Lewis A. Conner, MD (1867 to 1950), was a pioneer in public health cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation, and cardiac psychology. He helped establish the Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and was the founding president of the New York and American Heart Associations (AHA). Dr Conner was the founder of the American Heart Journal, America's first medical subspecialty journal, and the official publication of the American Heart Association until 1950, when CIRCULATION: was created. Conner spent more than a half-century on the staff of the New York Hospital and Cornell University Medical College and was Chairman of Medicine from 1916 to 1932. During this time, he created the innovative Cornell Pay Clinic and united the "old" New York Hospital with the new and scientifically-oriented Cornell University Medical College on a modern and inspiring urban campus. An extraordinary clinician and a humanist with great equanimity, Conner devoted his career to the Oslerian tradition of scholarship, leadership, and organization in the quest for improved patient care. This article contains newly discovered biographic material on Dr Conner and explores his professional and personal connection to Sir William Osler. (+info)
How the measurement of residual volume developed after Davy (1800).
(66/2006)
H. Davy measured the residual volume of his own lungs in 1800, by inhaling a hydrogen mixture contained in a mercurial air holder. Using the same principle, Nestor Grehant determined the functional residual capacity, and the volume of the dead space, in 1864. Both used a forced breathing method, that was substituted by a prolonged dilution method by D.D. Van Slyke and C.A.L. Binger in 1923. It was in 1941 that G.R. Meneely and M.L. Kaltreider replaced hydrogen with helium. The open circuit nitrogen washout method was proposed by R.E. Darling, A. Cournand and D.W. Richards in 1940, and the body plethysmograph by A.B. DuBois et al. in 1956. So the three methods, still in common use today for measuring the static lung volumes, had been described by the mid-1950s. (+info)
The philosophical terrain of behavior analysis: a review of B. A. Thyer (Ed.), The Philosophical Legacy of Behaviorism.
(67/2006)
The Philosophical Legacy of Behaviorism, edited by Bruce A. Thyer, is a set of original contributions, each dealing, from a behavioral stance, with one of the following major topics of philosophy: epistemology, ethics, consciousness, language, free will and determinism, and self-control. Confusions about radical behaviorism and its similarities to, and differences from, other behavioral and non-behavioral approaches are described in the book, which provides a state-of-the-art description of the philosophical underpinnings of behavior analysis. (+info)
From poor farm to medical center: a century of library services to the Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center.
(68/2006)
As its centennial approaches, the history and development of library services to the patients and professional staff of the Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center is traced from the early days when the library was housed in the cafeteria of the dispensary to its present position of being first point of access to library service for one of the largest teaching hospitals in the country. Its recent affiliation with the Norris Medical Library of the University of Southern California School of Medicine is explained. The change in emphasis from patients' library to health sciences library is illustrated, and the contribution of the library to the Cumulative Index to Nursing Literature is detailed. (+info)
The future of surgery--Santayana or Ford.
(69/2006)
The Canadian health care system is currently in an era of reform and restructuring. Economic and political forces, changes in licensing and educational system as well as public expectations all influence change in this evolving health care delivery system. In contemplating change it is useful to remember the lessons of our rich surgical history so that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. The Canadian Association of General Surgeons is well positioned to exert a leadership role in the evolution of surgical care in Canada. The role of the Association in the promotion of evidence-based surgery, continuing professional development and the provision of surgical services in rural areas is discussed in this paper. (+info)
"The branches into which bacteriology is now ramifying" revisited.
(70/2006)
The American Society for Microbiology was originally founded in 1899 as the Society of American Bacteriologists. The transition from "bacteriology" to "microbiology" and from an emphasis on the identity of the membership (bacteriologists) to an emphasis on the discipline (microbiology) was a contentious one that occurred in several steps. This article reviews the history and events that accompanied this development. (+info)
Welch, Sedgwick, and the Hopkins model of hygiene.
(71/2006)
William H. Welch and William T. Sedgwick, two of the founding fathers of American public health, were both early generation "Hopkins Men." Sedgwick was part of the first group of graduate students to attend Johns Hopkins University, and Welch was part of the initial faculty at the University's medical school. While they never worked together as colleagues at Hopkins, both became interested in the exciting new discoveries of the microbial nature of human disease and developed similar public health programs based on this information. Sedgwick expanded upon these investigations in the new sanitary science program at MIT, where academic public health first emerged in the United States following Sedgwick's appointment in 1883. Welch, who had been exposed to European research in microbiology, promoted microbial research in pathology in Baltimore in 1884. His laboratory-based investigations expanded until they led to the formation of the country's first school of public health in 1916. Thus, a "Hopkins Model" for hygiene and public health emerged from the efforts of both Welch and Sedgwick. (+info)
Transplantation and its biology: from fantasy to routine.
(72/2006)
The replacement of diseased organs and tissues by the healthy ones of others has been a unique milestone in modern medicine. For centuries, transplantation remained a theme of fantasy in literature and the arts. Within the past five decades, however, it has developed from a few isolated attempts to salvage occasional individuals with end-stage organ failure to a routine treatment for many patients. In parallel with the progressive improvements in clinical results has come an explosion in immunology, transplantation biology, immunogenetics, cell and molecular biology, pharmacology, and other relevant biosciences, with knowledge burgeoning at a rate not dreamed of by the original pioneers. Indeed, there have been few other instances in modern medicine in which so many scientific disciplines have contributed in concert toward understanding and treating such a complex clinical problem as the failure of vital organs. The field has been a dramatic example of evolution from an imagined process to an accepted form of therapy. (+info)