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

Showing posts from: Doctors

James Parkinson: Social Activist and Advocate, Parkinson’s Disease and Palentology

Dr. James Parkinson was born on World Parkinson’s Disease Day, April 11th 1755, in London, England. Of course he didn’t know it at the time. Come to think of it, neither did his parents; nor the fact that he would become one of the 50 most influential doctors of all time.

Affecting an estimated 1% of people over 60 years of age, what has come to be known as “Parkinson’s Disease” is one of the most common neurologic disorders known today.
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John Snow: Water Pumps, Cholera and Epidemiology

I live in no fear that telling you Dr. John Snow is one of history’s top 50 influential doctors will give even the slightest concern.

If it does, it means you really have no clue that he was the one who basically took Cholera off the front page of every newspaper and gave the world toilets, sewer systems and public works departments—world-wide.
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10 Medical Breakthroughs Unaccepted At First – Part Three

I read an article recently about the many medical breakthroughs the world would have missed if the detractors, naysayers and just plain and simple evil-intentioned haters had their way; and I decided to turn it into an article.

I’ve mentioned nine so far in the previous two parts including: Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis who was basically killed for suggesting his colleagues wash their hands; the vitriol made public by the new fangled internet against Dr. Prusiner over disease caused by proteins; and, the delay in cancer therapy caused by the “good ol’ boy’s.”
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10 Medical Breakthroughs Unaccepted At First – Part Two

In part one I already confessed to being in a profession full of egos which, like it or not, sometimes get in the way of rational consideration of things new or which are going against long used practices.

And I even asserted that pediatricians don’t have as much trouble with that as other specialists; proposing, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that it was because we were all used to dealing with adolescents whose very body language conveys that every adult around them “just doesn’t have a clue.”
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Joseph Kirsner: Colon Cancer, IBS, Educator, Doctor

It’s one thing to live 102 years and witness two generations of medical advancements and still quite another to be the one who made many of those advances!

Further, it’s even more unusual when the Decagenarian set out to do nothing but “be a good doctor” yet ended up with over 750 articles, 12 books and, get this, TWO lifetime achievement awards—why not he saw almost two lifetimes come and go.
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10 Medical Breakthroughs Unaccepted At First – Part One

Unfortunately, I’m in a profession where egos flair at the drop of a hat either through overwhelming skepticism, inordinate caution, debilitating fear of being wrong or as yet some unknown neurological or psychiatric condition.

I wish I was smart enough to write a definitive article on that, it would do the world a favor.

But I’m not, so this is not about that; it’s about the unfortunate result of all that—the often adolescent refusal to accept new knowledge when it is presented.
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#40 Lawrence (Larry) Einhorn (1942-)

Our number 40, of the top 50 most influential doctors in history, is Dr. Lawrence Einhorn who has less written about him on the internet than any of previous 10 we’ve mentioned—even those dating back to nearly the dawn of medicine!

However, he is deserving of at least as many words on the internet as any of the others—he did invent an (almost) cure for testicular cancer after all!
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Robert Koch: Modern Bacteriology

A man after my own heart, Dr. Robert Koch, one of the top 50 “influencers” of medicine of all time, loved to travel—except he had the where-with-all and time to actually do it.
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Stanley Dudrick: Total Parenteral Nutrition

They guy who, unbeknownst to me, directed much of the many late nights I was on call for three years, comes up as number 42 of the fifty most influential doctors in history which we are going through.

Stanley Dudrick M.D. painstakingly invented and improved total parenteral nutrition (TPN) to the point it actually could be used in medicine and not cause more problems than it solved.
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Stanley Prusiner: Neurodegenerative Diseases

We’re going through the top 50 doctors who have made a lasting impact on medicine throughout all time—at least according to a heavily read medical magazine which had its “best people” scratch their heads on the matter several months ago.
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Victor McKusick: Medical Genetics

Continuing our historical description of the top 50 most influential doctors in history we come to #44, Victor McKusick known as the father of medical genetics. Can you even comprehend what it means to have been the “inventor” or “founder” of an entire field of medicine? I’m not sure I can.
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Virginia Apgar: Blue Babies

I think I’ve said something like this before but today’s number 45 of the top 50 physicians making a lasting impact on the field of medicine is known by EVERY pediatrician in the world, and most other physicians too. But that’s the definition of “lasting impact” isn’t it.

In 1949 Dr. Virginia Apgar was the first female full professor at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in 1953 went on to create what became known as the “Apgar score.”
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