During this time, many doctors were trying to cure a disease call pernicious anemia. It is a disease that is caused by a deficiency. People with this disease have unnaturally yellow skin because they don’t produce enough red blood cells, prematurely gray hair, walk unsteadily, are short of breath, endure chronically swollen tongues, and suffer from numbness in their hands and feet. The new wave of research began after World War I, and doctors now took advantage of scientific method and new medical technologies. Doctors examined blood samples of anemic patients and found that they had low amounts of red blood cells. To try and fix this, they used blood transfusions. Unfortunately this only increased their red blood cell count and did nothing
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This discovery led to America winning its first Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1934. After the news about the cure, people wanted to find what was in liver that helped pernicious anemia. One of these doctors was William Castle, a doctor from Harvard, picked up where the other researchers left off. He guessed that people with pernicious anemia couldn’t produce normal digestive juices. He thought that an active substance in the stomach combined with a substance stored in the liver were necessary to produce red blood cells …show more content…
He had healthy people eat ground beef and keep it in their stomach long enough for the digestive juices to act on it (one hour). After the hour was over they would regurgitate their stomach contents. Next, his patients with pernicious anemia would would eat the partially digested matter. This experiment was ridiculed by many people, but it did succeed in curbing pernicious anemia in his subjects, and in the 1940s researchers confirmed the physiology and biochemistry behind his work (176-177). ELECTROCARDIOGRAM One of the most important medical technologies from between the two world wars was the electrocardiogram. Before it was invented, the only tool that could be used to diagnose heart problems was a stethoscope, which would only let the doctor listen to the patients heart. The electrocardiogram would trace the electrical action of the heart, so doctors could see if there were any abnormalities. It was also used to see how different medicines would effect the heart. It was also invented around the same time that heart attacks became more common (179).
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This discovery led to America winning its first Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1934. After the news about the cure, people wanted to find what was in liver that helped pernicious anemia. One of these doctors was William Castle, a doctor from Harvard, picked up where the other researchers left off. He guessed that people with pernicious anemia couldn’t produce normal digestive juices. He thought that an active substance in the stomach combined with a substance stored in the liver were necessary to produce red blood cells …show more content…
He had healthy people eat ground beef and keep it in their stomach long enough for the digestive juices to act on it (one hour). After the hour was over they would regurgitate their stomach contents. Next, his patients with pernicious anemia would would eat the partially digested matter. This experiment was ridiculed by many people, but it did succeed in curbing pernicious anemia in his subjects, and in the 1940s researchers confirmed the physiology and biochemistry behind his work (176-177). ELECTROCARDIOGRAM One of the most important medical technologies from between the two world wars was the electrocardiogram. Before it was invented, the only tool that could be used to diagnose heart problems was a stethoscope, which would only let the doctor listen to the patients heart. The electrocardiogram would trace the electrical action of the heart, so doctors could see if there were any abnormalities. It was also used to see how different medicines would effect the heart. It was also invented around the same time that heart attacks became more common (179).
MONEY/BETTER