Ira Brodsky.com

This post is the second in a series based on my soon-to-be published book, The History & Future of Medical Technology. Each week I’ll present highlights from one of thirteen chapters.


Medicine's First Power Users

When did modern medicine start? The 1950s would be a good guess. But the 1840s is a better answer. That’s when radical students in France, Germany, and other countries revolted against a medical establishment that attributed diseases to causes such as miasma, an imbalance of humors, and bad weather.

In France, Claude Bernard demanded that physicians and medical professors spend less time pontificating and more time gathering and analyzing facts. In Germany, Hermann Helmholtz led a group of students determined to rid medicine of metaphysics. Finally, the stage was set for real progress based on empirical evidence.

What happened next was one of the most notorious episodes in the history of medicine.

When Ignaz Semmelweis arrived at Vienna General Hospital in 1846, the maternity wards were plagued by outbreaks of deadly childbed fever. Semmelweis was convinced that no one knew the real cause, and he was determined to discover it. He studied the statistics and investigated the facts. The evidence suggested the disease was infectious. Semmelweis ordered that medical attendants entering the first ward wash their hands in a bowl of chlorinated water placed by the entrance. The incidence of childbed fever fell dramatically.

Semmelweis’ finding suggested that physicians had been carrying the deadly disease from patient to patient all along. Naturally, there was tremendous resistance to that conclusion within the medical profession. Semmelweis discovered the truth but, thanks to his stubbornness and poor social skills, had little success in persuading others. He died a broken man.

Fortunately, Louis Pasteur possessed the skills that Semmelweis lacked. As the foremost proponent of the germ theory of disease, Pasteur organized dramatic public demonstrations. While Semmelweis didn’t even bother looking through a microscope, Pasteur employed a variety of tools, and even taught breweries how to use the microscope for quality control.

Pasteur famously said “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Helmholtz had a similar outlook. They both understood that the mind was best prepared through hard work and use of the latest technology. Pasteur applied existing tools in new ways. Helmholtz developed new tools—often Rube Goldberg-like contraptions made out of materials only a notch above bubble gum and chicken wire.

Robert Koch took the technology to the next level. He invented photomicrography; discovered the best materials for culturing and staining microorganisms; and developed tools for sterilizing lab equipment. By the late 1800s, Pasteur, Koch, and others were preventing and even curing once dreaded diseases.

The pioneers of modern medicine were the technology power users of the 19th century.


Next time: The Fantastic Voyage (endoscopes, x-ray, and computed tomography)

Note: If you wish to be notified when The History & Future of Medical Technology is published, please go to Telescope Books and enter your email address in the newsletter sign-up field on the left menu bar. This email list is only used to announce book offers from Telescope Books; your email address will not be shared with third parties.

This post is the first in a series based on my soon-to-be published book, The History & Future of Medical Technology. Each week I’ll present highlights from one of thirteen chapters.


The Hidden World

How did the human race learn to prevent and cure diseases, repair and replace body parts, and improve the quality of life for chronic disease sufferers? The history of medicine is usually depicted as the gradual accumulation of knowledge over two thousands years punctuated in the late 20th century by the sudden convergence of biology and engineering. The problem with that narrative is that it misses two key events: an epochal invention and a scientific rebellion (discussed in chapter 2).

The microscope enabled not only modern medicine but all of the life sciences. As British biologist Brian J. Ford reminds us, the microscope has come to symbolize laboratory research.

Outsiders often do the most to prove and improve a new technology. The first person to observe microorganisms, Antony Leeuwenhoek, was a Dutch draper. Joseph Jackson (J.J.) Lister, who figured out a reliable way to manufacture low distortion microscopes, was a British wine merchant. These two hobbyists made immense and lasting contributions.

It’s hard to imagine how Leeuwenhoek must have felt when he first discovered creatures too small to be seen with the unaided eye. And it’s no wonder that he saw no link between microorganisms and disease: he also found “animalcules” in the mouths and excrement of healthy people.

Leeuwenhoek made his own single-lens microscopes. These were not mere magnifying glasses, though. They consisted of small, hand-polished lenses that could magnify objects up to 270 times mounted between two metal plates.

Many natural philosophers doubted Leeuwenhoek’s credibility; after all, he was untrained and didn’t know Latin. But time after time, Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries were verified by others. He even demonstrated some of his discoveries to Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who was touring Europe incognito.


Leeuwenhoek’s simple microscopes were difficult to use; most natural philosophers preferred compound microscopes. Unfortunately, the instruments suffered from spherical and chromatic aberration. Good microscope makers found they could reduce distortion by using combinations of offsetting lenses. However, producing good instruments was still a trial and error affair.


J.J. Lister is one of the most underappreciated figures in the history of science. (He's best known as the father of Joseph Lister, who introduced antiseptics to surgery and wound care.) In 1829, he discovered the law of aplanatic foci. Now there was a reliable method for producing relatively low distortion microscopes. The floodgates opened to further discoveries. The cell nucleus was first described in detail in 1831. By the 1850s, the germ theory of disease was widely accepted.

Others, such as Ernst Abbe, made important contributions to optical microscope technology. By the early 20th century, microscopes were bumping up against a performance ceiling: the wavelength of visible light. Ernst Ruska won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the first electron microscope, a device that used electromagnetic coils as virtual lenses. Electron microscopes can magnify objects up to one million times. In 1981, a type of electron microscope was employed to produce the first image of an individual atom.

The latest advances include confocal laser scanning microscopes, vitrification of specimens for electron microscopes, and magnetic resonance force microscopes. Confocal microscopes can produce three dimensional images of live specimens. Electron microscopes and magnetic resonance force microscopes are enabling scientists to observe the structure of complex organic molecules.

I suspect we will eventually be able to directly observe most of life’s underlying chemical machinery--both its structure and processes. That portends a future that is at once wonderful and frightening. We will be better equipped to prevent and cure genetic diseases. But we will also learn how to produce custom genomes.


Next time: Medicine's First Power Users


Note: If you wish to be notified when The History & Future of Medical Technology is published, please go to Telescope Books and enter your email address in the newsletter sign-up field on the left menu bar. This email list is only used to announce book offers from Telescope Books; your email address will not be shared with third parties.

You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto is an interesting read, but overall a disappointment. In fact, it isn’t about you at all. It’s a digirati’s second thoughts about Web 2.0 and the emergent hive mind.

Lanier is a guy with boundless curiosity—and that’s something I admire. He takes the reader on a fast-paced tour of some of the digital realm’s most exotic nooks and crannies. However, he doesn’t argue for individualism as much as against what he calls “cybernetic totalism.”

The book’s second to last paragraph is probably the best summary of the tome--if you can make sense of it. In Lanier’s own words:

The most important thing about postsymbolic communication is that I hope it demonstrates that a humanist softie like me can be as radical and ambitious as any cybernetic totalist in both science and technology, while still believing that people should be considered differently, embodying a special category.

My translation:

If everyone wants to upload themselves to the Web’s collective consciousness, then I’m willing to help them figure out how to do it, but personally I reserve the right to remain an old-fashioned person with a physical body.

Lanier points out, helpfully, that there is a downside to the Creative Commons and open software. He even dares to suggest that proprietary systems are sometimes superior. (This is a point I have been making for years.) Unfortunately, Lanier presents the latter idea almost as an aside. Instead of shouting it from the rooftops, he whispers it from a sidebar off the book’s main text.

There are some things about the book that I found annoying. Lanier demonstrates his own hive mentality. For example, he takes a few obligatory (but gentle) swipes at George W. Bush. He claims that there wasn’t an independent press during the Bush presidency and that the Bush years “are almost universally perceived as having been catastrophic.” I’ve criticized G.W. Bush more harshly, but at least my criticisms were based on facts.

More annoying is Lanier’s hive writing style. He is a member of a generation of science writers who revel in nuance but shun grand ideas. He makes overly generous use of dubious words such as “retropolis” and “computationalism.” And there are cute-sounding section titles (such as “Schlock Defended”) every several paragraphs.

Still, Lanier is an interesting fellow and this is an interesting book. Just don’t buy it expecting an impassioned defense of the individual in the face of rising collectivism.

I am frustrated and saddened when I hear friends or relatives say—or should I say brag?—that if their medical condition ever becomes hopeless then it is their wish that physicians withhold or remove artificial life support.

To Whom It May Concern: If my medical condition ever deteriorates to the point that some or all physicians consider my case hopeless, then it is my fervent wish that health care providers do everything they can to preserve my life and restore my health.

There are several reasons why I feel this way:

Life is short; we have all of eternity to be dead. What's the rush?

Telling health care providers to withhold or remove life support is like saying “I don’t value my life too highly, so don’t try your best to save me.”

Doctors are sometimes wrong. There have been many times that a patient recovered after doctors pronounced their case hopeless.

Committees of doctors are even more likely to be wrong. I don’t want a committee deciding that keeping me alive is too expensive or that pulling the plug on me will free up limited resources.

It is foolish to delegate decisions about your fate to others. People you don't know well or don’t know at all may become involved.

According to the Hippocratic Oath, doctors must “never do harm.” Allowing exceptions corrupts that oath.

Our schools and leaders implore us to put the common good above self interest. People are conditioned to believe that an individual on life support is a burden to everyone else. Now hear this: I am an individualist and I reject this view.

I love life and hate death. I have a wonderful family and, career-wise, am pursuing my dream. Even if my chance of returning to reasonable health is extremely faint, why would I preemptively extinguish that chance?

"I just put down a book that I had a hard time putting down: The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses by Ira Brodsky, KC9TC..."

Surfin': The Ghosts of Surfin' Past

Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor, ARRL.org

Science Daily reports that a new study by Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol "reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data" and finds that there has been no increase in the fraction of airborne carbon dioxide in the past 160 years.

Knorr's research was published November 7, 2009 in Geophysical Research Letters.

I have no reason to conclude that Knorr is trying to debunk global warming. But it's nice to know that there are still scientists who revisit the data and challenge aspects of prevailing theories. (I suspect more and more that it's journalists and politicians who are pushing the notion that these issues are settled.)

A couple of interesting resources readers may want to check out: World Climate Report and Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog.