Historical Footprints: MJM Past and Present
There has been a long tradition in the history of medicine
to cement one's legacy by naming some anatomic structure, disease
process, or new treatment after oneself; although to be fair,
sometimes the naming was done posthumously by a third party.
Either way, the net result has been a one-to-one association
between researcher and discovery that has become ingrained into
our collective consciousness. Of course, if things were that
simplistic then the sheer number of medical eponyms that bear
Virchow's name would probably lead us to believe that he was
the most industrious man in the history of western medicine.
The reality though, is that every great scientific discovery
is the product of entire teams of researchers that rarely get
their names mentioned in textbooks. So it would be unfair of
us to talk of the Calvin cycle and credit its discovery to Melvin
Calvin without at least giving a passing nod to Andrew Benson
who did a considerable portion of the work while on Calvin's
team. Also, while Denis Burkitt described the new form of lymphoma
that would come to bear his name, it was Michael Epstein, Yvonne
Barr, and Burt Achong that actually isolated the causative virus.
Unfortunately, the naming of the Epstein-Barr virus pays little
tribute to the third member of this triad.
This tirade against the injustices of historical nomenclature
has its origins in the unlikely developments stemming from the
Faculty of Medicine's annual newsletter. The newsletter carried
an article about the MJM and its growing readership that provoked
a rather surprising response. Two of our noted alumni, Dr. Charlotte
Ferencz and Dr. William Gibson, wrote to us to point out that
the article did little to recognise the previous incarnation
of our medical journal. It is an accusation we readily acknowledge.
In fact, our predecessor publication bore the slightly different
name "McGill Medical Journal" and was first published
in 1931. Its origins were far older than we had originally realised
and its longevity was just as surprising. Its final issue, published
in 1981 marked the end of its half-century run. However, the
discoveries did not end there. It was three hard-working students,
from the illustrious Class of '32, that originally founded the
McGill Medical Journal. They were Clement Clay, James Gray and
Colin McLeod. It was the last name that sparked the greatest
amount of interest.
McLeod graduated from McGill in 1932 and spent the next two
years as a resident at the Montreal General Hospital, before
moving to New York and accepting a position at the Rockefeller
Institute Hospital. It was then that he began to work with his
fellow Canadian-in-exile Oswald Avery. The result of that partnership
was the groundbreaking 1944 paper "Studies of the Chemical
Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal
Types. Induction of Transformation by a Deoxyribonucleic Acid
Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III" by Avery,
McLeod, and McCarty. The paper challenged the belief that genetic
material was carried by proteins and proposed that it was in
fact transmitted by these so-called "nucleic acids."
Though McLeod did much of the actual physical work, he still
had to play second fiddle to the more senior Avery who was director
of the laboratory. However, the point became mute after Watson
and Crick published their 1953 paper on the double helix (which
incidentally never cited the work of Avery and McLeod). The
magnitude of the publicity surrounding the double helix eclipsed
the work done at the Rockefeller Institute, forever denying
Avery and MacLeod a much-deserved Nobel Prize. In the 50th anniversary
edition of Nature (vol. 421, no. 6921, p. 406, 23 January 2003),
an editorial note called the omission "an oversight that,
to this day, still puzzles."
So what is to be done with all these historical oversights?
Perhaps, very little can be done. A drastic re-write of medical
history would be cumbersome and serve no real purpose. All we
can do is continue with the basic principles that have guided
scientific researchers for the greater part of modern history.
We provide a forum for scientific discussion and let everyone
submit their papers, hypotheses, theories, and suspicions. There
will be the inevitable amount of retractions, confusion, disputes,
and competing claims over some work. We can only hope history
will sort it out and give us some final pronouncement of who,
if anyone, was ultimately correct. Morever, in this tempest
of scientific publication, and in a world where big discoveries
increasingly seem to require big research budgets, student research
can often get lost in the whirlwind. Fortunately, there is a
place where student research is always welcome. It is a place
where great careers can begin, and it is place where researchers
that will change the course of history can get their feet wet.
That place is here at the MJM, and we are very proud of it.
1. McCarty, M. Discovering genes are made of DNA. Nature 2003;