WILTIMS #104: On the shoulders (and hearts) of giants

Today was a history heavy day, even in classes not entitled History of Medicine.

One of the stories we discussed was of William Blalock, Helen Taussig and Vivien Thomas, the trio credited for pioneering one of the first major cardiac surgeries, effectively curing blue baby syndrome. One of the most amazing aspects of this collaboration was the diversity of the three people involved, especially for the year of 1948. Blalock was the esteemed chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Taussig was a renowned female physician and master clinician, and Thomas was a high school educated lab technician working under Blalock.

Dr. Taussig approached Dr. Blalock with a theory of the cause of and a potential surgical intervention for the very common blue baby syndrome, a condition where the lungs can't get enough blood flow from the pulmonary artery. Blalock and Thomas devise a way to divert blood from the aorta back to the lungs. Thomas masters the surgery on over 200 dogs and guides Blalock though the first surgery on a child. The story is told very well in the 2004 HBO film Something the Lord Made; watch the trailer below:

TIL: Vitamin K is named for the German word for blood clotting, koagulation. It is used to modify clotting factors in the blood and vitamin K deficiency can cause bleeding disorders.

I actually already knew this one but it's too fun not to share. The term "limey" as a name for a British man originates as a derogatory term for ye olde British sailors. When shipping companies learned that citrus (containing vitamin C) could completely eradicate scurvy (vitamin C deficiency), they supplemented sailors' diets with concentrated lime juice.

Galen was the greatest physician of the Roman empire. He moved from Greece to Italy and was appointed to the prestigious position of physician to the gladiators, a great way to learn anatomy and surgery. His observations reworked beliefs of the ancient Greeks and defined medicine for over 1400 years, even longer than Hippocrates, the father of medicine. The Galenic tradition was a vast improvement over humoral theories but was still a ways from correct. For instance, until the 16th century it was thought that food was digested by the liver which produced blood that was consumed by the heart.

Rhazes, an Islamic physician in the 9th century, was the father of pediatrics.

Avicenna, probably the most influential physician between Galen and the European Renaissance was ridiculously smart. At the age of 10, he had memorized the Koran; at 15 he had intellectually outgrown every tutor that could be found to teach him. He was so skilled that he famously offered the following treatment to a wealthy patron: marry the girl. While taking the man's pulse and talking with him about various subjects, he noticed a quickened pulse when talking of a certain woman. Avicenna was a prolific author and wrote The Canon of Medicine a prolific work that recalled and expanded upon the traditions of both Hippocrates and Galen.

The University of Padua, founded in 1222, was the major university for Venice. It was located inland from Venice which provided both literal and figurative distance from the Church. This fostered free thought which produced great scientists such as Galileo and Copernicus, and the pioneers of modern anatomy, Vesalius and Harvey.

Heart regeneration was proved by doing autopsies on men who had received a heart transplant from a female donor. The genetically XX cells from the donor heart had disappeared and been replaced by XY cells from the recipient.