1892 - Medicine

Medicine

The Comparative Pathology of Inflammation by zoologist-microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff (originally Ilya Ilich Mechnikov), now 47, establishes that the white blood cells (phagocytes, or, in humans, leukocytes) constitute the first line of defense against acute infections, devouring infectious organisms (see 1885).

Russian botanist Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovski, 28, discovers filterable viruses, pioneering the science of virology (although he believes the pathogenic agents to be minuscule bacteria). Ivanovski was asked 5 years ago to investigate "wildfire," a disease that was ruining tobacco farms in the Ukraine and Bessarabia. His article "On Two Diseases of Tobacco" is based on his study of mosaic disease in the tobacco plants and reports that filtered sap from diseased plants can transfer the infection to healthy plants (see Beijerinck, 1895).

Austrian surgeon Anton Eiselsberg, 32, removes the parathyroid glands in an experiment and produces the cramps of tetany—a nervous affection characterized by intermittent paroxysms of the extremities that he noted 2 years ago during goiter operations. A former student of Theodor Billroth, Eiselsberg will teach surgery at Utrecht beginning next year, move on to Königsberg and Vienna, do important research in pituitary surgery, and help found modern gastrointestinal surgery, becoming the first surgeon in Europe to remove a spinal column tumor, pioneering brain surgery, and performing studies on streptococcal infections.

Pathologist William H. Welch and San Francisco-born biologist-physician George (Henry Falkiner) Nuttall, 30, at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University identify the gangrene-causing microorganism Clostridium perfringens.

English medical missionary Wilfred (Thomason) Grenfell, 27, inaugurates a service to Labrador fishermen. A follower of the U.S. evangelist Dwight L. Moody, Grenfell has worked since 1887 as a surgeon for the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen aboard the first hospital ship serving the North Sea fisheries (see 1912).

Cholera arrives in the United States August 30 with steerage passengers from the Hamburg-Amerika line ship S.S. Moravia.

The American School of Osteopathy is founded at Kirksville, Missouri, by Andrew T. Still (see 1875). His practice eschews use of drugs, it will spread quickly, and most states will eventually accord it legal recognition equivalent to that of orthodox medical practice.

The Ladies' Home Journal announces that it will accept no more patent medicine advertisements (see 1883). Edited since 1889 by Edward W. Bok, now 29, the magazine will campaign against such products (see 1904; Food and Drug Act, 1906).

Physician Sir Morell Mackenzie dies at London February 3 at age 54; physician Jean Antoine Villemin at his native Paris October 6 at age 65, having been vindicated in his belief that tuberculosis is contagious.