Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Early Days
- Chapter 2 Washington Heights
- Chapter 3 Speyer School for Gifted Children
- Chapter 4 New York University at University Heights
- Chapter 5 To Each His Farthest Star–A Medical Student at Rochester: 1929–1934
- Chapter 6 Duke University Hospital and Its Medical School, 1934–1935
- Chapter 7 Yale Medical School, 1935–1936
- Chapter 8 Return to Duke, 1936-1937
- Chapter 9 You Can Go Home Again
- Chapter 10 My One and Only Wife
- Chapter 11 The Bronx Is the Graveyard for Specialists, 1937
- Chapter 12 The Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, 1937 — The First of Its Kind
- Chapter 13 Pearl Harbor and World War II
- Chapter 14 Valley Forge General Hospital, 1942–1945
- Chapter 15 Tinian, 1945
- Chapter 16 Saipan, 1945–1946
- Chapter 17 Return to Columbia-Presbyterian, 1946
- Chapter 18 The Changing of the Guard at the Medical Center
- Chapter 19 An Internist-Diagnostician Rebuilds His Practice
- Chapter 20 The Upjohn Grand Rounds
- Chapter 21 The Iceman Cometh to Park Avenue
- Chapter 22 Songs My Patients Taught Me
- Chapter 23 Mr. J. Peter Grace, Chairman of W. R. Grace and Company
- Chapter 24 Birth of the Upjohn Gastrointestinal Service
- Chapter 25 Roosevelt Hospital, 1962–1965
- Chapter 26 Consultant and Physician to President Herbert C. Hoover
- Chapter 27 Problems at Roosevelt Hospital: The Bête Noir of Full Time
- Chapter 28 Internal Medicine as a Vocation (1897)
- Chapter 29 The Upjohn Service Moves to St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Chapter 30 Helicobacter Pylori and Peptic Ulcer: A Revolution in Gastroenterology
- Chapter 31 Plasmapheresis for Hepatic Coma at St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Epilogue
- Endmatter
Chapter 30 - Helicobacter Pylori and Peptic Ulcer: A Revolution in Gastroenterology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Early Days
- Chapter 2 Washington Heights
- Chapter 3 Speyer School for Gifted Children
- Chapter 4 New York University at University Heights
- Chapter 5 To Each His Farthest Star–A Medical Student at Rochester: 1929–1934
- Chapter 6 Duke University Hospital and Its Medical School, 1934–1935
- Chapter 7 Yale Medical School, 1935–1936
- Chapter 8 Return to Duke, 1936-1937
- Chapter 9 You Can Go Home Again
- Chapter 10 My One and Only Wife
- Chapter 11 The Bronx Is the Graveyard for Specialists, 1937
- Chapter 12 The Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, 1937 — The First of Its Kind
- Chapter 13 Pearl Harbor and World War II
- Chapter 14 Valley Forge General Hospital, 1942–1945
- Chapter 15 Tinian, 1945
- Chapter 16 Saipan, 1945–1946
- Chapter 17 Return to Columbia-Presbyterian, 1946
- Chapter 18 The Changing of the Guard at the Medical Center
- Chapter 19 An Internist-Diagnostician Rebuilds His Practice
- Chapter 20 The Upjohn Grand Rounds
- Chapter 21 The Iceman Cometh to Park Avenue
- Chapter 22 Songs My Patients Taught Me
- Chapter 23 Mr. J. Peter Grace, Chairman of W. R. Grace and Company
- Chapter 24 Birth of the Upjohn Gastrointestinal Service
- Chapter 25 Roosevelt Hospital, 1962–1965
- Chapter 26 Consultant and Physician to President Herbert C. Hoover
- Chapter 27 Problems at Roosevelt Hospital: The Bête Noir of Full Time
- Chapter 28 Internal Medicine as a Vocation (1897)
- Chapter 29 The Upjohn Service Moves to St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Chapter 30 Helicobacter Pylori and Peptic Ulcer: A Revolution in Gastroenterology
- Chapter 31 Plasmapheresis for Hepatic Coma at St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Epilogue
- Endmatter
Summary
In the current era of big-money research with multimilliondollar grants, impressive buildings, laboratories, institutes, elaborate and highly sophisticated equipment, and teams of collaborating scientists, we tend to forget that an individual, in a remote area using simple facilities, may sometimes make an extraordinary discovery that has eluded those in leadership levels of research. Such a discovery, was announced in 1983 in Brussels at a meeting of infectiousdisease authorities. The author was Barry Marshall, an unknown, brash young resident in medicine from Perth, Australia, who announced that he and his pathologist-collaborator, Dr. J. Robin Warren, had evidence that peptic ulcers were caused by a bacterial organism, Campylobacter Pylori (later called Helicobacter Pylori). Quoting from a superb essay entitled “Marshall's Hunch: The Unprecedented and Very Unorthodox Findings of an Unknown Doctor Point Toward Cures for Stomach Diseases That Afflict Millions” in the New Yorker, 20 September 1993 by Terence Monmaney.
The way it looked to Marshall, people infected by the bug first developed stomach inflammation, and then some fraction of those went on to develop chronic indigestion or peptic ulcer. (Later, he even began to think that the bug might cause cancer.) And as far as he could tell, the bug itself wasn't some new pathogen that had sprung out of the rain forest and into the belly of humanity; he thought that his older patients had probably been infected for decades. When Marshall finished speaking, an audience member stood up and gently inquired, “Dr. Marshall what causes peptic ulcers in people who don't have the bacteria?” “If you don't have the bacteria, you don't have a peptic ulcer” Marshall said. He might as well have said he knew the secret of cold fusion. The scientists chuckled and murmured and shook their heads a little embarrassed for a junior colleague whose debut was such a disaster. Dr. Martin Blaser, the director of the Division of Infection Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, was in the audience. Marshall's talk struck him then as “the most preposterous thing I ever heard” he says. “I thought, this guy is a madman.” But far from simply dismissing Marshall's ideas, dozens of scientists more or less independently paid him the highest tribute their profession could bestow; they set out to prove him wrong. Dr. David T. Graham, a distinguished gastroenterology researcher at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston, recalls his first impression of Marshall's work.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Life of the ClinicianThe Autobiography of Michael Lepore, pp. 417 - 421Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2002