From watchful waiting to antibiotics

Article Abstract:

Dr. Rudolph H. Kampmeier describes the changes that have occurred in public health and the treatment of infectious diseases during his 65 years as a physician. When he was growing up during the early 1900s smallpox was the most feared contagious disease. In 1900 influenza and pneumonia were the leading causes of death, with tuberculosis ranking third. In medical school Dr. Kampmeier learned that the treatment for pneumonia included fresh air, bed rest, diet to avoid abdominal distension, and tepid sponge baths. As an intern, working with a mining company physician in Utah, Dr. Kampmeier cared for patients during a typhoid epidemic. After one epidemic the source of typhoid was found to be contaminated milk. Dr. Kampmeier first encountered malaria in an immigrant patient working in a Utah mining camp. While attending patients in the student infirmary at the University of Michigan in the late 1920s, he encountered infectious mononucleosis which was just beginning to become an endemic disease, occurring frequently in the population, but having a low mortality rate. During the Depression Dr. Kampmeier worked in Louisiana treating patients with tuberculosis and malaria; he specialized in using the method of collapsing a lung in the treatment of tuberculosis. He studied cases of atypical pneumonia that were different from the bacterial pneumonia which was the country's leading cause of death. The most dramatic event of his professional life occurred when he obtained an early precursor of the current antimicrobial sulfa drugs, which he used to treat patients with pneumococcal pneumonia. In the 1920s he was involved in the government's first attempt to treat syphilis in the civilian population. He spent a great part of his medical career working in the field of sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. Kampmeier notes that the public's confusion and the social problems encountered then are very similar to the reactions of the public today regarding acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). He also states that the most exciting events of his lifetime are the improved treatments of infectious diseases, marked by the introduction of antimicrobial drugs, which destroy or prevent the development of microorganisms, and, later, the advancement of antibiotics, which inhibit growth or destroy microorganisms. Having experienced the sense of helplessness of both physician and patient in the earlier years of his training and medical practice allows Dr. Kampmeier to fully appreciate the changes brought about by these drugs.

Care and treatment, Medicine, Antibiotics, History, History of medicine, Anti-infective agents, Communicable diseases, Medical innovations

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Posting the signs on the road to the 21st century

Article Abstract:

American Medical Association president Lonnie R. Bristow recalls rewarding experiences and lessons learned as a physician, as he challenges fellow doctors to unite against forces that could disrupt the patient-physician relationship. Looking back on his life as a doctor, Bristow, an internist, recalls moonlighting in the emergency room and feeling scared about delivering a breech baby. He prayed, used common sense, and delivered a healthy baby boy. The parents named the child Lonnie. He remembers a lesson learned about patient values through a woman with cancer who did not want conventional treatment. He tells the story of a fellow colleague, Frank Jirka, who was seriously wounded at Iwo Jima, but led a fulfilling life as a physician and became an AMA president. Lastly, Dr. Bristow calls for courage to band together and exert leverage against the corporatized process placed on medicine. He asks his fellow physicians to step up communication with the public and to make a policy commitment toward unity, professionalism, and patient partnership.

Social aspects, Medical care, Physician and patient, Physician-patient relations, Bristow, Lonnie R.

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The road to Morrakonnam

Article Abstract:

An American doctor revisits his extended family in India at a point when he has begun to question his career path because of the pressures put upon him. When asked to evaluate a cousin, he relearns why he became a doctor, which was to help people in any way possible. The cousin is dying and the doctor finds that what he is being asked to do is to reassure the cousin's wife that she did everything possible and that it is all right to let the man die.

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