Kevin Hemker, the Alonzo G. Decker Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Hopkins, held a talk last Thursday on how Hopkins alumni and faculty have influenced the history of the medical profession.
Widely attended by both graduate and undergraduate students, the lecture outlined the many different paths that brought these figures to success and helped them contribute to the evolution of medicine. The talk, inspired by a seminar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, ultimately spoke to the value of perseverance.
Hemker’s talk filled a large lecture room in Hodson Hall, and one of the attendess was senior Bailey Hannon, who has conducted research with Professor Hemker for two years.
“I’m interested in biomechanics, so [Hemker] thought it would be good [for me to attend],” Hannon said.
Hemker began by outlining the history of medicine before Hopkins existed, from the work of the classical physician Hippocrates, often called the father of medicine, onward.
One of the contributions Hippocrates made was the suggestion that medical care should be performed by secular physicians instead of the clergy. Hemker described the physician’s intensely flawed concept of the four humors — yellow bile, phlegm, black bile and blood — and the idea that a patient could be made well by the balancing of these four humors within the body.
Hemker then spoke about Roman physician Galen, who applied the idea of the four humors to the circulatory and other body systems. His medical volume was the standard work of the profession for over a thousand years, as medieval physicians did not question the teachings of their classical ancestors.
Vesalius authored De humani corporis fabrica in 1543 and spread his drawings, based on myriad animal dissections, with the help of the printing press. Hemker said, however, that Vesalius failed to question the teachings of Galen and tailored his findings to fit the teachings of the past, even as English doctor William Harvey began to conduct experiments that disproved the teachings of Galen.
Hemker then went on to address the many advances of the late 19th century, spearheaded by the work of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. Optical microscopes, so integral to the development of modern medicine, were being developed in Germany. Pasteur was starting work on germ theory, which would soon revolutionize the practice of medicine throughout the world. Robert Koch, meanwhile, was also studying how infectious diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis and anthrax were spread.
Hemker then contrasted these developments in Europe with the backward practice of medicine in the United States. At this time in America, there was little science to medicine, and physicians practiced with slim hopes of success. Doctors would go to Europe to train and to walk the halls of the hospitals in Paris, London, Berlin and Vienna. Hemker described how this changed once entrepreneur and philanthropist Johns Hopkins founded the nation’s first research university.
After Johns Hopkins was founded in 1876, the school’s first president Daniel Gilman helped bring the school to academic prominence. When the University sought to build a medical school, they received funds from a group of female trustees who helped to make the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine the first co-ed medical school in the nation.
The Big Four, a quartet of medical titans each with very different skills, soon came to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and helped to make it the respected institution it is today. Alumnus William Halsted was a New York surgeon who helped develop innovations in surgery even though he was addicted to morphine until the end of his life.
William Welch was a pioneer in the field of pathology after graduating, and he became the first dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Alumnus William Osler helped to develop bedside training and residencies for aspiring physicians. Howard Kelly was an Hopkins-educated innovator who helped to establish the specialty of gynecology.
Hemker described the challenges faced by two women, Florence Sabin and Helen Taussig, who attended the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Florence Sabin was a member of the fourth graduating class and later became the first full-time female professor at the medical school. Helen Taussig, a graduate from the class of 1923, went on to create the field of pediatric cardiology.
Taussig found success despite facing opposition from her father, encountering sexism and being discriminated against based on her deafness, which struck her late in life. With Alfred Blaylock and Vivien Thomas, Taussig helped develop the Blalock-Taussig shunt that would help to extend the lives of children born with what was known as blue baby syndrome.
Hemker informed the audience that the trio’s innovation would help to save the lives of many young children and had inspired further research into the possibility of surgery on major organs. Taussig became the second female full-time professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
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