1933 - Medicine

Medicine

Belgian biologist Albert Claude, 34, isolates the first cancer virus.

British biochemist Ernest (Lawrence) Kennaway, 52, isolates the first pure chemical carcinogen (cancer-causing chemical) and shows that a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon from subtotal combustion will cause cancer in test animals (see 1915). Such hydrocarbons are found in air pollution, auto exhaust, and cigarette smoke (see 1936; Ochsner, 1945).

The influenza virus is isolated for the first time following a London epidemic (see pandemic, 1918; Goodpasture, 1931; Francis, 1934).

French researchers develop a neurotropic vaccine against yellow fever using a strain of attenuated yellow fever virus (see 1936; Walter Reed, 1900).

Polish neurophysiologist and psychiatrist Manfred J. Sakel, 33, at Vienna's University Neuropsychiatric Cinic reports the treatment of schizophrenia by repeatedly using insulin to induce coma (see Wagner-Jauregg, 1917). He has used insulin to tranquilize morphine addicts, one of whom received an accidental overdose and went into a coma; his mental state seemed better after he recovered, Sakel has theorized that inducing convulsions in schizophrenics might be beneficial, his initial experiments show that 88 percent of patients improve, Sakel will emigrate to America in 1936 and publish The Pharmacological Shock Treatment of Schizophrenia in 1938, but later studies will find that his treatment is less effective than was first thought (see Meduna, 1935).

The United States has 5,000 new cases of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) (see Roosevelt, 1921). Some victims suffer respiratory failure and can be kept alive only with the Iron Lung invented in 1927 (see March of Dimes, 1938).

"Sister Kenny" opens her first clinic for treating victims of poliomyelitis. Australian Army Nurse Corps war veteran Elizabeth Kenny, 47, (the "Sister" denotes the rank of second lieutenant given her in 1916) has an income derived from royalties on the patent for a stretcher equipped with shock-treatment appliances that she invented for patients en route to hospital. Polio has no known cure, but physicians have been immobilizing patients with splints and casts, which cause their muscles to atrophy. Sister Kenny uses warm wool compresses to relieve pain and spasms plus limb manipulation therapy. The medical establishment disdains her methods, especially in Australia, but she will open a facility in Britain in 1937 and one at Minneapolis in 1940 as she travels the world demonstrating her treatment.

Pathologist William T. Councilman dies at York Village, Me., May 26 at age 79; bacteriologist Albert Calmette at Paris October 29 at age 70, His BCG vaccine against tuberculosis will not be used in America until 1940 (it will be administered widely to physicians, nurses, and others at particularly high risk of contact with the disease); Emile Roux dies at Paris November 3 at age 79.