Categotry Archives: Medicine

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Frederick Robbins

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Categories: Education, Medicine, Scientists

Dr. Frederick Chapman Robbins, a Nobel Prize-winning pediatrician, died on Aug. 4 from congestive heart failure. He was 86.
Robbins earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri and his medical degree from Harvard. He was appointed resident physician in bacteriology at The Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston until the start of World War II when he joined the Army Medical Corps. While stationed in North Africa and Italy, Robbins patched up wounded soldiers and conducted studies on hepatitis, typhus and Q fever. His efforts overseas earned him a Bronze Star.
After the war ended, Robbins returned to the states to finish his training in pediatrics. In 1948, he worked with the research division of the infectious diseases laboratory at Children’s Hospital. With the aid of Dr. John F. Enders and Dr. Thomas H. Weller, Robbins developed a way to grow the polio virus in tissue culture. This method aided in the creation of polio vaccines, and earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1954.
Robbins mentored many doctors as a professor at Harvard and the Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, and as the chief of pediatrics and contagious diseases at Cleveland City Hospital. In the 1980s, Robbins was elected president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Transcript of Robbins’ Nobel Lecture

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Ben Munson

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Categories: Law, Medicine

Dr. H. Benjamin Munson performed abortions in South Dakota even before it was legal to do so.
Munson believed women had the right to safely end a pregnancy, and he risked his medical practice and well-being by performing abortions at a Rapid City clinic in the late 1960s. At the time, he was the only physician in the entire state willing to perform the procedure.
In 1969, Munson was arrested and charged with performing an illegal abortion. He won his case at the circuit court level, but the state appealed, and the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled against him. His case was still in appeals when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade case.
“He thought it was absolutely essential that women have the right to make that decision themselves. That’s what it was all about for him,” said Homer Kandaras, Munson’s attorney.
Munson died on July 27 of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 87.

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Peter Safar

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Categories: Medicine

psafar.jpgDr. Peter J. Safar taught physicians how to cheat death.
During his distinguished career, Safar developed the first intensive care unit and paramedic ambulance service. He was a driving force behind the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in hospitals, and he received three nominations for the Nobel Prize in medicine.
Safar graduated from the University of Vienna School of Medicine in 1948, immigrated to the United States on a student visa, and spent two years as a resident at Yale University. Visa regulations required him to leave the U.S., so he spent 14 months working as the chief anesthetist at the National Cancer Hospital in Lima, Peru. He then secured a special-preference immigration visa to the states, which allowed him to practice at John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore. There Safar experimented on volunteers and documented the best steps for performing CPR.
In 1961, Safar moved to Philadelphia to work as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He founded the International Resuscitation Research Center, which has trained more than 500 physicians in critical care medicine, anesthesiology, emergency medical services and disaster reanimatology.
As a researcher, Safar designed a technique to lower a patient’s temperature during cardiac arrest by inducing mild hypothermia. Injecting a cool liquid into the patient’s lungs during a heart attack would, in theory, lower overall body temperature and give paramedics a few extra minutes to arrive before permanent brain damage can occur. Safar received several grants from the U.S. Department of Defense to study this concept for use on the battlefield.
Safar died on Aug. 3 from cancer. He was 79.

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Robert Thorne

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Categories: Medicine, Military

Dr. Robert Leslie Thorne, the youngest member of the Tuskegee Airmen, died on July 13 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 78.
Thorne was 17 when he enlisted in the Air Force in 1943. Because of his race, the military put him in the Alabama-based Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneering unit that shattered racial misconceptions about the quality of black pilots. Thorne qualified as a bombardier and a navigator; he had just completed his training to become a fighter pilot when World War II ended.
After the war, Thorne applied to the University of Michigan dental school under the G.I. Bill, but was turned down because the school had already reached its racial quota. Undeterred, Thorne applied to the New York University dental school and was accepted.
He spent 40 years in private practice as a dentist in Harlem, and often volunteered his services to the children of New York City.

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Bill Shull

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Categories: Medicine

Dr. William Henry Shull Jr. helped patients with brain injuries as the director of neurotrauma rehabilitation at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. His training came in handy this year when he suffered a stroke.
“I think this was part of God’s plan for me. I care for patients with disabilities, and now I know what it is like to not be able to move,” Shull said.
Shull began his residencies and fellowships in rehabilitative medicine, surgery and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation in 1987 after earning a medical degree from Duke University. While working at the hospital, he designed a questionnaire to help survivors and their families understand the effects of acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Shull died on July 11 of malignant melanoma. He was 42.

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