HAPPY ACCIDENTS
HAPPY ACCID ENTS Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the Twentieth Century MORTON A. MEYERS, M.D.
Arcade Publishing New York
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To my wife, Bea, my greatest serendipitous discovery
Contents
Preface Introduction: Serendipity, Science’s Well-Guarded Secret PART I: THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA: INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND ANTIBIOTICS, THE MIRACLE DRUGS 1. How Antony’s Little Animals Led to the Development of Germ Theory 2. The New Science of Bacteriology 3. Good Chemistry 4. The Art of Dyeing 5. Mold, Glorious Mold 6. Pay Dirt 7. The Mysterious Protein from Down Under 8. “This Ulcer ‘Bugs’ Me!” PART II: THE SMELL OF GARLIC LAUNCHES THE WAR ON CANCER 9. Tragedy at Bari 10. Antagonists to Cancer 11. Veni, Vidi, Vinca: The Healing Power of Periwinkle 12. A Heavy Metal Rocks: The Value of Platinum 13. Sex Hormones 14. Angiogenesis: The Birth of Blood Vessels 15. Aspirin Kills More than Pain 16. Thalidomide: From Tragedy to Hope 17. A Sick Chicken Leads to the Discovery of CancerAccelerating Genes
18. A Contaminated Vaccine Leads to Cancer-Braking Genes 19. From Where It All Stems 20. The Industrialization of Research and the War on Cancer 21. Lessons Learned PART III: A QUIVERING QUARTZ STRING PENETRATES THE MYSTERY OF THE HEART 22. An Unexpected Phenomenon: It’s Electric! 23. What a Catheter Can Do 24. “Dottering” 25. A Stitch in Time 26. The Nobel Committee Says Yes to NO 27. “It’s Not You, Honey, It’s NO” 28. What’s Your Number? 29. Thinning the Blood PART IV: THE FLAW LIES IN THE CHEMISTRY, NOT THE CHARACTER: MOOD-STABILIZING DRUGS, ANTIDEPRESSANTS, AND OTHER PSYCHOTROPICS 30. It Began with a Dream 31. Mental Straitjackets: Shocking Approaches 32. Ice-Pick Psychiatry 33. Lithium 34. Thorazine 35. Your Town, My Town, Miltown! 36. Conquering the “Beast” of Depression 37. Librium and Valium 38. “That’s Funny, I Have the Same Bug!”
39. LSD Conclusion: Taking a Chance on Chance: Cultivating Serendipity Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Illustration Credits Index
Preface
“My God, it moves!” I was astonished at what I saw on the Xray screen. As an academic radiologist, I was trying several years ago to visualize anatomic structures and features never seen before. I was directing my research efforts to the abdominal cavity, the largest potential space in the body, which encloses complex organs and structures. To do this, I introduced liquid contrast material (“dye”) in volunteers to fill its recesses and outline its contents on X-ray images. Surprisingly, I discovered that the contrast agent “spontaneously” flowed. Rather than being static and pooling, over time the fluid spread in a specific pattern. I would come to understand that this d