FAMOUS PEOPLE IN MEDICAL HISTORY: by Dr Nihal D Amarasekera

FAMOUS PEOPLE IN MEDICAL HISTORY

Paintings with short descriptions 

by Dr Nihal D Amarasekera

Jonas Salk (1914-1995)

He was an American Virologist who developed the first Polio vaccine. In 1947, he became the Director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh and the Medical School in Pennsylvania. Salk started work on the Polio vaccine in 1948 and perfected it for general use in 1955. This led to a vaccine to wipe out the most frightening scourge of the time: paralytic poliomyelitis. He did not patent it, not wanting make a profit from it. Hence, it was soon available globally, working in the prevention of Polio. Salk campaigned to make Polio vaccination mandatory.

An attenuated live oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin, coming into commercial use in 1961.

In 1963, Salk founded the  Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Here he worked assiduously to develop a vaccine against HIV. His life’s philosophy is memorialised at the Institute with his now famous quote: “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."

William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) 

William Harvey was an English physician. He studied medicine in Padua in Italy. Harvey was the first to describe accurately how blood was pumped around the body by the heart. He also explained the part played by valves in the circulation of blood. Harvey was the first to suggest that humans and other mammals reproduced via the fertilisation of an egg by sperm. Nowadays, these are facts we learn in biology in school.

William Harvey became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and, in 1609, was appointed physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital.

Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)

He was a Scottish physician. Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, which was the first broadly effective antibiotic. This is still considered the greatest discovery in the treatment of infections. For this he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922. He was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. He studied medicine at St Mary's Hospital Medical School. He was elected professor of the medical school in 1928 and emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of London in 1948.

Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

He was an English Physician who pioneered the concept of vaccines and found the smallpox vaccine. This was the greatest killer disease of the time. According to folklore of the countryside milkmaids who suffered the mild disease of cowpox never contracted smallpox. Jenner proved that those who have been inoculated with cowpox were immune to smallpox. He submitted a paper to the Royal Society in 1797 which was accepted. It was Jenner who coined the word vaccine from the Latin word 'vacca' for cow.

He is greatly respected as a scientist and is often described as the “Father of immunology”.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

He is a Frenchman best known for discovering the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurisation. Pasteur was dyslexic and dysgraphic but this did not prevent him from making an enormous contribution to medicine. He did extensive research in chemistry which led to the better understanding of the causes of disease and also prevention of disease by better hygiene and public health.

Louis Pasteur's germ theory, published in 1861, revolutionised medicine by proposing that many diseases are caused by microorganisms, rather than spontaneous generation or imbalances in the body, and that these microbes can be killed by heat, as seen in pasteurisation.  Pasteur is the founder of modern microbiology. He established the Pasteur Institute of which he was the director until his death. There was much sadness in his life as 3 of his children died young, of typhoid.

Pasteur will be forever remembered for his germ theory of disease.