Pioneer in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) Robert Edwards

Robert Edwards is a world famous reproductive physiologist with a distinguished career as a research scientist.

His doctoral research concentrated on mouse embryos and in collaboration with a fellow student Ruth Fowler, he developed the Fowler-Edwards method used to treat female mice with hormones and regulate the number of eggs produced and their time of evolution.

Robert Edwards began to study in-vitro maturation of human oocytes in the early 1960s. On February 15, 1969, the journal Nature published a paper authored by R.G Edwards, B.D Bavister and P.C Steptoe: Early stages of fertilization in vitro of human oocytes matured in vitro.

Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe perfected the process of in-vitro fertilization and created the first human test tube baby.

Louise Joy Brown, born in 1978 was the first ‘test tube’ baby – born from the in-vitro fertilization or conception outside a woman’s body. Edwards and Steptoe worked on procedures for in-vitro fertilization for 10 years before the procedures resulted in the birth of Louise Brown.
Pioneer in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) Robert Edwards

History of physiology

The term ‘physiology’ to represent ‘the science of the functions of the human body in good health’ seems to have been used for the first time in 1542 by Jean Fernel in his work: De naturali parte medicinae.

The physiology of respiration was developed by the studies of John Mayow (1643-1670), who proved that when blood is aerated, it changes appearance and that breathing is an exchange of gases. Oxygen was discovered in the eighteenth century by Joseph Priestly and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. Soon it was generally accepted that all animal life required oxygen.

Physiological research in the early nineteenth century continued to focus on anatomical structure to locate the site of biological processes and elucidate their nature.

William Harvey’s experiment proof of the circulation of the blood, founded physiology as a science and have it a method. The doctrine of the circulation is the fundamental conception of physiology.

By the time anatomy became essential to medical education, physiologists were well placed to profit; however, virtually all medical anatomy was done on cadavers.

Physiology a distinct utilizing chemical, physical and anatomical method began to develop in the 19th century. Claude Bernard in France; Johannes Muller in Germany; and Sir Michael Foster in England may be numbered among the founders of physiology as it now is known.
History of physiology

Discovery of aspirin

Aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid is a derivative of salicylic acid. It is useful in the relief of headache and muscle and joint aches.

The tablet was the precursor of modern mass produced medicines, and has probably cured more minor ills than any other drug.

In 1829, the French pharmacist H. Leroux identified the active element in willow bark to be salicin. In 1853 a chemistry professor at France’s Montpellier University, Karl Friedrich Gerhardt, discovered the molecular structure of salicylic acid.

The use of salicylic acid did not become common until 1853 when Von Gerhardt of Bayer developed aspirin.

In 1897, Felix Hoffmann prepared a more pure of aspirin using an improved method. He had studied Charles Gerhardt’s experiments and ‘rediscovered’ the pain-relieving, fever-lowering and anti-inflammatory acetylsalicylic acid.

In 1899, Hoffmann, a Bayer chemist, used aspirin to treat his father’s rheumatism.

Hoffman’s colleague, Heinrich Dreser, investigated the overall medical effects of the new drug and recognized it to be effective not only as a mild sedative but also as a reducer of fever and inflammations.

In 1899, Hoffman and Dreser coined a new name for that new drug: aspirin – ‘a’ for ‘acetyl’, ‘spir’ for the Spirea plant family and ’in’ to round it off.

In United States Bayer was able to obtain a patent in 1900, giving the company the monopoly on manufacturing the drug aspirin.

The first clinical trial of aspirin in patients occurred from 1948 to 1956 when a general practitioner, Lawrence Craven treated 1500 relatively healthy, overweight, sedentary men between the ages of 40 to 65.

The result reported in the Mississippi Valley Journal is that one aspirin a day was sufficient, because none of Lawrence Craven’s 1500 patients experienced a heart attack over the five-year course of treatment.

In 1971, John R. Vane discovered that aspirin works by blocking cyclooxygenase, thus preventing the synthesis of prostaglandins.
Discovery of aspirin

Trypanosomiasis (chagas disease)

Most of historical reconstructions indicate that although human Chagas disease may have been well established amongst pre-Columbian Andean cultures, it would have been of sporadic occurrence in the rest of the continent until the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

American trypanosomiasis was named Chagas disease in honor of its discoverer, Brazilian physician, Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas who was born on a coffee farm at Oliveira, state of Minas Gerais, on July 9, 1878.

In 1909, Carlos Chagas identified Trypanosoma cruzi as the agent of Chagas disease. Trypanosoma cruzi is a protozoan parasite that is enzootic and endemic in much of the Americas, where it infects a wide variety of wild and domestic mammals as well as many species of triatomine vectors, in addition to humans.

In 1910, Chagas discovered that Triatoma bugs are vectors of the parasite and that various animals are wild reservoirs for the parasite.

According to the classical WHO data, it was estimated that Chagas disease affected 16-18 million people with at least 100 million at risk of contracting the infection in 21 countries throughout Latin America.
Trypanosomiasis (chagas disease)

Discovery of vitamin E

Vitamin E was first discovered at the University of California at Berkeley by Herbert Evans and Katherine Bishop in 1922. They characterized as a fat soluble nutritional factor during reproductive studies with rats. 

First named factor X and the antisterility factor, the vitamin was later designated vitamin E by Bishop.

A vitamin E active compound was isolated from wheat germ oil in 1936. At this point the Evans research group named the compound alpha-tocopherol.

The term tocopherol is derived from the Greek word tokos, which means ‘childbirth’ and phero, which means ‘to bear or bring forth’.

Tocotrienols discovery came much later, in 1965, but existed for almost 20 years as an obscure vitamin E. Recognition for tocotrienols began to emerge on the early 1980s at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, through the efforts of Asaf Qureshi and Charles Elson.

In the 1930’s and 1940’s two Canadian cardiologists, Wilfred and Evan Shute treated 30,000 patients with natural vitamin E and reported considerable success in reversing heart disease.

In 2001, researchers discovered that vitamin E from food and supplements may help slow mental decline and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Discovery of vitamin E

The Rise of Modern Biomedical Research

The Rise of Modern Biomedical Research
Most research done before the twentieth century was more anecdotal than systematic, consisting of description of patients or pathological findings.

James Lind, a Royal Navy surgeon carried out the first recorded clinical trial in 1747.

In looking for a cure for scurvy, he fed sailors afflicted with scurvy six different treatments and determined that a factor in lines and oranges (subsequently found to be vitamin c) cured the disease while other foods did not.

His study was not blinded, but as a result (although not for 40 years) limes were stacked on all ships of the Royal Navy and scurvy among sailors (limeys) became a problem of past.

Research studies of physiology and other basic science research topics began to appear in large numbers in the nineteenth century.

By the start of the twentieth century, medicine had move from the empirical observation of cases to the scientific application of basic science to determine the best therapies and catalog diagnoses.

Although there were some epidemiological studies hat looked at populations, it was uncommon to have any kind of longitudinal study of large group of patients.

There was a 200 year gap from Lind’s studies before the controlled-clinical-trial became standard study for medical innovations. It was only in the 1950s that the randomized-clinical-trial became the standard for excellent research.
The Rise of Modern Biomedical Research

Gregor Johann Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel Gregor
Johann Mendel was born in Heinzendorf, a village near the border between northern Moravia and Silesia, in Austrian Empire on July 22, 1822. He was an Augustinian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. In 1851 he was sent to the University of Vienna to study, returning to his abbey in 1853 as a teacher, principally of physics.

Mendel began his experiments with the hybrid cultivation of pea plants in 1856. After spending eight years carrying out experimental work in the monastery garden, he reported on the results of his observations at the meetings of the Association for Natural Research in Brno on the evenings of February 8th and March 8th, 1865. His experiments brought forth two generalizations which later became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.

Mendel's attraction to research was based on his love of nature. He was not only interested in plants, but also in meteorology and theories of evolution. Mendel often wondered how plants obtained atypical characteristics. On one of his frequent walks around the monastery, he found an atypical variety of an ornamental plant. He took it and planted it next to the typical variety. He grew their progeny side by side to see if there would be any approximation of the traits passed on to the next generation. He found that the plants' respective offspring retained the essential traits of the parents, and therefore were not influenced by the environment. This simple test gave birth to the idea of heredity.
Gregor Johann Mendel

History of Quinine

History of Quinine
Quinine was the first effective treatment for malaria caused by Plasmodium. falciparum, appearing in therapeutics in the 17th century. It remained the antimalarial drug of choice until the 1940s. The tree is found in the rainforests along the northern end of the Andes Mountains.

Augustinian monk in Peru in 1633 wrote about powder of cinchona which can give a cure the fevers. In 1638 the Jesuits used quina bark to cure wife of the Viceroy of Peru.

It was brought back to England in 1640. English Protestants called it powder of the devil. Englishman name Robert Talbor mid 1600s, then realized that those cinchona bark have a reaction to the malaria fever. He then started using cinchona bark to cure malaria. He treated royalty and then awarded knighthood and appointed as Royal Physician in 1679.

In 1820, Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou isolated an alkaloid from cinchona (or quina) bark and named it quinine. The purified compound began to be used instead of powdered bark to treat malaria.

By the late 1800s, the malaria parasite had been identified and Ronald Ross had discovered the role of the mosquito vector. Ross launched “mosquito brigades” to eradicate the vector in England, while another public health advocate, S. P. James, advocated improving housing to separate humans from mosquitoes.

In 1820, two French scientists named J.B. Caventou and P.J. Pelletier isolated the chemical that seemed to cure malaria from the bark.
History of Quinine

Discovery of penicillin

Penicillin
Penicillin is defined as any antibiotic drug taken from molds or made synthetically to treat different diseases and/or infections. More specifically, penicillin is the liquid which is secreted from penicillium notatum, which is the mold.

In 1906 the young physician Alexander Fleming became a research assistant at St Mary's Hospital in London. Fleming went to France during the First World War to treat wounded soldiers and could see for himself that there was no effective way of treating many infections.

Back at St Mary's after the war, Fleming was determined to find a better way of killing germs. In 1928 he was studying staphylococci bacteria (that can, among other things, infect wounds). By pure luck, he noticed that on a dish containing agar on which he had been growing germs, near some mold, the germs were less common.

He grew more of the mold, naming it penicillin from its Latin name Penicillium. Fleming discovered the mold was effective against bacteria that caused diseases such as anthrax, meningitis and diphtheria. He published his discoveries but did not have the resources to experiment more widely with penicillin.

Some of the diseases/illnesses that penicillin treats includes: pneumonia, meningitis, erysipelas, scarlet fever, diphtheria, blood poisoning, syphilis, gangrene, strep throat and gonorrhea.

Penicillin works to treat illnesses/diseases by killing bacteria and arresting its growth. It only kills the bacteria that is growing and reproducing, not those which are stationery.
Penicillin