1948 - Medicine

Medicine

The United Nations establishes a World Health Organization (WHO) with headquarters at Geneva. The United States accepts membership June 14.

Parliament enacts a British National Health Services law July 5 to offer taxpayer-financed "cradle-to-the-grave" medical care. The law makes medical service free; its effect will be to lower dramatically Britain's infant mortality and maternal death rates to levels below those in the United States and reduce death rates from bronchitis, influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and some other diseases to levels below U.S. rates.

The steroid hormone cortisone isolated from the human adrenal cortex by Mayo Foundation biochemist Philip S. (Showalter) Hench, 52, and his colleague E. Calvin Kendall of 1915 thyroxine fame brings the promise of new relief to arthritis victims. Chemist Tadeus Reichstein at the University of Basel isolated corticosterone more than a decade ago, he and his assistants have isolated 29 different steroids produced by the adrenal glands, Hench and Reichenstein have been testing cortisone, not enough of the substance is available for clinical evaluation, but Hench and Kendall obtain enough of the liver bile constituent deoxycholic acid to let Hench administer a dose of the anti-inflammatory compound E September 21 to a 20-year-old woman incapacitated by rheumatoid arthritis, she is active again 4 days later, and Hench then treats 13 other arthritics with similar dramatic results. Merck Laboratory researchers headed by Illinois-born organic chemist Lewis H. (Hastings) Sarett, 30, synthesize from liver bile the adrenocorticotropic hormone ACTH produced by the human pituitary gland to stimulate the adrenal glands, (see 1949; prednisone, 1955).

Montgomery, Ala.-born chemist Percy L. (Lavon) Julian, 49, finds a low-cost way to synthesize cortisone. It will make the drug widely available and make Julian a millionaire (he will use his fortune to support the civil rights movement).

The antibiotics aureoymycin and chloromycin are developed (see 1947).

Dramamine proves effective in relieving motion sickness. A clinic patient being treated for hives (urticaria) with the anti-allergen beta-diaminoethylbendohydryl-ether-8-chlorothyeophyllinate reports to Johns Hopkins physicians that taking 50 milligrams of the drug by mouth before boarding a streetcar prevents the motion sickness that she has usually experienced. Control groups on the U.S. troop transport General Ballou test it while en route to Bremerhaven for occupation duty, and the drug will be marketed under the brand name Dramamine.

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Indiana University taxological entomologist Alfred C. (Charles) Kinsey, 54, indicates that many sex acts thought heretofore to be perversions are so common as to be considered almost normal. Kinsey has conducted interviews with some 18,500 men and women throughout America with funds provided by the National Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. Published in January by medical textbook publisher W. B. Saunders, the "Kinsey Report" contains no photographs (but plenty of charts, footnotes, and statistics), sells for $6 when most books go for half that much, arouses great controversy, and enjoys sales of 200,000 copies in its first 6 months, forcing the publisher to run two presses around the clock to meet demand. The NRC will appoint a committee in 1950 to evaluate Kinsey's work (see 1953).

Louisiana state senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, 54, introduces Hadacol, a "health" tonic with B vitamins and a 12 percent alcohol content. A Cajun burial insurance promoter, he has borrowed $12,000 to start a company, sponsors Hank Williams on his radio station to boost sales, and makes his product such a success that he will be able to sell the company in 3 years for more than $8 million.