1938 - Medicine

Medicine

The New York legislature at Albany enacts the first U.S. state law requiring medical tests for marriage license applicants April 12 (see Wasserman, 1906).

Liverpool-born biochemist E. (Edward) Charles Dodds, 38, and his colleagues at the University of London create the non-steroidal hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES); the first synthetic estrogen, it will be widely used to prevent miscarriage. Schering Pharmaceutical chemists create an estrogen pill; they find that by replacing one hydrogen atom on the estradiol molecule chain with a group of atoms (called an ethinyl radical) they can produce a compound that can be taken orally instead of being injected for such purposes as relief of painful menstruation (see 1941).

The March of Dimes to finance research into infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) is founded under the name National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis with President Roosevelt's former law partner Basil O'Connor, 46, as its chairman and Rockefeller Institute virologist Thomas M. Rivers as chairman of its virus research committee (see 1933) epidemic. Entertainer Eddie Cantor suggests the new name, which is based on the film series March of Time, and press agent Everett Thoner, 19, comes up with idea of a poster child to promote the cause (he suffered from polio himself and was on crutches from age 6 until last year). The virus continues to create epidemics each summer, leaving thousands of victims crippled or dead, no cure is known, and hot compresses, splints, and manipulation remain the only treatment. Demand escalates for braces, crutches, Iron Lung respirators, and wheelchairs (see 1943).

Babies Hospital pathologist Dorothy Hansine, 37, at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital publishes her findings on cystic fibrosis (CF), a previously unrecognized disease that she has named. She has collected infants' hearts with congenital defects since 1935, will develop a method of diagnosing CF in living patients, describe the genetics of the disease, and, in 1959, publish a paper suggesting guidelines for the care of young adults with CF, which up to now has been invariably fatal in infancy.

Italian psychiatrists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini use electroshock therapy for treating schizophrenia (see Meduna, 1935). They induce convulsions by passing an electrical current through the patient's brain, but the treatment will be found more effective in alleviating severe depression.

Pharmacologist-physiological chemist John Jacob Abel dies at Baltimore May 26 at age 81.

A new U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act signed into law by President Roosevelt June 15 is the world's first measure requiring drug manufacturers to test products for safety and efficacy before putting them on the market (see S. E. Massengill's Elixir Sulfanilamide, 1937). Amendments to the new law will further tighten regulation of food, drugs, and cosmetics (see thalidomide, 1962). The Wheeler-Lea Act signed June 27 gives the Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction over advertising that may be false or misleading even if it does not represent unfair competition (see 1931). Advertisers will continue nevertheless to promote products with deceptive claims that they can help users lose weight without eating less or exercising and even help them shed pounds in particular parts of the body.

Phenytoin sodium is the first anticonvulsive treatment for epilepsy since pheonobarbitol; North Carolina-born Harvard neurologist H. Houston Merritt, 37, and his associate Tracy J. Putnam have developed a drug first synthesized by German physician Heinrich Blitz in 1908, the Food and Drug Administration will give approval in January 1953 for using it to control seizures, it will be marketed as Dilantin (Epanutin in Britain), and it will also be used to treat abnormal heartbeats.