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Arguably The Most Prolific Vaccine Scientist in History

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Arguably The Most Prolific Vaccine Scientist in History

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For my docent entry, I chose American microbiologist, Maurice Hilleman, who has been dubbed the father of modern vaccines. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Hilleman has been considered the most prolific vaccine scientist of the 20th century and has supposedly saved more lives than any other scientist in history.

Between the years 1950-1980s, Hilleman is credited for developing more than 40 vaccines, including measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningitis, pneumonia, Haemophilus influenzae bacteria, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcus, meningococcus, varicella (chickenpox) and rubella. Aside from developing vaccines, he was also the first to isolate and characterize several viruses such as hep A in culture or isolating mumps from his daughter in order to create a vaccine. When he created the hepatitis B vaccine, Dr. Hilleman became the first person to develop a vaccine against a virus that causes cancer.  Hilleman also became the first person to combine viral vaccines when he created the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. His vaccines have been credited with saving millions of lives and with eradicating common childhood diseases. The measles vaccine alone has prevented approximately one million deaths.  He eventually became an advisor to the World Health Organization, emphasizing his importance to the field of medicine.

I chose Maurice Hilleman due to his integral role in the world of medicine, particularly in developing vaccines and isolating viruses/cultures. Hilleman would be a great person to explain the importance of the scientific process in relation to discovering new medicines and medical treatments as well as how discoveries always lead to new innovations and ideas. As a NIHF inductee, he is the most qualified to walk through this exhibit and expand on the concept of inventing medication, treatments, and chemical compounds. His work done developing 40+ vaccines that are still administered today and have saved millions of lives speaks for itself.

Sources:
https://www.invent.org/blog/inventors/maurice-hilleman-vaccines#:~:text=Considered%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20father%20of%20modern,than%20any%20other%20medical%20scientist.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557162/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557162/#:~:text=Maurice%20Hilleman%20was%20responsible%20for,with%20eradicating%20common%20childhood%20diseases.

https://hillemanfilm.com/dr-hilleman

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Record-Breaking Vaccine Created In Less Than A Year Amidst Global COVID-19 Pandemic

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Record-Breaking Vaccine Created In Less Than A Year Amidst Global COVID-19 Pandemic

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COVID-19 is something all too familiar to everyone who has been alive for the last 4 years. For the first time in our lifetime, we faced a worldwide pandemic, claiming more than six million lives globally. At the beginning of 2020, an unknown virus coined Coronavirus was found in Wuhan, China which quickly spread to the US. By the end of January, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency, causing a ripple effect of shut-downs: air travel cancelled, death tolls rising. By the beginning of March, the WHO deemed COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic with the US and almost every country spiking in cases daily.

America started issuing lockdowns: governments started scrambling to handle their crumbling healthcare systems that were ill-equipped to deal with the high death tolls, only essential workers were allowed to go to work, masks became a requirement, social distancing of 6 feet away was implemented, etc. Meanwhile, there is a global search for a possible vaccine to COVID-19, a rampant virus unlike any other at the time. Between the months of March and April, hydroxychloroquine began being considered as a potential treatment for those suffering from COVID-19. Next, remdesivir began being considered as a treatment for COVID-19. From June to November, vaccine trials begin  from companies like Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, BioNTech, CanSino Biologics, GlaxoSmithKline,  Sanofi Pasteur and even more globally to race to try to provide some protection against the pandemic. After a global death toll surpasses 40 million, finally, in December, almost a year after the virus began, the Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna vaccines get approved and distributed across America with 2.8 million American receiving at least the first dose by the end of the month.

"The fastest any vaccine had previously been developed, from viral sampling to approval, was four years, for mumps in the 1960s. To hope for one even by the summer of 2021 seemed highly optimistic. The COVID-19 experience will almost certainly change the future of vaccine science, says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “It shows how fast vaccine development can proceed when there is a true global emergency and sufficient resources,” he says. New ways of making vaccines, such as by using messenger RNA (mRNA), have been validated by the COVID-19 response, he adds. “It has shown that the development process can be accelerated substantially without compromising on safety." Such a speedy development was because of years of previous research on related viruses and faster ways to manufacture vaccines, enormous funding that allowed firms to run multiple trials in parallel, and regulators moving more quickly than normal" (Ball 2020).

As everyone in this class has experienced, COVID-19 and the manufacturing of the COVID-19 vaccine in such a short time frame was both a frightening and an awe-inspiring once-in-a-lifetime moment as future medical professionals. Not only are we the only generation to survive a pandemic while in school, we are also the only generation to grow up to enter our medical field amidst a pandemic where we witnessed adaptability and ground-breaking inventions as scientists all across the globe collaborated to try to aid in stopping the spread of a deadly virus. This is the ultimate example of the synthesis of new medicine and it's application to save lives. This altered every field of science forever, including neuroscience. The effects of this pandemic and this vaccine continue to be monitored and have to be studied for years on end.

Sources:
https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1

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Modern Medicine Evolves to Create A Vaccine Against Rabies

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Modern Medicine Evolves to Create A Vaccine Against Rabies

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In 1885, Louis Pasteur revolutionized the history of vaccines and modern medicine by creating a successful vaccine against rabies: successfully vaccinating a young boy who had been bitten by a dog with rabies. Four years prior to this event, Pasteur had been intensely researching rabies in both rabbits and dogs. He had developed a vaccine that had proven effective in lab-controlled environments on dogs and rabbits, but had yet to test the vaccine on humans.

9 year old Joseph Meister had been aggressively bitten by a rabid dog 2 days prior to his vaccination. According to Pasteur, the child was deteriorating quickly, with death appearing eminent. It was then that Pasteur decided to try the vaccine and injected the first dose (out of 14 daily doses) into Joseph.  "On October 20, he successfully treated another patient infected by a mad dog six days earlier. By 1886, he had treated 350 patients from all over Europe, Russia, and America." Thankfully, the vaccine proved to be successful and word spread around the world like wildfire. Only 5 years later, by 1890, multiple rabies treatment centers had been established across the globe, equipped to combat rabies with Pasteur's vaccine.

Although this is a quick deviation from the previous 4 entries that revolved around anesthesia, it's a great example of how priorities shift once medicine keeps evolving. Up until this point, it's evident that new anesthetics were the focus to aid in surgeries, oral procedures, etc. Once an array of anesthetics were developed and produced, new medical topics came into focus. So much research was done and science evolved so much that a vaccine was able to be created against a virus, when not even 40 years prior, certain procedures were unable to be done without numbing. This is a great example of the power of medicine and also a stepping stone in the field of immunology & infectious diseases. We see this progression of science in neuroscience and focuses shift depending on need.

Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000572.htm#:~:text=On%20July%206%2C%201885%2C%20Louis,rabid%20dog%202%20days%20before.

https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/73/1/82

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Cocaine Gets Discovered As A Potential Medical Aid in Surgery

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Cocaine Gets Discovered As A Potential Medical Aid in Surgery

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In 1860, Albert Niemann purified cocaine by evaporating an aqueous extract of the leaves and then drying the residue to obtain white crystals, allowing him to determine it's molecular mass & his interpretation of it's molecular formula. He wasn't the first to produce a crude product of cocaine, but he was the first to perform the first quantitative investigation on it, as well as naming it cocaine.

20 years later, in 1884, Carl Koller, an Austrian ophthalmologist, tested the effects of cocaine on his own body by administering cocaine to his cornea, documenting it's anesthetic properties. Funnily enough, he gathered the idea to utilize cocaine as an anesthetic from a famous figurehead in neuroscience: Sigmund Freud. Koller and Freud were friends from medical school and experimented with the new drug cocaine. Freud focused on cocaine's potential to aid with morphine addiction, while Koller focused on it's numbing agent. He eventually wrote a paper documenting cocaine's role as a local anesthetic which eventually took off and spread the word of his discovery.

Finally, in 1898, Karl Gustav August Bier, a German surgeon, utilized cocaine for intraspinal anesthesia. Bier injected a cocaine solution, which was commonly used as an anesthetic, into the spinal column of one of his patients prior to his surgery that required a partial amputation of the leg. Bier injected the solution into the patient's spinal canal and waited twenty minutes before proceeding with the amputation. Bier documented that the patient claimed to feel nothing in his lower half, was completely alert and oriented during the surgery, and maintained his position that he felt no pain. Bier also documented that the patient could not move any of his limbs. After this first successful trial, Bier repeated the same process on 5 other patients. While all patients felt no pain, they all did experience symptoms such as vomiting and severe week-long headaches post-cocaine administration. "Bier hypothesized that those side effects resulted from circulatory trauma to the central nervous system or excessive loss of cerebrospinal fluid."

After conducting six successful spinal blocks, Bier was determined to figure out if the post-surgical side effects of vomiting and headaches were due to the cocaine solution.  Bier and his surgical assistant, August Hildebrandt, administered the spinal anesthetic to each other: it was not successful when administered to Bier, but it was successfull in numbing Hildebrant's lower half. Although Bier was not numbed, both of them experienced intense headaches that lasted about a week post-trial. This concluded for them that the side effects were due to the cocaine anesthetic and that a small dosage of cocaine solution in the spinal canal can numb a large portion of a patient's body, proving to be effective in surgery as an anesthetic.

This exhibit is a great example of how fast medicine can progress within a short span of time. In the 19th century, within 30 years, a chemical compound was isolated and then introduced as a numbing agent injected into the spine to aid with amputations. This is also interesting given how cocaine is now a "common," if you will, recreational drug that people take for fun at parties or a hardcore drug that people suffer addiction from. I also appreciate how this also revolutionized the world of surgery and anesthesia forever.

Sources:
https://edu.rsc.org/feature/cocaine-a-short-trip-in-time/2020119.article

https://www.aao.org/biographies-detail/carl-koller-md

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22531385/

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/august-karl-gustav-bier-1861-1949

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James Young Simpson Introduced Chloroform to the Anesthetic Medications

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James Young Simpson Introduced Chloroform to the Anesthetic Medications

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In 1847, chloroform anesthesia was discovered by Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician. Simpson and his 2 assistants, George Keith and James Matthews Duncan, were attempting to find new forms of anesthesia to aid in surgical procedures and even childbirth. After trying plenty of unsuccessful and toxic chemicals, Simpson found himself in  possession of chloroform. The three men inhaled the sample of chloroform, passed out, and upon multiple trials of falling over and waking up, they concluded that chloroform was fit to be the next big thing in the field of anesthesia.

In November 1847, Simpson publicly announced his discovery of a new anesthetic agent after using it in a number of minor procedures. In November of 1847, he successfully implemented it in an obstetric procedure for the first time ever. Simpson published pamphlets and his findings  were debuted on front pages of the newspaper which spread the word that there was supposedly an anesthetic better than the others. Due to the news picking up, the popularity caused manufacturers to struggle: they couldn't keep up with the demand for chloroform. Although he convinced many to introduce chloroform as an anesthetic, he received a lot of backlash for his suggestion to implement it in obstetrics.

Although most of the medical population could rationalize using chloroform during long, strenuous childbirth, a lot of backlash was received in regards to using it during normal childbirth with no complications. Most affiliated childbirth with pain, noting pain as a natural and essential part of childbirth, so if a delivery did not require some invasive operation, it was frowned upon to use chloroform.  Simpson disagreed with these takes and thought the usage of chloroform during childbirth was absolutely necessary (shout-out to to Simpson for helping women!) After only a year of Simpson's chloroform discovery, medical professionals were sure of it's effectiveness and usage in surgery. Chloroform quickly became the go-to anesthetic for general surgeries, excluding obstetric surgery. Chloroform was the anesthetic of choice for general surgery, but still not used widely for obstetrics. Over the course of time, patients experienced adverse reactions and negative responses to chloroform which led to it's regulation & ultimate refinement to make it the safest possible.

I chose this exhibit because for one, it is another example of a scientist being his own test subject, but for two, the recognition of pain management during childbirth! Historically speaking, it is no surprise that no attention was paid to the suffering women endure during labor, but Simpson was one of the first to suggest merging the fields of anesthesia with obstetrics which we know go hand-in-hand today with options like the epidural. It's also a great example of how not all medical discoveries are received with open arms and that backlash shouldn't stop scientists from continuing their work/what they believe to be fair.

Sources:
https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/heritage/college-history/james-young-simpson

https://fn.bmj.com/content/86/3/F207

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Crawford W Long and William Morton Revolutionize the World of Anesthesia With Sulfuric Ether

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Crawford W Long and William Morton Revolutionize the World of Anesthesia With Sulfuric Ether

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In 1842, Crawford W Long, an American surgeon, used ether on man: proving the effectiveness of ether anesthesia after painlessly removing a tumor from the neck. In medical school, Long had heard about and witnessed the analgesic effects of laughing gas at ether at social laughing gas parties and “ether frolics,” where guests would inhale nitrous oxide or sulfuric ether for fun. He noticed that these participants would suffer accidents such as falls or bumps, yet never seemed to experience pain until the gas wore off. After he became a practicing doctor, Long started to conduct experiments with sulfuric ether as a tool in anesthesia.  He performed a surgery using the gas on March 30, 1842.

Long continued to use sulfuric ether as an anesthetic in multiple surgical procedures, but he did not report his findings until 7 years later in 1849 because he wanted to be completely sure of his hypothesis. Three years prior to his publication of his findings, in 1846, William Morton, a dentist from CT, displayed the usage of ether in the form of ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital. Morton had experimented with a wide range of possible pain reducers, but eventually began implementing the usage of pure sulfuric ether after learning it from Dr Charles T. Jackson. In 1846, he persuaded surgeon Dr. John Collins Warren to perform a removal of a neck tumor while using sulfuric ether publicly in front of a Harvard Medical School class of doctors. The surgery was a success, with the patient experiencing zero pain. The other surgeon aiding Jackson, Dr. Henry Bigelow, reported his observations in a medical journal, allowing for the publication of these findings and the usage of ether across the globe.

There has been great debate as to who truly discovered the effects of sulfuric ether as an anesthetic due to this choppy timeline, and while Morton is recognized as the first to publicly demonstrate the usage of ether, Long is still attributed as the first medical professional to put it into practice.

I chose this exhibit due to how it revolutionized medicine in regards to pain reduction and the ability to conduct specific procedures and surgeries. Without this discovery, the field of anesthesia would have lagged behind and medical practice would've been hindered. It also is a great example of how medicine and treatment will eventually be discovered: even by multiple people. The debate as to who was the first raises the question as to does it even matter if both contribute greatly to medicine? I think the question still rings true today in all fields related to neuroscience as researchers are still racing to find cures and new medications.

Sources:
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/science-medicine/crawford-long-1815-1878/

https://library.uab.edu/locations/reynolds/collections/medical-greats/william-t-g-morton

https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/117/1/1/11257/Ether-Day-s-William-T-G-MortonPublic-Benefactor

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Humphry Davy & Horace Wells' Influence on Laughing Gas

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Humphry Davy & Horace Wells' Influence on Laughing Gas

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In 1800, Humphry Davy, a British chemist, synthesized nitrous oxide and also documented said effects of nitrous oxide by experimenting on himself. What is now known as "laughing gas" was isolated by Davy by heating up ammonium nitrate, collecting the gas in a silk bag, purifying the gas via water vapor, and finally inhaling it orally. Upon first experimentation, he documented symptoms such as giddiness, flushed cheeks, intense pleasure, and "sublime emotion connected with highly vivid ideas".

These initial experiments jumpstarted multiple trials with the laughing gas--all with vivid documentation. He would try to use the gas in normal life conditions, inhale the gas in the dark as well as by himself, and he also experimented with simultaneous effects of the gas and alcohol. As the experiments progressed, he created a "breathing box" that was air-tight & filled with laughing gas where he would breathe in absurd amounts of the gas for hours on end, even to the point of reaching near-death.

He eventually opened up these experiments to patients, friends, and family, but he made sure to ask all the participants to write down their experiences. Their documentation of their experiences actually ended up compiling into his book named Researches, Chemical and Philosophical: Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide.

Thanks to this work on experimenting with the side effects of nitrous oxide, in 1844, Horace Wells, a dentist, revolutionized the practice of dentistry by implementing the usage of nitrous oxide to aid in his own tooth extraction. He first used nitrous oxide at his practice in Hartford, CT. He enlisted the help of John Riggs to extract his tooth in order to observe it's analgesic properties. Wells and Riggs conducted many dental trials using nitrous oxide, and later publicly exhibited it's usage in Boston, MA, to lecture doctors and dentists about it's utility.

Unfortunately, his demonstration did not go smoothly. A medical student volunteered to have the tooth extraction done on him under nitrous oxide, but he cried out during the extraction, seeming to experience pain. Although the patient supposedly tried to explain that he wasn't experiencing pain, the observers at the demo were not convinced and did not consider Wells' discovery to be a success. Regardless, he considered to practice his "pain-free dentistry" in Connecticut and is still known for being a pioneer in the field of dentistry for his introduction of laughing gas to the field--which is still used regularly today.

I chose this exhibit due to how early it was discovered and how relevant it still is today. Laughing gas is still commonly utilized in wisdom tooth surgery, even causing viral trends of videos with people being "loopy" after removal. I also find it extremely interesting and relevant to the field of neuroscience because it's discovery was mostly using self-experimentation. It is very common to think that most prolific scientific discoveries are done in a lab on a specific experiment, but this is a great example of how scientists can be their own test subject. It's also a great example of just because a scientific discovery isn't widely accepted or believed at first doesn't mean it's not true or important.

Sources:
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-nitrous-oxide-experiments-of-humphry-davy

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.00206.2014#:~:text=humphry%20davy%20(1778%E2%80%931829)%20(Fig.,still%20extensively%20used%20in%20anesthesia.

https://connecticuthistory.org/horace-wells-discovers-pain-free-dentistry/

https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/119/5/1014/13670/Horace-Wells-Demonstration-of-Nitrous-Oxide-in