HisTech: People to Know

Edwin Smith

Purchased Papyrus, an ancient medical text about surgery and medicine.

Asclepius

Greek god of healing; his staff is the modern symbol of medicine.

Hippocrates

Emphasized ethics; Hippocratic Oath states that no harm shall be done.

Geneva

Emphasized ethics and patient respect; Declaration of Geneva states that no medical techniques will be used that violate humanity’s laws.

Paracelsus

Swiss physician, focused on medicine dosage.

Leopold Auenbrugger

Discovered percussion.

Thomas Hodgkin

Used microscope to discover white blood cell cancer and acute appendicitis. (Hodgkin’s Lymphoma)

Geovani Morgagni

Did many autopsies; realized that disease was localized and not a result of general imbalance (4 humors).

Rene Linnaec

Invented the stethoscope.

Wilhelm Rontgen

Invented the X-Ray.

Willem Einthoven

Invented the electrocardiogram.

Alexander Fleming

Invented penicillin.

Crawford Long

Invented surgical anesthetics, tested on slaves.

Joseph Lister

Invented sterile surgery.

Jay McLean

Invented heparin (treats heart and lung issues) in Willian Howell’s lab.

Louis Pasteur

Invented germ theory, helped invent vaccines, disproved spontaneous generation model, discovered fermentation, and invented pasteurization.

David Sackett and John Stolden

Invented evidence-based medicine.

Virginia Apgar

Created Apgar Test for infant health.

Galen

Treated gladiators, established bloodletting and also used opium for pain relief.

Maimonides

Jewish physician, translated Hippocrates and Galen to Arabic, discovered hemophilia, built hospitals, emphasized preventative medicine; Oath of Maimonides focuses on humility.

Edward Jenner

“Invented,” vaccines.

Aretaeus

Described diabetes as “the turning of flesh to urine.”

Garrod

Proposed that disease could be inherited, realized that alkaptonuria (black urine disease) could be inherited.

Joseph Priestly

Discovered molecular oxygen.

Antoine Lavoisier

Discovered that animals breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.

Claude Bernard

Created “Theory of Indirect Nutrition.”

Hans/Edward Buchner

Proved that proteins exist and function outside of the cell.

Emil Fischer

Developed enzyme theory and “lock and key model,” (as seen in substrate-level phosphorylation.

Arthur Harden

Isolated phosphorylated intermediates in fermentation.

Embden and Meyerhof

Found that glycolysis and fermentation were the same pathway.

Warburg

Came up with Warburg Effect (in tumors, the rate of glucose uptake dramatically increases and lactate is produced, even in the presence of oxygen and fully functioning mitochondria).

Hans Krebs

Invented the Krebs Cycle.

Albert Szent Giorni

Discovered many Krebs Cycle components.

Fritz Lipmann

Discovered Acetyl-CoA.

James Sumner

First to isolate a protein (urease).

James Northup

Isolated pepsin.

Moore and Stein

Developed amino acid analyzers and column chromatography.

Stanley Prusiner

Came up with Prion Theory (a misfolded protein is the main (and perhaps the only) component of this unorthodox infectious agent called a prion).

Galileo

Debunked geocentric model of the universe.

Christiaan Eikjman

Demonstrated that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of antineuritic (thiamine/Vitamin B1) vitamins.

Frederick Hopkins

Worked with Christiaan Eikjman to discover vitamins, also discovered tryptophan.

Casimir Funk

One of the first to conceptualize and formulate the idea of vitamins.

Elmer McCollum

Discovered the vitamin that helps cure rickets (weak bones in children) was 2: A and D.

Karl Lohmann

Discovered ATP.