CNU Library Blog - LibGuides at California Northstate University

Happy birthday to Dr. Jane Cooke Wright!

Left: Dr. Wright in 1967.

Middle: Dr. Wright using a microscope, unknown date.

Right: Dr. Wright in 2011 with the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

Jane is remembered for her achievements in oncology. She worked with her father, who was also a doctor, on using folic acid antagonists as a viable treatment to stop tumor growth. She also found that a medication called methotrexate made chemotherapy a less life-threatening treatment option. And she invented a catheter that allowed doctors to get tumor-fighting drugs to areas of the body that were previously unreachable, including the kidneys and the spleen.

Jane was raised in a family of pioneering doctors: her grandfather was born into slavery and became a doctor after the Civil War, her step-grandfather was the first black person to graduate from Yale Medical college, and her father was the first black doctor in a New York City hospital. Jane had two daughters, one who became a psychiatrist and the other who became a clinical psychologist.

Read more:

Watch: (Pharmacology video on "Methotrexate," the medication that improved chemotherapy)

Title: Realizing the Promise of Equity in the Organ Transplantation System

Authors: Committee on A Fairer and More Equitable, Cost-Effective, and Transparent System of Donor Organ Procurement, Allocation, and Meredith Hackmann, Rebecca A. English, Kenneth W. Kizer.

Publication info: Washington, DC: National Academies Press. 2022.

Available: Academic eBook Collection.

Description: Each year, the individuals and organizations in the U.S. organ donation, procurement, allocation, and distribution system work together to provide transplants to many thousands of people, but thousands more die before getting a transplant due to the ongoing shortage of deceased donor organs and inequitable access to transplant waiting lists. Realizing the Promise of Equity in the Organ Transplantation System, a new consensus study report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine?s Committee on A Fairer and More Equitable, Cost-Effective, and Transparent System of Donor Organ Procurement, Allocation, and Distribution, provides expert recommendations to improve fairness, equity, transparency, and cost-effectiveness in the donor organ system.

Title: What Patients Teach: The Everyday Ethics of Health Care.

By: Larry R. Churchill; Joseph B. Fanning; David Schenck. Oxford University Press. 2013.

Available in our Academic eBook Collection.

Description: "Being a patient is a unique interpersonal experience but it is also a universal human experience. The relationships formed when we are patients can also teach some of life's most important lessons, and these relationships provide a special window into ethics, especially the ethics of healthcare professionals. This book answers two basic questions: As patients see it, what things allow relationships with healthcare providers to become therapeutic? What can this teach us about healthcare ethics? This volume presents detailed descriptions and analyses of 50 interviews with 58 patients, representing a wide spectrum of illnesses and clinician specialties. The authors argue that the structure, rhythm, and horizon of routine patient care are ultimately grounded in patient vulnerability and clinician responsiveness. From the short interview segments, the longer vignettes and the full patient stories presented here emerge the neglected dimensions of healthcare and healthcare ethics. What becomes visible is an ethics of everyday interdependence, with mutual responsibilities that follow from this moral symbiosis. Both professional expressions of healthcare ethics and the field of bioethics need to be informed and reformed by this distinctive, more patient-centered, turn in how we understand both patient care as a whole and the ethics of care more specifically. The final chapters present revised codes of ethics for health professionals, as well as the implications for medical and health professions education."

Happy birthday to Louis Lewin, a German pharmacologist who lived from 1850 to 1929. In 1881, Lewin wrote the book Die Nebenwirkungen der Arzneimittel, which was translated to English as The Untoward Effects of Drugs: A Pharmacological and Clinical Manual. It was the first book of its kind.

Louis Lewin also indirectly contributed to an ongoing debate about dental amalgam fillings: do they cause mercury poisoning, or not? One of his patients was chemistry professor Alfred Stock, who died from mercury poisoning (allegedly from occupational exposure, not from his fillings). While determining the cause of his poisoning, Lewin noted that his dental fillings were a possible source. Stock wrote against further use of amalgam, which refueled the ongoing debate on the topic in Germany.

Dental amalgam fillings do contain small amounts of mercury. Amalgam is an alloy of mercury which uniquely (and at a low cost) produces the versatility and strength required to fill and support a decaying tooth's shape. Read more in the links below!

Read more:

About Louis Lewin on his Wikipedia page.
About his 1881 book, Die Nebenwirkungen der Arzneimittel, here.
Stock's insistence that doctors cease usage of amalgam is translated to English here.
About the history, science, and significance of dental amalgam fillings in this article in NCBI.

Advancements in oncology: Dr. Jane Cooke Wright

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