot treat disease the better.” Medical historian Brian Inglis says that this critic “was wrong about there being nothing to learn from auscultation [listening for sounds in the body]: for purposes of diagnosis and prognosis it was invaluable. But he was largely right that it could do little to improve the treatment of disease, which had to await better knowledge of disease processes.” 2
And herein lies the difference between medical practice and medical science; in this book we distinguish carefully between the two. Medical practice is at least as much art as it is science, for physicians are dealing with the most complex structure on the earth. And they are attempting to put to work knowledge and procedures that have been developed by others—researchers who deal in biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, statistics, and a variety of other disciplines. Medical science, on the other hand, has laid the basic groundwork that has made possible whatever successes modern medicine has seen. What a glorious, astonishing search it has been.
As in any science, the quest for knowledge has been a driving factor. When, however, the science has, or may have, connection with human health—as is the case in medical science—then the researcher who comes up with a new idea may feel an added urgency.