10 doctors who changed the world

Born in May 17, 1749, in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Edward Jenner was an English physician/scientist who pioneered the world's first vaccine, which he developed for smallpox. Often called the "father of immunology," Dr. Jenner and his work were said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human." Indeed, during his time, smallpox was responsible for the deaths of roughly 10% to 20% of the population. By 1979, smallpox was declared eradicated from the world by the World Health Organization.

Daniel Hale Williams was born on January 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, PA. Despite the hardships and racial biases of the era, Dr. Williams, who was an African American, became a surgeon. He also performed the first documented, successful pericardium surgery in the United States to repair a wound. Dr. Williams founded the Provident Hospital and Training School, Chicago, IL—the first non-segregated hospital in the United States, and associated nursing school for African Americans. Now known as the Provident Hospital of Cook County, it was the first hospital in the United States that was owned and managed by African Americans.

Helen Brooke Taussig, born on May 14, 1898, in Cambridge, MA, is considered the founder of the field of pediatric cardiology. Her seminal work, Congenital Malformations of the Heart, was published in 1947. She developed the concept for the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt procedure, which successfully prolongs survival in children born with tetralogy of Fallot, one of the main causes of blue baby syndrome.

Dr. Taussig was also renowned for her work in banning thalidomide, which caused serious deformations in infants whose mothers took it during pregnancy. She testified before Congress to ban thalidomide, and it was consequently banned in both the United States and Europe. Dr. Taussig also worked to promote the use of x-rays and fluoroscopy together for less invasive monitoring of changes in the hearts and lungs of infants. In 1960, Dr. Taussig became the first female president of the American College of Cardiology.

Born on June 3, 1904, in Washington, DC, Charles Richard Drew was an African American surgeon and medical researcher with a special interest in the field of blood transfusions. He developed improved blood storage techniques, which were used to develop large-scale blood banks during World War II. Dr. Drew also developed bloodmobiles, which, at the time, were simply trucks with refrigerators of stored blood.

Dr. Drew improved the blood collecting process, making sure that there was a centralized location where donors could go to donate. He also had all blood plasma tested before shipment, and strove to ensure that only skilled personnel would handle the plasma to avoid contamination. His work became the starting point for what would become the American Red Cross Blood Bank.

On September 7, 1908, Michael Ellis DeBakey was born to Lebanese Christian immigrants, in Lake Charles, LA. With a career that spanned over 75 years, Dr. DeBakey was one of the foremost cardiovascular surgeons in the world. He performed surgery on over 60,000 patients, including presidents and celebrities. In 1932, Dr. DeBakey developed the components that would become part of the first heart-lung machine. In the 1950s, he developed plastic tubing for vascular repair, which was used to prevent stroke recurrence, kidney failure, and vascular restoration in limbs.

His surgical innovations revolutionized cardiovascular procedures, and included the coronary artery bypass, carotid endarterectomy, artificial hearts, and ventricular assist devices. Dr. DeBakey famously pioneered the use of Dacron grafts for vascular repair. The DeBakey Dacron Graft is now used worldwide, including in the surgical repair of aortic aneurysms, which Dr. DeBakey himself underwent at the age of 97. In 1963, Dr. DeBakey installed the first artificial pump to assist a damaged heart. Not surprisingly, Dr. DeBakey's awards were numerous, and included the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and the Congressional Gold Medal. Dr. DeBakey died in 2008, at the age of 99.

Photo courtesy: Al Ravenna

Born in 1909, Virginia Apgar developed the Apgar Score, the first standardized measurements for assessing a newborn's transition upon leaving the womb. Initially rejected, the Apgar Score is now used worldwide to assess a newborn's heart rate, respiratory effort, muscle tone, reflex response, and color on a scale of 0-2 points for a combined total score immediately following birth. Currently, 1- and 5-minute Apgar Scores are standard and accepted as predictors of neonatal survival and neurological development. Dr. Apgar made many contributions to the field of obstetrical anesthesia, and demonstrated the association between infant Apgar Score and the effects of labor, delivery, and maternal anesthesia.

Along with Duncan Holaday, MD, and Stanley James, MD, she developed new methods to measure blood gases and serum anesthesia levels, and discovered that low blood oxygenation in infants and highly acidic blood were associated with low Apgar Scores. Dr. Apgar and colleagues demonstrated that cyclopropane anesthesia delivered to mothers in labor could cause low infant Apgar Scores. She was also the first woman to achieve full professorship at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY.

Georges Mathé was born on July 9, 1922, in Sermages, France. In preclinical studies of bone marrow transplantation, he demonstrated that donor cells survived and replicated only in those recipients that were first irradiated to neutralize their immune systems. Although performing such studies in clinical trials was problematic, fate provided Dr. Mathé with a chance to prove his theories in 1958. Several Yugoslavian physicists had been exposed to radiation during a nuclear accident. Dr. Mathé infused them with donor marrow and saved all but one from radiation poisoning.

Thus, Dr. Mathé become one of the first doctors to perform a human allogeneic bone marrow transplant, essentially discovering the treatment for leukemia. In 1963, Dr. Mathé cured a patient of leukemia with a bone marrow transplant. He also later defined graft-versus-host disease, a secondary disease that often follows transplantation, by deducing that it was due to an immune reaction of the cells in the donor marrow against the autologous cells of the patient.