Moody Medical Library

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) labored with great dedication and endurance for 52 years in the African jungle. Few physicians have ever faced the variety of persistent health problems that he encountered when he arrived in the jungle in 1913.

He established a hospital and was successful in introducing public health measures to control the ailments and the tropical diseases which afflicted the native population. His efforts on behalf of the African people earned him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952.

Dr. Schweitzer’s daughter, Mme. Rhena Eckertas, the new administrator, and Dr. Walter Munz, the new physician of the Lambarene hospital and clinic, have modernized the facilities, but the hospital will continue to be “an African village, where people can come with families, goats and chickens to continue their village life even when under treatment,” as Dr. Schweitzer wished.

Leprosy was known to the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans in the ancient world. The leper had always to wear his distinctive garb, carry his rattle and stick and touch things exposed for sale only with his stick. He could speak to people only from the leeward side and was never permitted to enter a narrow lane.

By the 11th to the 13th century, leprosy assumed pandemic proportions in Europe. The control of leprosy led to the development of isolation as a public health measure and the Church assumed the leadership in this by taking as its guiding principle the concept of contagion embodied in the book of Leviticus of the Old Testament. In France alone, there were 2,000 leprosaria and in the Christian world there were over 19,000. These were called lazar houses, named after the tradition that Lazarus suffered from the disease.

Because the Order of the Knights of Malta has done such a remarkable job in caring for lepers, their cross is the emblem of all work for the cure and prevention of leprosy. The order operates hospitals associated with leprosy around the world.

Armauer Gerhard Hansen (1841-1912) was a Norwegian physician who was deeply interested in leprosy. There were 2,800 lepers in Norway in 1817 when he discovered the causative organism of leprosy – a bacteria which is frequently referred to by his name. Today the disease is almost nonexistent in Norway. The treatment of leprosy was discouraging up to the twentieth century. Hygienic and general measures helped to control the disease. The introduction of ethyl esters of chaulmoogra oil in the treatment of leprosy was encouraging, and now the use of promin may result in actual cures. Surgery has successfully rehabilitated thousands of these patients to useful lives.

Father Joseph Damien (1840-1889) was a Belgian missionary, renowned for his dedicated work among the lepers of Molokai. This Hawaiian leper colony, established in 1860, is located on the isolated northern coast of the island, shut off from the rest of Molokai by a 1,600 foot high rock wall. Father Damien lived among the lepers from 1873 until his death from the disease.

Malaria is a disease of ancient origin. It was a real problem in the United States, especially in the southern States. The U. S. devoted the necessary talent, time and money to develop an effective malaria eradication program. In 1935 there were 6,000,000 cases of malaria in the U.S., while in 1962 there were only 50, most of these contracted outside the country. This great reduction was accomplished through the control of mosquitoes and the effective use of modern insecticides especially in houses. This has been the greatest contribution of the United States to the eradication of malaria throughout the world.

Malaria was one of the greatest killers in history. It never appeared with the dramatic suddenness of any outbreak of the plague, striking a community and killing thousands in a few weeks; instead, it always settled down as a permanent inhabitant, exacting its toll year by year.

There was no treatment for malaria until the period of the Conquistadores of Peru, when cinchona bark was discovered as a remedy. In 1820 the French pharmacologists, Pierre J. Pelletier and Joseph B. Caventou discovered the active principle in cinchona bark, which they called "quinine." Quinine was then used in the treatment of all fevers, but it was known that it was most effective in the fever disease called malaria.

Alphonse Laveran, a French Army doctor proved the parasitic nature of malaria, but the identity of the mosquito was finally proven by Sir Ronald Ross, a British physician working in India. This discovery at last permitted public health services to control the disease by eliminating the mosquito vector. DDT is the most effective destroyer of the anopheles mosquito.

Walter Reed (1854-1902) was born in Virginia and received his medical degree at the University of Virginia before his 18th birthday, the youngest medical graduate in America. The following year, he received his second medical degree from the Bellevue Medical College in New York. He started to practice medicine in New York but because of his youth and lack of a beard he did not attract patients. He became a city physician and in 1875 was commissioned in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army. During the Spanish-American war, he was chief of the commission to study the origin and spread of typhoid fever.

In 1900 he was appointed chief of the Yellow Fever Commission, which investigated an epidemic among American troops in Cuba. This commission consisted of Drs. Reed, Carroll, Lazear and Argamonte. They proved that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of the sedes Aegypti mosquito. Reed died from acute appendicitis and was buried in Arlington with the simple inscription over his tomb: “He gave to man control over that dreadful scourge – Yellow Fever.” What a blessing to man that his youth put him into work where his brilliance was so fruitful.

Carlos Juan Finlay (1833-1915) was born in Camaquey, Cuba, the son of a Scotch father and a French mother. He received his education in France and graduated from the Jefferson Medical School of Philadelphia in 1855. He returned to Cuba and was a general practitioner in Havana. He was a keen medical observer and after many years of study, he was convinced that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of the Stegomyia mosquito. He reported this at a meeting of the International Sanitary Conference in Washington in 1891 and published it in the American Journal of Medical Sciences in 1886. The Yellow Fever Commission under Walter Reed proved that Finlay’s theory was correct.

Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that still has not been eradicated; the cause is unknown and the treatment is still only palliative. The insignia of the Society has in it the rising sun as the symbol of hope that the cause of this disease is found and specific preventatives and treatments devised.

Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was John Hunter’s favorite pupil. He introduced vaccination with cowpox for the prevention of smallpox in 1796 when he vaccinated eight year old James Phipps. This proved successful and, in spite of controversies, it soon became a worldwide practice. Jenner’s discovery ranks among the greatest discoveries in medicine and no one will dispute his title as a benefactor to the human race. In countries enforcing compulsory vaccination, the death rate from smallpox approaches zero. A new anti-viral drug, methisazone, is being tested in Brazil and in India and it has been found to be very effective in smallpox prophylaxis among those exposed to the disease.

The United States Government as well as private agencies such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation have been in the forefront in the campaign to eliminate hunger throughout the world. They have contributed more generously than any other country in this program which was initiated by the U.N. and conducted under the general direction of its specialized agencies.

Scientists of the United States have also contributed to the development of fish flour, soybean product, cotton flour mixtures and other edible protein rich preparations from coconut, sesame seed and sunflower seeds, to be adopted to deficient diets throughout the world so that these diets may become as nearly optimal as possible.

Poliomyelitis was known as the great crippler since the time of recorded history. The Stele of Rem, a functionary of the sanctuary of Astarte at Memphis shows an obvious poliomyelitis. This was made during the 19th Dynasty, about 2000 B.C. Since that time a long road has been traveled toward the eradication of this disease.

Vaccines prepared by Dr. Harold Cox and by Dr. Jonas Salk were the first effective preventatives of poliomyelitis. The Salk vaccine proved the more effective. The development of the Sabin oral vaccination was the real boon in this campaign. Public Health measures were applied and hundreds of millions of people throughout the world have now received polio vaccine.