Michael H. Tomasson: Self-Experimentation That Revealed the Immune Mechanism of ITP
Michael H. Tomasson, Professor of Medicine at University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, Chief Medical Officer at LSF Medical Solutions, Chair, Programmatic Committee, Rare Cancers Research Program, CDMRP at United States Department of War, shared Mel Mann‘s post on X:
“There have been a number of advances in medicine made by self-experimentation.
While at Washington University School of Medicine I learned that the immune mechanism of immune mediated thrombocytopenia was demonstrated by the self-experimentation of William J. Harrington and James W. Hollingsworth.
They injected themselves with the serum of a patient with ITP and recorded their drop in platelet count.”
Mel Mann, Patient Advocate, shared a post on X:
“Werner Forssmaann: The Doctor who Walked his Catheter to X-Ray.
Doctors thought touching a living heart would kill it. In 1929, a young German surgical trainee in Eberswalde tested that on himself.
Werner Forssmann’s chief had said no. So he numbed his own arm, opened a vein, pushed a catheter toward his heart, and walked down to radiology. The X-ray showed its tip inside.
Berlin’s Charité dismissed him after the stunt. His career drifted, and he ended up a small-town urologist. Meanwhile, André Cournand and Dickinson Richards in New York turned his idea into a science. In 1956, the three of them shared the Nobel.
Every cath lab runs on the vein he opened.”
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