A cell biologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Gey propagated the HeLa cell line from Henrietta Lacks' cervical tumor. This cell line, which maintained a continuous growth phase, was the first immortal human cell line to be grown in culture. HeLa cells became the basis for countless significant scientific discoveries. When Gey and his lab assistant Kubicek published this brief report the cause of HeLa's "immortality" was not understood. 

Lacks was a 31-year-old African-American mother of five who died of cancer on October 4, 1951. Because Gey propagated the cell line from Lacks' tumor without her knowledge or consent, as was common in the U.S. at the time, the story may be viewed as an example of medical injustice to a black person. See Rebecca Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (2010). 

Order of authorship in the original publication: Gey, Coffman, Kubicek.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Adey and colleagues sequenced the haplotype-resolved whole genome of the HeLa cancer cell line. This showed a highly rearranged region at chromosome 8q24.21, where an integration locus of the HPV (human papillomavirus, type 18) was found, making it responsible both for her cervical carcinoma and death, and the immortalizing properties of this cell line. The authors also showed that this integrated HPV-18 genome caused a strong activation of the common proto-oncogene now known as Myc which is responsible for the carcinogenic action of the virus.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 1961 "Hayflick developed the first normal human diploid cell strains for studies on human aging and for research use throughout the world. Prior to his seminal research, all cultured cell lines were immortal and aneuploid. One of these new cell strains, developed by Hayflick and his colleague Paul Moorhead at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, called WI-38, has become the most widely used and highly characterized normal human cell population in the world. Hayflick had found that his normal cell strain WI-38 was capable of growing all of the then known human viruses. He hypothesized that because WI-38 was free from contaminating viruses, it could replace the then widely used primary monkey kidney cells, which contained several dangerous contaminating viruses. Indeed, WI-38 became used worldwide for human virus vaccine manufacture, to the benefit of billions of people" (Wikipedia article on Leonard Hayflick).

Order of authorship in the original publication: Olshansky, Hayflick. Available from PubMedCentral at this link.

In January 2008 I collaborated with fellow ABAA member and tax lawyer Bruce Barnett on the appraisal of frozen ampoules of WI-38 that Leonard Hayflick donated to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research. This was one of the first, if not the very first, appraisals of the fair market value of living material donated to a non-profit organization.
 

Hueston described Dupuytren's diathesis, including early onset, bilateral involvement, postive family history, and presence of ectopic lesions. He noted that patents presenting Dupuytren's diathesis experience more severe and rapidly progressive contractures, and have increased risk of recurrence following intervention.

Later, factors associated with the diathesis were refined to include male sex, age of onset earlier than 50 years, bilateral disease, Garrod's pads, and Northern European descent. With all factors present, a 3-fold increase in recurrence can be expected following treatment of contractures. Of all the clinical manifestations of Dupuytren's disease, Garrod's pads have been shown to have the highest association with aggressive disease. Hindocha S, Stanley JK, Watson S, Bayat A., "Dupuytren’s diathesis revisited: evaluation of prognostic indicators for risk of disease recurrence," J. Hand Surg. Am., 2006, 31, 1626-1634. Dolmans GH, de Bock GH, Werker PM., "Dupuytren diathesis and genetic risk," J. Hand Surg. Am., 2012, 37, 2106-2111

"During the 1790s and beyond, medicine left the somber halls of universities, hospitals, and learned societies and became profoundly politicized, inspiring a whole panoply of different—often bizarre and shocking—subcultures. Quinlan reconstructs the ethos of the time and its labyrinthine underworld, traversing the intersection between medicine and pornography in the works of the Marquis de Sade, efforts to create a "natural history of women," the proliferation of sex manuals and books on family hygiene, anatomical projects to sculpt antique bodies, the rage for physiognomic self-help books that taught readers to identify social and political "types" in post-revolutionary Paris, the use of physiological medicine as a literary genre, and the "mesmerist renaissance" with its charged debates over animal magnetism and somnambulism.

"In creating this reconstruction, Quinlan argues that the place and authority of medicine evolved, at least in part, out of an attempt to redress the acute sense of dislocation produced by the Revolution. Morbid Undercurrents exposes how medicine then became a subversive, radical, and ideologically charged force in French society" (publisher).

Beschet emphasized "the relevance of anatomic investigation to dermatologic problems" (Crissey and Parish, Dermatology and syphilology of the nineteenth century, 117). In this book the authors first described the anatomy of the human sweat glands.  Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Abstract: "We evaluated the performance of a large language model called ChatGPT on the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), which consists of three exams: Step 1, Step 2CK, and Step 3. ChatGPT performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any specialized training or reinforcement. Additionally, ChatGPT demonstrated a high level of concordance and insight in its explanations. These results suggest that large language models may have the potential to assist with medical education, and potentially, clinical decision-making."

"In the past three weeks, a new AI model called ChatGPT captured significant attention due to its ability to perform a diverse array of natural language tasks⁹. ChatGPT is a general Large Language Model (LLM) developed recently by OpenAI. While the previous class of AI models have primarily been Deep Learning (DL) models, which are designed to learn and recognize patterns in data, LLMs are a new type of AI algorithm trained to predict the likelihood of a given sequence of words based on the context of the words that come before it. Thus, if LLMs are trained on sufficiently large amounts of text data, they are capable of generating novel sequences of words never observed previously by the model, but that represent plausible sequences based on natural human language. ChatGPT is powered by GPT3.5, an LLM trained on the OpenAI 175B parameter foundation model and a large corpus of text data from the Internet via reinforcement and supervised learning methods. Anecdotal usage indicates that ChatGPT exhibits evidence of deductive reasoning and chain of thought, as well as long-term dependency skills" (from the paper).

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.19.22283643v2.full-text

Order of authorship: Kung, Cheatham, ChatGPT...Tseng.

Abstract: "Atavisms have attracted people’s attention for a long time. First, atavisms excited their imagination and created fertile ground for myths and superstitions. With the development of science, atavisms became the subject of investigation, which soon provided evidence to support evolutionary theory. However, at the molecular level, the formation of atavisms remained insufficiently understood. Recent progress in comparative genomics and molecular developmental biology has helped in understanding the processes underlying the formation of one of the human atavisms: the vestigial tail."

"Introduction: According Wilhelm Roux, the term “atavism” in biology defines the revival of a biological structure that was lost in ancestors during evolution (Correns et al., 1912). The term “atavism,” coined in 1766 by French botanist Duchenne [i.e. Antoine Nicolas Duchesne] comes from the Latin atavis, which roughly corresponds to the word “precursor” (Hall, 2010; Zanni and Opitz, 2013). We know several atavisms in humans: color blindness, extra nipples, enlarged teeth, an elongated coccyx (“tail”), excess hair, etc. The existence of atavisms is a big problem for creationists challenging evolution. Atavisms are the insurmountable argument of the theory of evolution, which contradicts the basic idea of creationism that animals and plants exist unchanged from the moment of their creation."

The authors stated that “The four genes that are the most likely candidates for the role of genes whose function causes the absence of tail are : 1) TBXT 2) Wnt3a 3) Tbx6 and 4) Msgn1. It is the functional deficiency of these that causes the absence of a tail”.  They also stated that TBXT is the most important of these genes. It is generally stated that mutations in these genes made them non-functional and caused the loss of a tail that resulted eventually in the hominid apes roughly about 18-25 million years ago, Once the tail disappeared, the hominid apes with no tail evolved, such as the Gibbon, Pongo and Gorilla, to a stage reaching the Pan (chimpanzee) species, which has the closest genetic lineage to man.

Open access at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1062360422030043

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Chimpanzees are the closest primates genetically to humans. In this paper the authors demonstrated the genetic changes that differentiated humans from chimpanzees. By comparing human and chimpanzee chromosomes the authors showed that essentially every band and sub band observed in man has direct counterpart in the chimps' chromosome complement. However, man has 46 chromosomes whereas the chimp has 48. They unequivocally showed that the presence of just 46 chromosomes in man vs. the 48 in chimps can be explained by fusion of 2 acrocentric chromosomes to form the human chromosome number 2, and that this "fusion" is generated by telomeric fusion. The fusion occurred at the upper 2/3 and lower 1/3 of band q13.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Yunis, Sawyer, Dunham.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

"Realisé à l'initiative de la Société française d'histoire de la dermatologie. Rédigé par 76 auteurs représentant la communauté dermatologique française, cet ouvrage constitue le cadeau officiel du vingtième Congrès mondial de dermatologie tenu à Paris du 1er au 5 juillet 2002."

Perhaps the most comprehensive study of the application of pyrotherapy in the treatment of a wide variety of diseases, including syphilis. For syphilis in particular the treatment was replaced by penicillin, developed during World War II.

The authors showed that the experimental drug (STI571) Imatinib, sold under the brand names Gleevec and Glivec,
1) was well tolerated and had very significant antileukemic activity in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). 
2) Adverse effects were minimal.
3) Complete hematologic responses were observed in 53 of 54 pts. treated with doses of 300 mg. or more. Cytogenetic responses occurred in 29, and 7 of those had complete cytogenetic remissions.
4) At the end of the paper they stated, “These results show that the BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase is critical to the development of CML and demonstrate the potential for the development of anticancer drugs based on the specific
molecular abnormality in a human cancer. “

Order of authorship in the original publication: Drucker, Talpaz, Resta. Full text available from nejm.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Carl H. June and colleagues proved that the ‘concept’ of CAR T-cell therapy developed by them, was a very promising and viable alternative in specific recalcitrant cancers. They showed that their novel in-vitro-created molecular cocktail of agents including T-cells, chimeric antigen receptors and other esoteric ingredients (T-cells engineered in the lab to target the specific CD19 in cancerous B cells delivered into the patient in a HIV lentiviral vector), met the following requirements:
1) The one patient treated had basically two severe adverse reactions: tumor lysis and lymphopenia. Both were then treatable.
2) The one patient treated had a remission still ongoing at 10 months after treatment.
3) The novel engineered cells given to the patient persisted at high levels for 6 months after therapy.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Porter, Levine, Kalos, June. Full text available from nejm.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The second printed book on balneology. Savonarola took a skeptical approach to the subject, relying on his own observations and rejecting the notion that baths owed their virtues to occult or supernatural properties. Included in his work is the first recorded instance of a clock being used to regulate an actual, purposive experiment—in this case, a comparison of the water temperatures of two Italian hot springs.
ISTC is0029000. Digital facsimile from Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link.

Hachinski and Sörös discovered that the control of the heart by the brain is asymmetric, with the fight/flight (sympathetic) response controlled by the right hemisphere and the rest and digest (parasympathetic) response controlled by the left hemisphere. Damage to one key component (the insula) can lead to heart irregularities and sudden death (Wikipedia).

"Summary: Sudden death is an important but widely under-recognised consequence of stroke. Acute stroke can disturb central autonomic control, resulting in myocardial injury, electrocardiographic abnormalities, cardiac arrhythmias, and ultimately sudden death. Experimental and clinical evidence suggests that autonomic imbalance is more frequent after infarcts involving the insular cortex, a crucial region for the control of sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic functions. Cardiovascular comorbidities increase the risk of cardiac morbidity and mortality after stroke. Thus, many sudden deaths and serious non-fatal cardiac events after stroke are probably due to an interaction between cardiovascular and neurological causes. The exact mechanisms leading to sudden death remain incompletely understood. Further research is needed to investigate the autonomic consequences of acute stroke and to identify patients at high risk of sudden death" (Lancet Neurology).

Order of authorship in the original publication: Sörös, Hachinski.

The authors showed that contrary to the prevailing view that most dementias were caused by hardened brain arteries (cerebral atherosclerosis), most were multi-infarct dementias—dementias caused by multiple, small, often imperceptible strokes.

"Abstract: As part of a prospective clinicopathologic study, a cohort of 105 "normal" elderly volunteers was investigated with computed tomographic scans, psychometric testing (Extended Scale for Dementia [ESD]) and neurologic examination. Computed tomographic scans were evaluated for the presence or absence of white matter lucencies, termed leuko-araiosis. These are defined as patchy or diffuse areas of decreased attenuation involving only white matter and with no change in adjacent ventricles or sulci. The nine controls with leuko-araiosis had lower scores on the ESD than the 96 controls without leuko-araiosis (mean ESD with leuko-araiosis, 227.1 +/- 14; without leuko-araiosis, 237.1 +/- 8), and the difference remains significant even after adjusting for the possible confounding effects of age, sex, education, and infarct detected on computed tomography. Significant differences were also found comparing subjects with leuko-araiosis and those without in respect to abnormal gait, limb power, plantar response, and the rooting and palmomental reflexes. Leuko-araiosis may represent a marker for early dementia. The pathophysiology of this finding remains uncertain. Our results suggest that white matter abnormalities play a role in the development of intellectual impairment in the elderly."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Steingart, Hachinski, ... Merskey.

Probably the first book on whooping cough, proceeding Watt's book by 40 years. Butter proposed hemlock as a treatment for whooping cough.
Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

(Thanks to Webb Dordick for this reference.)

The earliest bibliography of mineral springs. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

(Thanks to Webb Dordick for this reference.)

The first French book on nursing. Digital facsimile of the 1787 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

(Thanks to Webb Dordick for this reference.)

The first German book on nursing--a manual of instructions for male nurses. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

(Thanks for Webb Dordick for this reference.)

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

(Thanks to Webb Dordick for this reference.)

A work of medical humanism written while Bullein and his wife were in prison for debts. Bullein was the only writer of medical works in English in the sixteenth century to employ the dialogue form, allowing the physician as counsellor to engage in ‘political digression and autobiographical anecdote’ alongside the medical content (Withington). Bullein has also been called the first English writer on the history of medicine.

Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The autobiography of the first woman to practice medicine professionally in the United States. Digital facsimile from U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.

Ombrédanne improved surgical techniques for the correction of undescended testicles, cleft palate and penile hypospadias in children.

Henderson's paper in the October 1976 issue of Scientific American was one of the first published announcements of the completion of the eradication of smallpox. Illustrating the iconic photograph of a mother holding an infected child in her arms, Henderson wrote: “The three year old girl recovering from smallpox was the last known victim in Bangladesh and thus the world’s last known case of the more virulent form of the disease, variola major." He added,  "The patient, three year old Rahima Banu, was the world’s last known case of the severe form of smallpox, variola major. After that 12,000 health workers supervised by nearly 100 epidemiologists repeatedly searched Bangladesh house by house. They found no cases, and it is unlikely that any more will be discovered, but surveillance will continue for two years."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

President Carter devoted half of this book to Guinea worm disease, nature of the illness, its epidemiology, its cause and the current importance from a public health and human suffering standpoint. Carter's leadership was highly influential in the near complete eradication of this disease. He then explained his plan for prevention leading to the virtual eradication of this illness from the earth. The main instrument of prevention is a straw like ‘pipe filter’ which is handed out along with education to millions in all the endemic areas of Africa. This filter carries a cord like necklace, that is worn by each individual on a 24/7 basis, and utilized each time they drink water from their water holes, all of which are contaminated by the copepod that carries the larvae of this parasite in the water. The filter has a sieve size that does not allow the copepod to pass through, and thus the water ingested is never contaminated. This effort brought the number of cases from at least 3.5 million new cases per year to near zero.

In 2002 Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Foundation of Proteomics. Order of authorship in the original publication: Wilkins, Pasquali, ...Hochstrasser.

"Abstract: Separation and identification of proteins by two-dimensional (2-D) electrophoresis can be used for protein-based gene expression analysis. In this report single protein spots, from polyvinylidene difluoride blots of micropreparative E. coli 2-D gels, were rapidly and economically identified by matching their amino acid composition, estimated pI and molecular weight against all E. coli entries in the SWISS-PROT database. Thirty proteins from an E. coli 2-D map were analyzed and identities assigned. Three of the proteins were unknown. By protein sequencing analysis, 20 of the 27 proteins were correctly identified. Importantly, correct identifications showed unambiguous "correct" score patterns. While incorrect protein identifications also showed distinctive score patterns, indicating that protein must be identified by other means. These techniques allow large-scale screening of the protein complement of simple organisms, or tissues in normal and disease states. The computer program described here is accessible via the World Wide Web at URL address (http:@expasy.hcuge.ch/)."

Ricord's extensive work with veneral diseases at the Hopital du Midi includes 66 hand-colored ithographs illustrating a multitude of conditions at various levels of infection in both sexes. The illustrations were drawn from nature by Bion and Beau and are accompanied by case histories and treatment modes. Digital facsimile of the 1862 edition from BnF.gallica at this link.

Order of editorship in the original publication: Wilkins, Williams, Appel, Hochstrasser.
"Recent advances in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, protein microanalytsis and bioinformatics have made the large-scale, systematic analysis of proteins and their post-translational modifications from any tissue or organism possible. This approach has acquired the name 'Proteome Research', and can be considered as the core of functional genomics. The results of proteom analysis show which genes are expressed, how the protein products are modified, and how they interact, making proteom research of fundamental importance for the biologist, clinician, and pharmaceutical industry" (publisher).

A treatise on malformations of particular interest to surgeons, including facial clefts, urogenital anomalies, anorectal atresias, parasitic twins, and limb duplications. Digital facsimile of the text, without the volume of plates, from Google Books at this link.

In his doctoral thesis Mohl reported his discovery of the multiplication of cells by division, later known as mitosis. Digital facsimile from Bayerische StaatsBibliothek at this link.

Kobilka and colleagues published the crystal structure of a beta-2 receptor forming a complex with the G protein coupled receptor. This was the first time that a complete complex of an active receptor and it's Gs protein partner were crystallized.They also described some’of the basic molecular interactions of a beta receptor and G protein coupled receptors. The image of this crystallographic complex that they published was described by more romantic molecular biologists as “the first image of the receptor locked in an embrace with its protein partner.” Order of authorship in the original publication: Rasmussen, Devree....Kobilka.

In 2012 Kobilka shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert J. Lefkowitz "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors."

See also No. 14135.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Using X ray crystallographic techniques and electron microscopy, Kobilka (Nobel Prize 2012) and colleagues described the very complex nucleotide exchange and interactions at the molecular level of the alpha subunit of a Gs at the moment of its activation by an adrenergic receptor. 
The authors showed that the structural links between the receptor binding surface and the nucleotide binding pocket of the Gs undergo higher levels of hydrogen deuterium exchange than would have been predicted from the crystal structure of the beta 2 adrenergic receptor-Gs complex. Then the team, using advanced computer techology, explained the complex molecular interactions between these two molecules, revealing many details that were neither expected nor predicted before this achievement.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Chung, Rasmussen, ...Kobilka....

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

First edition of this work written in English in the 17th century, privately published in 1863, supposedly in an edition of 100 copies, from a manuscript then owned by Blenkinsop. Willughby has been characterized as "the first professional man to devote his practice entirely to obstetrics."

A translation of portions of Willughby's text into Dutch appeared in Jacobus de Visscher & Hugo van de Poll, Het Roonhuysiaansch geheim, in de vroedkunde ontdekt; Tegen de Weederstrevers veredigt...Huig Chamberlen...Willoughby. Leiden: Johannes Heiligert, 1754.  Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

"The earliest copy of his work is a closely written quarto, entitled Dni Willougbaei, Derbiensis, De Puerperio Tractatus, in the British Library Sloane MS. 529. The second, an amplification of this, and referred to by Dr. Denman in his Practice of Midwifery, was then in the possession of his friend Dr. Kirkland; while the third and greatly enlarged edition [i.e. manuscript] consisted of two exquisitely written copies in Latin and in English, which were afterwards the property of Dr. J. H. Aveling, the English version being in two parts, with the titles Observations in Midwifery and The Countrey Midwife's Opusculum or Vade-mecum, by Percivall Willughby, Gentleman. It was privately printed in 1863 by Henry Blenkinsopp, but a Dutch translation had been printed as an octavo at Leyden in 1764, though no copy is now to be had in Holland. He [Willughby] was the intimate friend of Harvey and of most of the scientific men of the century, and died on 2 October 1685, in the ninetieth year of his age, being buried in St Peter's Church, Derby, where within the rails of the chancel is a tablet to his memory" (Wikipedia article on Percivall Willughby).

Digital facsimile of the 1863 edition from the Wellcome Collection at this link.

Discovery of mammalian meat allergy (MMA) or Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), also called Alpha-gal allergy, a type of meat allergy characterized by delayed onset of symptoms (3-8 hours) after ingesting mammalian meat. The allergy is a reaction to the carbohydrate galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose ("alpha-gal") in which the body is overloaded with immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies on contact with the carbohydrate. Bites from specific tick species, such as the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) in the US, and the paralysis tick (Ixodes holocyclus) in Australia have been implicated in the development of this delayed allergic response.

Full text available from PubMedCentral at this link.
Order of authorship in the original publication: Commins, Sharma,....Platts-Mills.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Von Frisch discovered the waggle dance, a particular figure-eight dance of honey bees by which successful foragers can communicate information with other members of their colony about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, or information regarding new nest-site locations.

In 1973 von Frisch shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen "for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors showed that the complex waggle dance, previously thought to be an inborn trait, is partly learned by young bees as they observe more experienced bees. 

Abstract:

Lefkowitz and colleagues showed that there are two different types of beta receptors, distinguishing them as Beta-1 and Beta-2. They noticed that each has specific pharmacological characteristics. Order of authorship in the original publication: Stiles, Strasser, Caron, Lefkowitz. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

In 2012 Lefkowitz shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Brian K. Kobilka "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 1992 Krebs and Fischer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism." Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Krebs, Graves, Fischer.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Lipmann and Tao isolated, purified, and characterized biochemically an enzyme which they called "adenyl cyclase." They stated that this enzyme is responsible for producing "cyclic AMP" in E. coli.
Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Goodman shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Martin Rodbell "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells."

In this paper Goodman and Ross showed that a guanine nucleotide binding protein (a "G" protein) activates adenylate cyclase. They posited a system whereby a hormone receptor (adrenergic), interacts with guanine nucleotides (G proteins), and these in turn activate the enzyme adenylate cyclase, but they qualified this with a statement that "proof of function of each entity must await their purification."

Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Gilman and colleagues showed that G proteins are in the cell membrane and are stimulated once a ligand (adrenaline) binds the adrenergic receptor. This system can then activate adenyl cyclase to form cyclic AMP. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Ross, Howlett, Ferguson, Gilman.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Crumpler was the first Black woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive.

The authors at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai reported the first cloning of a non-human primate.
Full text available from cell.com at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Liu, Cai...Sun.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

"Kanavel produced the classic paper on infection in Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics in 1905. In that paper, he described the anatomy and clinical study of acute infections of the hand. This clearly changed the course of treatment for infections and has withstood the passage of time. The basic principles laid down by Kanavel continue to be appropriate today. He was working in the preantibiotic era and his delineation of the anatomic spaces allowed surgeons to approach infections in a new way, changing the clinical outcome from amputation to preservation of structures. His principles, with the addition of antibiotics, now makes the treatment of infections relatively predictable" (Wilgis, "Classic Papers in Hand Surgery", The Journal of Hand Surgery, 25, issue 1, January 2000).

"Winner of the 2011 American Publishers Awards and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) in the Government and Politics category, as given by the Association of American Publishers. Read an interview with Paul Starr on the Yale Press Log. In no other country has health care served as such a volatile flashpoint of ideological conflict. America has endured a century of rancorous debate on health insurance, and despite the passage of legislation in 2010, the battle is not yet over. This book is a history of how and why the United States became so stubbornly different in health care, presented by an expert with unsurpassed knowledge of the issues. Tracing health-care reform from its beginnings to its current uncertain prospects, Paul Starr argues that the United States ensnared itself in a trap through policies that satisfied enough of the public and so enriched the health-care industry as to make the system difficult to change. He reveals the inside story of the rise and fall of the Clinton health plan in the early 1990s-and of the Gingrich counterrevolution that followed. And he explains the curious tale of how Mitt Romney's reforms in Massachusetts became a model for Democrats and then follows both the passage of those reforms under Obama and the explosive reaction they elicited from conservatives. Writing concisely and with an even hand, the author offers exactly what is needed as the debate continues-a penetrating account of how health care became such treacherous terrain in American politics" (publisher).

"In 2018, Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa's article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore.

"Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to "live sicker and die quicker" compared to their white counterparts. Today's medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely...." (publisher). 

In 1953 Watson and Crick proposed that rarely formed isomers of DNA bases cause spontaneous mutations to occur during the copying of DNA. Such mutations would be easily accommodated because tautomeric mispairs do not distort the helical DNA structure. The disfavored-tautomer model for spontaneous mutation formation (mutagenesis) was rapidly adopted by biologists and included in textbooks, despite the absence of supporting experimental evidence. In 2018 Kimsey, Al-Hashimi and colleagues showed that Watson's and Crick's prediction was correct.
Digital text from PubMedCentral at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Kimsey, Szymanski....Al-Hashimi.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors, representatives of the "BEAT-ROP Cooperative Group," showed that intravitreal bevacizumab monoclonal antibody therapy in infants with stage 3+ retinopathy of prematurity showed a significant benefit for zone one disease compared to conventional laser therapy, and led to a recurrence rate of 6% versus 42% with conventional laser therapy. Digital facsimile from New Engl. J. Med. at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Mintz-Hintner, Kennedy, Chuang.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

"Anderson Ruffin Abbott, son of a wealthy properties speculator, pursued a classical education in preparation for a professional career. Graduating from the Toronto School of Medicine in 1861 he became the first Canadian of African descent to train as a physician. In 1863 he petitioned Abraham Lincoln and was appointed one of only eight black surgeons in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Following Lincoln's assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln bestowed on Abbott the plaid shawl Lincoln wore to his first inauguration. His career as physician, surgeon, Canada's first African Canadian coroner and Superintendent of Chicago's Provident Hospital and Training School gained him respect in both countries and allowed him to bear with tolerance and equanimity the racial prejudice that was never far below the surface.

"Active in civil affairs, church and cultural matters, he was also a lecturer as well as musician. An advocate of advanced yet basic education Abbott served as the President of the Wilberforce Educational Institute and later as administrator for the Dundas Mechanics' Institute. Although a physician by trade Abbott saw himself very much as scholar, a man of letters with many of his works published in various papers or journals in Canada and the United States in which he championed the causes of others particularly those of African descent. His military career had a profound affect on him and in 1890 he was elected a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, James S. Knowlton Post No. 532 in New York State and was later accorded the role of Surgeon and Aide-de-Camp" (publisher).

"Farmer first visited the Western African Ebola virus epidemic site in July 2014, and much of the book is devoted to his personal experiences. Reviewing the outbreak in 2020, he noted that there were almost no Ebola deaths in the U.S. or Europe. By Farmer's account, the West Africa Ebola death toll arose from the longstanding failure to invest in basic health infrastructure which resulted in a lack of proper medical care. Looking at the history of West Africa, Farmer blames the almost five centuries of European rule that resulted in the "rapacious extraction — of rubber latex, timber, minerals, gold, diamonds and human chattel" for the country's inability to provide adequate health care" (Wikipedia).

Traces the life of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer with particular focus on his work fighting tuberculosis, especially in Haiti, Peru, and Russia.

Ferriar coined the term "bibliomania" in this work. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Facsimile of the 1585 fourth and best edition of Paré's Oeuvres, published in 3 vols., each volume additionally illustrated by a distinguished French 20th century artist. 5000 numbered sets were issued in various different bindings.

An interpretive exhibition catalogue explaining the relationship of Freud's large collection of antiquities preserved in the Freud Museum to ideas that Freud developed in psychoanalysis.

Issued in 10 parts in folio (510 x 360 mm). Includes 46 large-format original photographs mounted on sheets of cardboard. 

Laguesse, who in 1893 named the islets of Langerhans, established in this work that the islets of Langerhans were the seat of internal secretion of the pancreas. On figures 425 and 427 he drew that are now called "the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Lacy and colleagues showed that transplanation of murine pancreatic islet tissue into the portal vein of diabetic rats of the same inbred strain normalized the sugar levels and urine output of the rats that received the islet transplants. This was the proof of concept paper for islet transplantation in humans.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Little is known about Morand. He refers to his teacher, Jules Cloquet throughout. Cloquet's book on acupuncture was published the following year in 1826. (No. 6829). Digital facsimile of Morand's book from BnF Gallica at this link.
Also in 1825, Franklin Bache translated Morand's book into English as Memoir on acupuncturation, embracing a series of cases, drawn up under the inspection of M. Julius Cloquet by M. Morand, Doctor of Medicine. Paris, 1825. Philadelphia: Robert Desilver, 1825. Digital facsimile of the English translation from the Internet Archive at this link. 

The first monograph on medical spectroscopy. After Hoppe-Seyler published the first paper on the application of spectroscopy to blood chemistry in 1862 (No. 870), Valentin decided to publish his own contributions to the spectroscopy of blood in this monograph, rather than a journal article.  Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

See Frederic L. Holmes, "Crystals and carriers: The chemical and physiological identification of hemoglobin," In No truth except In the details. Essays in honor of Martin J. Klein. Edited By A. J. Kox & Daniel M. Siegel (1995) 191-244. 

Ehrlich's "lock and key" theory of antibody antigen relationship, or interaction, in which the toxin molecule (i.e the antigen) binds to the cell receptor, and then the antibody binds in a lock and key manner to the toxin (antigen) to neutralize the toxin. 

Digital facsimile from royalsocietypublishing.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Worobey and colleagues showed:

1) The earliest case of an abnormal pneumonia was first reported to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, 2019.

2) Using basic epidemiology going back to the now iconic plot maps drawn by John Snow in the 19th century, the authors showed with their 21st century maps that nearly all the reported cases in December 2019 to February of 2020, were reported within a circumferential radius around the Wuhan market, which was defined at about a 13 kilometer radius, but with the greatest group of cases within 8.3 kilometers of the market.

3) They determined that a "lineage B" strain was clustered around a 1.12 km. radius around the market and that a "lineage A" strain was identified beyond a 3.2 kilometer radius. On their maps there is a tight clustering of cases contained within an 8.3 km cluster around the market.

4) They showed that 11 infection susceptible animals were observed and documented at the Huanan market in November 2019, with the raccoon dog being perhaps the most salient. The Wuhan market traded and sold each and all of these raccoon dogs.

5) They suggested that the market was a superspreading event which would be lineage specific. Evidence suggests that lineage A and B likely originated at the market, and then spread from this epicenter into the neighborhoods surrounding the market and beyond.

6) China has not reported the early virological studies done on these animals at the market , so the Chinese are the only ones that know which animals tested positive.

7) Based on their data, the authors posited animal to human viral transmission plausibly from infected live animals at the market. They stated  that “there were probably two viral introductions (A and B), and there was an extensive network of wildlife farms in Wester Hubei Province, including hundreds of thousands of raccoon dogs on farms in Enshi Prefecture, which specifically
supplied the Huanan market."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Worobey, Levy... Lemey....

Digital text from science.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Abstract: "We analyzed the genomic diversity of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We show that SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity before February 2020 likely comprised only two distinct viral lineages, denoted “A” and “B.” Phylodynamic rooting methods, coupled with epidemic simulations, reveal that these lineages were the result of at least two separate cross-species transmission events into humans. The first zoonotic transmission likely involved lineage B viruses around 18 November 2019 (23 October to 8 December), and the separate introduction of lineage A likely occurred within weeks of this event. These findings indicate that it is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 circulated widely in humans before November 2019 and define the narrow window between when SARS-CoV-2 first jumped into humans and when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported. As with other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 emergence likely resulted from multiple zoonotic events."

Digital text from science.org at this link.

Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference.

Probably the first publication to illustrate the stages of surgical transition from male to female, and to discuss the risks then involved in the operations.

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Includes an extensive bibliography of printed and online sources.


https://web.archive.org/web/20070520063824/http://www.symposion.com/ijt/pfaefflin/1000.htm

Unna reported that skin lesions of urticaria pigmentosa contained numerous mast cells. This was the first report of a primary mast cell disorder.
Digital facsimile from deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de at this link.

Sézary and colleagues first reported systemic mastocytosis.

IN 1963 Gibbons discovered a novel protein on microtubules. In 1965 he purified two regions of the protein, known as its two "arms" and named the protein dynein. This protein converts the chemical energy stored in ATP to mechanical work, and is responsible for transporting any cell particle or element that needs to be moved from point A to point B. This paper includes very high resolution electron photomicrographs of dynein.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.) 

The authors discovered and named a second motor protein, and named it kinesin. Digital text from PubMedCentral at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Vale, Reese, Sheetz.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Crosse, a British surgeon whose name appears without the final "ed" on the title page, was a British surgeon who spent the winter of 1814-15 in Paris, where he wrote numerous letters to friends in london and Dublin describing Parisina hospital practices. These were then collected and published in this book, "the most measured and detailed British account of study in Paris" (Brockliss, “The new Paris medical school and the invention of the clinic,” in Cross and D. Williams, eds., The French Experience from Republic to Monarchy, 1792-1824, 137.)

Engelhart’s dissertation, presented before the medical faculty at the University of Göttingen, contains the first determination of the molecular mass of a protein (hemoglobin). Engelhart proved that the ratio of iron to protein is identical in the hemoglobin of several species, and that the iron in blood could be removed by the action of chlorine. From the known atomic mass of iron he calculated the molecular mass of hemoglobin to be n x 16,000 (n being the number of iron atoms in hemoglobin, now known to be 4). Engelhart’s calculation was greeted with incredulity by his colleagues, who refused to accept that any molecule could be so large, but a century later Gilbert Adair confirmed Engelhart’s results by measuring the osmotic pressure of hemoglobin solutions.

The first Western history of Chinese medicine. Lepage, a pupil of Pierre Sue, was a friend and colleague of pioneer sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat. In his medical thesis Lepage presented an overview of what was then known of Chinese medicine, drawing on Jesuit letters and other 18th-century European narratives of travels in China. Lepage “advocated understanding the state of the medical sciences among other peoples” and “proposed the long-range task of studying Asian systems and the more immediate one of reviewing those of the Chinese” (L. Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods and Ghosts: China, Healing and the West to 1848, p. 237.)

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Salvage's 21 plates after his own drawings "are based on three casts of bodies dissected to different anatomical layers and set in the pose of the Borghese Gladiator. For these casts he preferred to use the bodies of soldiers in their prime killed in duels rather than patients who died as a result of illness . . . Salvage, like Genga and Lancisi, presents the anatomy of the ideal forms of antique sculpture . . . The plates are colour-coded, with the muscles in red ink and the bones in black ink. The anatomy of the Borghese Gladiator is depicted in four views in a series of eleven plates. The contour of the body in the skeleton plates is given in red ink, and a broken line of the same colour is used for the detached muscles in the plates of deeper dissection . . . This system of transparent anatomy serves as an effective aide-mémoire for the viewer of the different anatomical layers and was a popular method of anatomical illustration” (Cazort, Kornell & Roberts, The Ingenious Machine of Nature, 105; also featuring an illustration from Salvage’s work on the cover). Salvage studied medicine at Montpellier and served as an army surgeon before joining the staff of the military hospital of Val-de-Grâce in 1796. His classically-inspired Anatomie, published the year before his death, also incorporates anatomical representations of the Belvedere Apollo, the Apollo of Florence, the infant Bacchus and the Farnese Hercules. 

Manec was head of anatomy at the Facultè de Médecine de Paris and a surgeon at the Salpetrière. He wrote text of his atlas on ligations of arteries in the first person based upon his experience performing the operations. Manec's atlas is illustrated with 13 lithographed plates drawn by Nicolas-Henri Jacob, the illustrator of Jean-Baptiste Bourgery’s magnificent multi-volume atlas of human anatomy.

Kletzinsky coined the term "Biochemie" (biochemistry).  Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

The invention of Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The novel technique was achieved by "by applying the method to tilted specimens, and using the principles put forward by De Rosier and Klug (GM - 13935), for  the combination of a three-dimensional map of the membrane at 7 Angstroms resolution.”

In 2017 Henderson shared the 2017 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Frank and colleagues developed a method that allows sorting of particle images into classes based on their orientation, as well as their structural features. Specifically Frank developed mathematical tools used for image analysis, which form the basis for single particle cryo-EM. He gathered them together in a suite of computer programs called “SPIDER”, making them readily available and useable for the scientific community. Order of authorship in the original publication: Frank, Verschoor, Boublik.

In 2017 Frank shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Dubochet and colleagues introduced "Dubochet's vitrification method" to vitrify water by cooling it so rapidly that it solidified to form a glass instead of crystals. Using this method, the authors published the first images of a number of different viruses, round and hexagonal.

In 2017 Dubochet shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors located individual atoms with a protein molecule for the first time using cryo-EM. This was the highest resolution imaging of a single protein molecule achieved to date using cryo-EM.

Order of authorship of the original paper: Nakane, Kotech, Sente, et al.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Translated into English by William Sayers as A history of disability. New foreward by David T. Mitchel and Sharon L. Snyder.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2019.

"The first book to attempt to provide a framework for analyzing disability through the ages, Henri-Jacques Stiker's now classic A History of Disability traces the history of western cultural responses to disability, from ancient times to the present. The sweep of the volume is broad; from a rereading and reinterpretation of the Oedipus myth to legislation regarding disability, Stiker proposes an analytical history that demonstrates how societies reveal themselves through their attitudes towards disability in unexpected ways.  Through this history, Stiker examines a fundamental issue in contemporary Western discourse on disability: the cultural assumption that equality/sameness/similarity is always desired by those in society. He highlights the consequences of such a mindset, illustrating the intolerance of diversity and individualism that arises from placing such importance on equality.  Working against this thinking, Stiker argues that difference is not only acceptable, but that it is desirable, and necessary" (publisher).
 

Swanson showed that just 0.01 mg. of epinephrine was as vasconstrictive as 2 mg. of ephedrine and 4 mg. of pseudoephedrine. He also showed that all three of these drugs have bronchodilator properties, but epinephrine caused marked bronchodilation at only 0.2mg.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In this speech Pasteur first introduced the term "germ theory" and defined its applications in medicine, surgery, and infectious disease. The speech was first published in condensed form in Comptes rendus...de l'Académie des Sciences, 86 (1878) 1037-1043. For that version authorship was expressed as "Pasteur, Joubert et Chamberland."

Digital facsimile of the separate printing from bnf.gallica at this link. Digital facsimile of the journal publication from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Moore and Quick established that the scrotal sac, and its ability to expand or contract, helps to regulate the temperature of the testes. Through this mechanism it enables sperm production and supports the viability of sperm.

Digital facsimile from physiology.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a rare inherited disorder that affects about 1 in 380,000 live births. In their summary the authors described this as a new "syndrome consisting of hyperuricemia, mental retardation, choreoathetosis, and self-destructive biting." 

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Jay Seegmiller and his colleagues at NIH discovered that the rare genetic disease, Lesch–Nyhan syndrome, was due to a profound deficiency of an enzyme known as hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyltransferase, or HGPRT. They reported this as "the first example of a relation between a specific enzyme defect and abnormal compulsive behavior and simultaneously as the 1st enzyme defect in purine metabolism demonstrated in a neurological disease."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Seegmiller, Rosenbloom, Kelly.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.