Dorothy M. Horstmann
Encyclopedia
Dorothy Millicent Horstmann (July 2, 1911 – January 11, 2001) was an American epidemiologist
, virologist
and pediatrician
whose research on the spread of poliovirus
in the human bloodstream helped set the stage for the development of the polio vaccine
. She was the first woman appointed as a professor at the Yale School of Medicine
.
and earned her undergraduate degree in 1936 from the University of California, Berkeley
. She received her medical training at the University of California, San Francisco
, earning her medical degree in 1940 and developed an interest in infectious disease
after hearing lectures delivered by Karl Friedrich Meyer
while at San Francisco General Hospital
, where she performed her internship and residency
. She performed further training at Vanderbilt University Hospital
.
Horstmann had initially been rejected from the residency program at Vanderbilt as the school's chief of medicine Hugh Morgan
would only choose men to participate. Months later she received another letter from Morgan asking whether "Dr. Horstmann" was still interested in the position, having forgotten the original reason for her exclusion. Morgan "all but went into shock" after she accepted the position and showed up for work, but the year ended successfully.
Hired by the Yale School of Medicine in 1942 as a Commonwealth Fellow in the Section of Preventive Medicine, Horstmann specialized in internal medicine
under Dr. John R. Paul
. She spent 1944 teaching medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, but returned to Yale the following year.
after working on a polio outbreak in New Haven, Connecticut
. she worked together on Yale's polio team with researchers including Joseph L. Melnick
, which used an approach they called "clinical epidemiology" to monitor polio outbreaks in Connecticut
, Illinois
, New Jersey
and New York
, as well as an outbreak in Hickory, North Carolina
that was one of the worst in the century. At each site, the team analyzed sanitary conditions in the water supply, collected insects that might be possible vectors and took blood samples from patients with symptoms and those without, all as part of an effort to identify how the poliovirus was transmitted between people. Overturning the conventional wisdom that the polio virus affected the nervous system directly, Horstmann and her fellow researchers such as Robert W. McCollum
discovered traces of poliovirus in the bloodstream, concluding that polio reached the brain by way of the blood.
Nobel Prize
-winner Dr. John Franklin Enders
credited Horstmann with shaking the "widely held feeling that the virus grew solely in nerve cells". Yale's medical historian John F. Fulton called Horstmann's discovery "medical history" and stated that the discovery of how polio was transmitted in the blood was "as exciting as anything that has happened in the Yale Medical School since I first came here in 1930 and is a tremendous credit to your industry and scientific imagination". The oral polio vaccine was developed based on this research and Horstmann was able to confirm by the late 1950s that tests of the vaccine conducted in the Soviet Bloc were effective, confirming preliminary results that showed that the vaccine worked and leading to its widespread use in the United States.
Yale chose her as a full professor in 1961, making her the first woman to receive the position at the medical school. Horstmann was named to an endowed
chair in epidemiology and pediatrics in 1969. A former president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
, Horstmann was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences
.
Horstmann died at age 89 on January 11, 2001, in New Haven, Connecticut
due to complications of Alzheimer's disease
.
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...
, virologist
Virology
Virology is the study of viruses and virus-like agents: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit cells for virus reproduction, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy...
and pediatrician
Pediatrics
Pediatrics or paediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. A medical practitioner who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician or paediatrician...
whose research on the spread of poliovirus
Poliovirus
Poliovirus, the causative agent of poliomyelitis, is a human enterovirus and member of the family of Picornaviridae.Poliovirus is composed of an RNA genome and a protein capsid. The genome is a single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome that is about 7500 nucleotides long. The viral particle is...
in the human bloodstream helped set the stage for the development of the polio vaccine
Polio vaccine
Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis . The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin...
. She was the first woman appointed as a professor at the Yale School of Medicine
Yale School of Medicine
The Yale School of Medicine at Yale University is a private medical school located in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. It was founded in 1810 as The Medical Institution of Yale College, and formally opened its doors in 1813....
.
Early life and education
Horstmann was born on July 2, 1911, in Spokane, WashingtonSpokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
and earned her undergraduate degree in 1936 from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. She received her medical training at the University of California, San Francisco
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...
, earning her medical degree in 1940 and developed an interest in infectious disease
Infectious disease
Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...
after hearing lectures delivered by Karl Friedrich Meyer
Karl Friedrich Meyer
Karl Friedrich Meyer was an American scientist of Swiss origin. He was one of the most prodigious scientists in many areas of infectious diseases in man and animals, the ecology of pathogens, epidemiology and public health[1-6]...
while at San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital is the main public hospital in San Francisco, California, and the only Level I Trauma Center serving San Francisco and northern San Mateo County...
, where she performed her internship and residency
Residency (medicine)
Residency is a stage of graduate medical training. A resident physician or resident is a person who has received a medical degree , Podiatric degree , Dental Degree and who practices...
. She performed further training at Vanderbilt University Hospital
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center is a collection of several hospitals and clinics, as well as the schools of medicine and nursing associated with Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.It comprises the following units:...
.
Horstmann had initially been rejected from the residency program at Vanderbilt as the school's chief of medicine Hugh Morgan
Hugh Jackson Morgan
- Early life and education:Hugh J. Morgan was born into a prominent Nashville, Tennessee family from Alabama in 1893, and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1914. The Jackson family's ancestral home, Forks of Cypress, remains a landmark in Florence, Alabama...
would only choose men to participate. Months later she received another letter from Morgan asking whether "Dr. Horstmann" was still interested in the position, having forgotten the original reason for her exclusion. Morgan "all but went into shock" after she accepted the position and showed up for work, but the year ended successfully.
Hired by the Yale School of Medicine in 1942 as a Commonwealth Fellow in the Section of Preventive Medicine, Horstmann specialized in internal medicine
Internal medicine
Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. Physicians specializing in internal medicine are called internists. They are especially skilled in the management of patients who have undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes...
under Dr. John R. Paul
John R. Paul
John Rodman Paul was an American virologist whose research focused on the spread of polio and the development of treatments for the disease.-Life and achievements:Paul was born on April 18, 1893, in Philadelphia...
. She spent 1944 teaching medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, but returned to Yale the following year.
Epidemiologist
She switched her focus to infectious diseaseInfectious disease
Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...
after working on a polio outbreak in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
. she worked together on Yale's polio team with researchers including Joseph L. Melnick
Joseph L. Melnick
Joseph Louis Melnick was an American epidemiologist who performed breakthrough research on the spread of polio, with The New York Times calling him "a founder of modern virology".-Early life and education:...
, which used an approach they called "clinical epidemiology" to monitor polio outbreaks in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, as well as an outbreak in Hickory, North Carolina
Hickory, North Carolina
Hickory is a city in Catawba County, North Carolina. Hickory has the 162nd largest urban area in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 341,851, making it the 4th largest metropolitan area in North Carolina. The city's population was 37,222...
that was one of the worst in the century. At each site, the team analyzed sanitary conditions in the water supply, collected insects that might be possible vectors and took blood samples from patients with symptoms and those without, all as part of an effort to identify how the poliovirus was transmitted between people. Overturning the conventional wisdom that the polio virus affected the nervous system directly, Horstmann and her fellow researchers such as Robert W. McCollum
Robert W. McCollum
Robert Wayne McCollum, Jr. was an American virologist and epidemiologist who made pioneering studies into the nature and spread of polio, hepatitis and mononucleosis while at the Yale School of Medicine, after which he served for nearly a decade as Dean of the Dartmouth Medical School.-Early life...
discovered traces of poliovirus in the bloodstream, concluding that polio reached the brain by way of the blood.
Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winner Dr. John Franklin Enders
John Franklin Enders
John Franklin Enders was an American medical scientist and Nobel laureate. Enders had been called "The Father of Modern Vaccines."-Life:...
credited Horstmann with shaking the "widely held feeling that the virus grew solely in nerve cells". Yale's medical historian John F. Fulton called Horstmann's discovery "medical history" and stated that the discovery of how polio was transmitted in the blood was "as exciting as anything that has happened in the Yale Medical School since I first came here in 1930 and is a tremendous credit to your industry and scientific imagination". The oral polio vaccine was developed based on this research and Horstmann was able to confirm by the late 1950s that tests of the vaccine conducted in the Soviet Bloc were effective, confirming preliminary results that showed that the vaccine worked and leading to its widespread use in the United States.
Yale chose her as a full professor in 1961, making her the first woman to receive the position at the medical school. Horstmann was named to an endowed
Financial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
chair in epidemiology and pediatrics in 1969. A former president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
Infectious Diseases Society of America
The Infectious Diseases Society of America is a medical association representing physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who specialize in infectious diseases. As of 2010, IDSA had approximately 9,000 members...
, Horstmann was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
.
Horstmann died at age 89 on January 11, 2001, in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
due to complications of Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
.