pediatric housecalls Robert R. Jarrett M.D. M.B.A. FAAP

15 Accidental Medical Discoveries

March 3, 2018

NASA seems to do it’s job so well-thought-out and planned down to the second that, for most of us, our mental image of science has taken on an “uncluttered, pristine, direct” feel full of stainless steel and glassware.

But, those of us who’ve peeked behind the curtain of “the Great and Powerful OZ” know that real science is most often anything and everything EXCEPT those adjectives.
Completely accidental medical discoveries occur more often than we like to admit, even in medicine
The floor of science is usually cluttered to waist height with remnants and detritus of multiple failed attempts and the air is pungent with unexplained (or expected) bubbles, fizzes, crackles, pops, odors and orbiting flying things that fluoresce and blink.

And, OH THAT IT WERE a mere straight line to medical break-throughs! Twists, turns, re-starts, berms, chasms and entire flocks of wild-geese to chase plague the most simple and straightforward of well thought out experiments to delay relieving the most heart-rendering of suffering!

Much of the time it’s only sheer obstinacy that succeeds AND more often than anyone is happy admitting it’s only sheer and unadulterated luck that wins AND occasionally we’re standing there confused and perplexed wondering “what the crap just happened” when the press-bus pulls up and we’ve got to invent sound-bytes to explain we knew exactly what we were doing.

Accidental Medical Discoveries
Anything BUT the Scenic Route

Even though the route is rarely the scenic one, even serendipity nearly always favors those with “prepared” minds and keen powers of observation who are accepting of intellectual adventure.

Let me list a dozen or so for you. And you tell me if you don’t recognize most of them.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)

Discovery and Contribution: Scientific inquiry, Microscopes, Protozoa and Bacteria (1676)

There van Leeuwenhoek was, making a name for himself in Holland during the Dutch Golden Age a businessman trading in fabric, when his “insatiable curiosity” led him to try his hand in a DIY project of making a microscope.

Perhaps it was initially to examine more closely the fibers of the cloth he purchased but perseverance made him build bigger and better microscopes than available at the time; which inevitably led to needing to find out what everything he could think of looked like under the “scope.”

He wanted to know what it was that actually made peppercorns hot and saw that it wasn’t little unseen sharp points that bit into the tongue. Stagnant rain water had “things” in it, fleas, dung and semen were close behind.

He began experimenting with things to look at, like “hog’s tongue.” Then, while looking at plaque from his teeth he described “round”, “rod-shaped” and “spiral-shaped” bacteria—cocci, bacilli and spirochetes, respectively.

His interest was making a living in trade remember so he had no clue what he was seeing but knew enough to begin an ongoing correspondence with the Royal Society in London—who, at first, didn’t know what he was looking at either.

But, even though he only came “this close” to understanding the role of bacteria in disease and heat-pasteurization, over 50 years of letter writing did earn him the title of being one of the “founders of bacteriology and protozoology.”

Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

Discovery and Contribution: Vaccination (1796), eradication (eventual) of smallpox (1980)

To say that Jenner was a bit “curious” would have been an understatement. As most smart people are, he seemed interested in about everything.

He studied cuckoos (the real kind not the clocks), heart attacks and chest pain (angina pectoris), geology, fossils and palentology… oh, and medicine in general. He was the epitome of a true “country doctor” and like everyone at the time: up to his neck in suffering and death from Smallpox.

This was the 1700’s remember, so perhaps he had never heard that back in the Ming Dynasty China, India and Africa they talked of smallpox and attempts to prevent it, or that variolation was practiced in the Ottoman Empire.

But what he undoubtedly knew about was the consistent folk-belief that those who had previously been infected with the pox from cows (cowpox) were immune to the Smallpox which regularly laid waste to whole villages of people around the world.

And, being a man of science, he recognized the “rumor” and “folk tale” could be proven true or false. Well, what was it—a myth or a valuable tool of medicine against a deadly scourge fatal almost 50% of the time to millions?

He painstakingly collected fluid from the cowpox sore on a country milkmaid, scratched the arm of an 8-year-old boy (whose circumstances would most assuredly lead to exposure to smallpox anyway) and inoculated him.

Six weeks later, Jenner did the part that makes me cringe when I think about it (and would get him in trouble with ethics committees today) he deliberately inoculated him with the real smallpox virus; and, I’m sure, began holding his breath. No smallpox occurred— the boy was immune!

Others, including in the U.S., replicated his experiment (yes, still using their own boys) which led to the first vaccine and the foundations of immunology… not to mention the eradication of the disease Smallpox.

Humphry Davy (1778-1829)

Discovery and Contribution: Nitrous Oxide (1799), (eventual) anesthesia in surgery

Those who knew Humphry Davy had a friend with a substantial ego and the smarts for self-promotion that made him a force to be reckoned with.

He did start out humble enough: an apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary (drug store); but his remarkable intelligence and self-promotion navigated him into the presidency of Britain’s Royal Society in his 30s.

He figured out how to isolate several specific gases, like nitrous oxide; which, with his knack for spin, became a celebrated parlor-game activity of his age documented as “self-experiments” which propelled him into scientific “respect” with a wide following, famous friends and fortune.

His hope was that his gasses would be treatment for consumption (later known as tuberculosis) which didn’t pan out; but, he did write that when he used nitrous oxide it made his mouth feel numb and conjectured that it would become an anesthesia for surgery. It took another 50 years to do it but it finally came true.

Besides treating his friends to the silliness that is “laughing gas” at parties, and running the Royal Society, his curiosity took him into electrochemistry; discovering magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium; and inventing the Davy Lamp for miners.

Robert Koch (1843-1910)

Discovery and Contribution: Selective Culturing of Bacteria (1881), bacteria causing disease

Robert Koch looked at the “scum” seeming to grow on potatoes and had an “ah-ha” moment that literally and figuratively changed the practice of medicine forever!

Truly, this was an insight of Koch’s that had researchers in search of their 15-minutes of fame slapping their foreheads in frustration for centuries. He “saw” that an old cut potato had “stuff” growing on its surface which were in “bumps” of different colors. Truly, that was it. Really.

But HE was the one who asked “why” are they different and was therefore the one credited with discovering that each one was a different colony of bacteria of a different species. Of all the many types there were, these were the ones which grew best on potatoes and they had the “good sense” to be growing separately and displaying different colors!

His curiosity, insight and perseverance changed medicine from using the low-yield broths that they were using into using various solid growth-mediums (like seaweed) in a shallow jar invented by his good friend Julius Petri (of the Petri-dish fame).

You may not have heard so much about Koch, him being a contemporary of Louis Pasteur and all; but, he was one of the brightest minds of the 19th-century who holds much of the credit (whether given or not) for the “germ theory of disease.”

And even if YOU didn’t know his name, the 1905 Nobel Prize committee did and gave him their medal for identifying the “bugs” that cause anthrax, meningitis, tetanus, syphilis and tuberculosis—pretty much the cause of most of the deaths every year back then.

Viagra

We both need to take a break from this list of 15 discoveries; but, I just want to leave you with one last chance-oddity: Viagra. It certainly is NOT a “top health advancement” but, believe it or not the “little blue pill” was touted as the “fastest selling drug of all time.”

And this thing does fall into the classification of “accidental” in that it was being developed and studied as a treatment for heart pain (angina) which it didn’t do very well.

Before it was scrapped however, the researchers poured over the reams of mandatory patient complaints of side-effects and found that their male patients in particular had a lot of complaints: erections. The drug produced a lot of them.

Now Viagra is one of the most prescribed drugs in the world.
See you in a bit for part two.