Great Ones

Famous contributors to medical knowledge and practice? U. S. students last week compared two lists, a U. S. selection recorded in the Journal of the American Medical Association and a British recorded in the Medical Press and Circular (English):

U.S. *Pasteur *Hippocrates *Harvey Osler *Lister Koch Galen *Laennec

British *Hippocrates *Harvey Sydenham Hunter *Pasteur Jenner *Laennec Simpson or Morton *Lister Roentgen

Some British correspondents preferred to put Morgagni among the first five instead of Hunter on the grounds of precedence in time.

Even to students these great teachers and innovators are mostly only names:

Hippocrates (B. C. 460-359 or 377) is rightly termed the "Father of Medicine." Of a family of physicians, he taught original research and experiment; was extolled by Plato and Aristotle, by the Ancients, by the Medievals.

Claudius Galen (A. D. 130-20) was another Greek who taught and wrote extensively, urging empirical research. He made profound discoveries on blood, respiration and wound treatment.

William Harvey (1578-1657), English anatomist and physician, discovered the circulation of the blood for modern times, although Galen and the Egyptians had some conception of the fact.

Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), English, taught doctors to study the patient instead of wrangling about what Hippocrates and Galen might have meant in their writings.

Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771), Italian, studied the pathology of the organs.

John Hunter (1728-1793), Scotch anatomist and surgeon, taught students to observe nature; worked on immunity and rivalry of diseases, on dissection.

Edward Jenner (1749-1823), English student of Hunter, discovered vaccination.

Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826), French, invented the stethoscope; discovered auscultation; was a specialist on local diagnosis.

Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870), Scotch, was an influential champion of surgical anesthesia and of chloroform.

William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868), American, discovered ether for anesthetization.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1905), French, hunted microbes, developed pasteurization.

Joseph Lister (1827-1912), 1st Baron, British, led in antiseptic surgery.

Robert Koch (1843-1910), German physician and bacteriologist, made great revelations on infectious diseases.

Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (1845-1923), German physicist, discovered X (or roentgen) rays; won the 1901 Nobel prize.

William Osier (1849-1919), Canadian, was a great teacher in the U. S. and England; wrote extensively. Most of these men lived to a ripe old age, to study, heal and teach. Of the moderns, Lister and Morgagni were 85 years old at death. (Hippocrates was either 99 or 73 according to conflicting dim reports of his life.) The youngest to die was Laennec, at 45.

*On both lists.