AMERICAN PIONEERS IN PATIENT CARE AND RESEARCH

STANFORD T. SHULMAN, MD

aSpring 2001

All of the stamps illustrated in this edition were issued by the United States to honor prominent American physicians.

Major Dr. Walter Reed (1851–1902) is depicted on the blue 5¢ stamp. He was an early American microbiologist who studied the pathology of typhoid at Johns Hopkins and is best known for proving the theory proposed by Juan Carlos Finlay of Cuba, that yellow fever is transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Reed’s team also proved that the agent was blood-borne and filterable, and thus likely a virus. These efforts led to rapid eradication of yellow fever from the West Indies and the U.S., saving countless lives.

Dr. Harvey Cushing (1869–1939), shown on the blue 45¢ stamp, is well known both for his leadership in developing the field of neurosurgery and for his definitive 1400-page Pulitzer prize-winning biography of Sir William Osler. Cushing, who was Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins and at Harvard, was a pioneer in pituitary surgery and surgery on eighth nerve tumors and other brain tumors. He also successfully decompressed neonatal intracranial hemorrhages as early as 1905.

Dr. Paul Dudley White (1886–1973) is shown on the 3¢ blue stamp. He was probably the foremost clinical cardiologist of the 20th Century and was instrumental in the founding of both the American Heart Association and the International Council of Cardiology. In 1911 he graduated from Harvard Medical School where he trained and became a life-long faculty member. White was the first to do clinical research using the electrocardiogram, developed by Einthoven in 1903 and brought from London by White in 1914. White wrote 12 books and more than 750 articles (“Wolfe-Parkinson-White”) on all aspects of clinical adult cardiology. Considered the consummate clinician, White provided care to presidents, politicians, writers, artists, scientists, and ordinary people.

Dr. George Papanicolaou (1883–1962) is portrayed on the brown 13¢ stamp. After receiving his MD in Athens in his native Greece and his PhD in Munich, he came to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell in New York City. Beginning in 1916 with cytologic studies of the female guinea pig genital tract, he was able to predict the hormonal cycle with his “Pap smears.” By 1920 he began to study human cervical smears, but it wasn’t until about 1943 that the validity of his cytologic studies was widely accepted. Since then, the Pap smear has saved millions of lives by the early diagnosis of cervical cancer. In 1961 he moved to Miami to develop the Papanicolaou Cancer Research Institute at the University of Miami but died in 1962 prior to its opening.

Dr. Charles R. Drew (1904–1950) is depicted on the gray 35¢ stamp. An African-American, he graduated from Amherst College, where he was a star athlete, and went on to McGill Medical School where he graduated second in his class. He completed his surgical residency at McGill, joined the faculty at Howard University, and then studied blood preservation during a surgical fellowship at Columbia University in New York. During the latter period he received the Doctor of Medical Science degree with a thesis entitled “Banked Blood”. In 1940 he returned to Howard as Chair of the Department of Surgery. Early in World War II, Drew became director of the Plasma for Britain project and then was instrumental in organizing the initial American Red Cross plasma donor program. At the same time he became the first Black physician certified by the American Board of Surgery and later became its first Black examiner. He strongly protested the American Red Cross’ acquiescence to the demands of the segregated U.S. Army to segregate blood from Black donors. Drew died tragically in an automobile accident on April 1, 1950 after falling asleep at the wheel enroute to a conference at Tuskegee Institute. At the time of his death he had trained more than half of the African-American surgeons in the United States.

Dr. Virginia Apgar (1909–1974) appears on the 20¢ brown stamp. Dr. Apgar was a pioneering physician whose desire to become a surgeon was discouraged because she was a woman. Thus, she turned to anesthesia, focusing on the resuscitation of newborns. After graduating from Columbia University, she trained there and subsequently in Madison, Wisconsin, and later at Bellevue Hospital in New York. She ultimately became the first woman professor at Columbia-Presbyterian and as Director of Anesthesia, the first woman to direct a department. Dr. Apgar is known for the Apgar score to assess neonates, initially published in 1953 in response to a medical student’s query. It has been said that in the developed world every newborn is first seen through the eyes of Dr. Apgar.

Dr. William J. Mayo (1861–1939) and Dr. Charles H. Mayo (1865–1939) are shown together on the green 5¢ stamp. Their father, Dr. William W. Mayo, a native of Manchester, England was a Civil War examining surgeon for the Union enrollment board, headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota. The sons joined their father’s practice after graduating from medical school, William J. from the University of Michigan and Charles from Northwestern University. After a deadly tornado hit Rochester in 1883, the Mayos cared for patients in makeshift quarters set up in hotels and offices. This experience led them to establish the first hospital in the region in 1889, which eventually became a public institution in 1919. Now, more than 100 years after its founding, the Mayo Clinic is legendary for clinical excellence.

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