Martha Wollstein

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Martha Wollstein
BornNovember 21, 1868
New York, New York
DiedSeptember 30, 1939(1939-09-30) (aged 70)
New York, New York
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Cornell University Medical School
OccupationPhysician

Martha Wollstein (November 21, 1868 – September 30, 1939) was an American physician. Wollstein was born in New York to a German Jewish family. [1]

Contents

Biography

Wollstein was educated at the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary, which became part of the Cornell University Medical School in 1909. [2] There she studied with Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi, with whom she would later publish her first paper in 1902, on a myosarcoma of the uterus. [1] After graduating in 1890, Wollstein joined the Babies Hospital in New York, where she became a pathologist in 1892. [3] Her work there included research on infant diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, and typhoid fever. [2] In 1904, she was invited by Simon Flexner to join the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research as an assistant researcher, though she continued to work at the Babies Hospital even after this. [1] At the Rockefeller Institute she did experimental work on polio, studied pneumonia, and helped to develop an antimeningitis serum. [3]

In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1918, she made an important contribution to the study of mumps, by indicating that the disease could be viral in nature, which she showed by transmitting the disease "using a filtrated preparation from mumps patients to cats and from cats to other cats. She did not make any special claims for her research, though, and others received credit in the 1930s for identifying the virus and transmitting it from humans to monkeys." [1]

From 1921 until her retirement in 1935, Wollstein continued her research on various children's diseases at the Babies Hospital, including tuberculosis and leukemia. [2] In 1930 she was made a member of the American Pediatric Society, as the first woman ever. [1] She published eighty scientific papers during her career. [3]

She was a quiet woman, some said shy, and sometimes called difficult to work with, but she was known to have collaborated closely with a wide range of researchers both male and female. [1]

After her retirement she moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. [1] When she fell ill she moved back to New York, where she died on September 30, 1939, at Mount Sinai Hospital. [1] [2]

Select publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Koch</span> German physician and bacteriologist (1843–1910)

Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he is regarded as one of the main founders of modern bacteriology. As such he is popularly nicknamed the father of microbiology, and as the father of medical bacteriology. His discovery of the anthrax bacterium in 1876 is considered as the birth of modern bacteriology. Koch used his discoveries to establish that germs "could cause a specific disease" and directly provided proofs for the germ theory of diseases, therefore creating the scientific basis of public health, saving millions of lives. For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen B. Taussig</span> American cardiologist (1898–1986)

Helen Brooke Taussig was an American cardiologist, working in Baltimore and Boston, who founded the field of pediatric cardiology. She is credited with developing the concept for a procedure that would extend the lives of children born with Tetralogy of Fallot. This concept was applied in practice as a procedure known as the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt. The procedure was developed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, who were Taussig's colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maude Abbott</span> Canadian physician (1868/69–1940)

Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was one of the first women to obtain a BA from McGill University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernest William Goodpasture</span> American pathologist and physician

Ernest William Goodpasture was an American pathologist and physician. Goodpasture advanced the scientific understanding of the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, parasitism, and a variety of rickettsial and viral infections. Together with colleagues at Vanderbilt University, he invented methods for growing viruses and rickettsiae in chicken embryos and fertilized chicken eggs. This enabled the development of vaccines against influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever, and other diseases. He also identified and described what would become known as Goodpasture syndrome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sidney Farber</span> American pediatric pathologist regarded as the father of chemotherapy

Sidney Farber was an American pediatric pathologist. He is regarded as the father of modern chemotherapy for his work using folic acid antagonists to combat leukemia, which led to the development of other chemotherapeutic agents against other malignancies. Farber was also active in cancer research advocacy and fundraising, such as through his establishment of The Jimmy Fund, a foundation dedicated to pediatric research in childhood cancers. The Dana–Farber Cancer Institute is named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Hansine Andersen</span> American physician (1901–1963)

Dorothy Hansine Andersen was the American physician and researcher who first identified and named cystic fibrosis. During her almost thirty year tenure at Babies Hospital of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Andersen not only identified CF and its inheritance through a recessive gene, she was also at the forefront of developing diagnostic tests and life-extending treatments for the disease. Andersen was also active in researching other diseases that are diagnosed in children. She was the first to describe Glycogen storage disease type IV, which, in recognition of her contributions, became known as Andersen's Disease. Her research on heart malformations informed the development of open heart surgery and the training of new surgeons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hattie Alexander</span> American pediatrician and microbiologist

Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was an American pediatrician and microbiologist. She earned her M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1930 and continued her research and medical career at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Alexander became the lead microbiologist and the head of the bacterial infections program at Columbia-Presbyterian. She occupied many prestigious positions at Columbia University and was well honored even after her death from liver cancer in 1968. Alexander is known for her development of the first effective remedies for Haemophilus influenzae infection, as well as being one of the first scientists to identify and study antibiotic resistance. She has received many awards and honors including the E. Mead Johnson Award in 1942, for her headway in pediatric research and antibiotic resistance. Alexander's research and studies helped lay the ground work for research into antibiotic and vaccine development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Reed Mendenhall</span> American pediatrician

Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall was a prominent pediatric physician specializing in cellular pathology. In 1901, she discovered that Hodgkin's disease was not a form of tuberculosis, by noticing the presence of a special cell, the Reed–Sternberg cell which bears her name. Dorothy was one of the first women to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She was also one of the first professionally trained female physicians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene Lindsay Opie</span>

Eugene Lindsay Opie was an American physician and pathologist who conducted research on the causes, transmission, and diagnosis of tuberculosis and on immunization against the disease. He served as professor of pathology at several U.S. medical schools and as Dean of the Washington University School of Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Somerfeld-Ziskind</span> American neurologist and psychiatrist

Esther Somerfeld-Ziskind was an American neurologist and psychiatrist. She conducted pioneering research into the use of insulin, lithium, and electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She was the daughter of Czech and Romanian immigrants. She received her medical degree in Chicago, Illinois, and her Masters in Los Angeles, California. After marrying Eugene Ziskind, they opened their own practice. Somerfeld-Ziskind was later chair of the psychiatry department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Simeon Burt Wolbach was an American pathologist, researcher, teacher, and journal editor who elucidated the infection vectors for Rocky Mountain spotted fever and epidemic typhus. He was president of the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists and the American Society for Experimental Pathology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elise L'Esperance</span> American pathologist and physician

Elise Depew Strang L'Esperance (1878–1958) was an American pathologist and physician, a pioneer in establishing a preventive model of cancer treatment. She was a pathologist noted for establishing cancer prevention clinics in New York. She founded two clinics: the Strang Tumor Clinic in 1932 and the Strang Cancer Prevention Clinic in 1937, which operated out of the New York Infirmary. In 1940, L'Esperance opened a second branch of the Strang Cancer Prevention Clinic at the Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases. During her medical career, L'Esperance published her research prolifically, credited for approximately 30 articles in medical journals.

Marilyn Hughes Gaston is a physician and researcher. She was the first black woman to direct the Bureau of Primary Health Care in the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. She is most famous for her work studying sickle cell disease (SCD).

Werner Henle and Gertrude Henle were a husband and wife team of German-American virologists. The National Library of Medicine called them "a prodigious force in virology, immunology and viral oncology during the second half of the 20th century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah McNutt</span>

Sarah Jane McNutt was an American physician, notable as the first woman inducted into the American Neurological Association. McNutt was a founder of the Babies' Hospital in New York City, now known as Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, along with her sister Dr. Julia G McNutt. Her mentors and co-workers Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell were some of the first female physicians in the United States. She focused her work on pediatrics, neurology, and medical education.

Lucy Balian Rorke-Adams is an American pediatric neuropathologist who was president of the American Association of Neuropathologists in 1982. She spent 50 years at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She was the first and only female president of Philadelphia General Hospital and president of the PGH medical staff (1973–1975). She also served as president of the medical staff at CHOP (1986-1988) and as acting chair of pathology at CHOP (1995–2001). She was a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania beginning in 1970, becoming clinical professor of pathology as of 1979.

Maria Daria Haust was a Polish-Canadian pathologist, medical researcher, and pioneer of the speciality paediatric pathology. She was the first president, from 1983 to 1986, of the Canadian Atherosclerosis Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Sadler Moss</span> American pathologist (1898–1970)

Emma Sadler Moss (1898–1970) was an American pathologist and medical educator. She specialized in parasitology, tropical, and mycotic diseases. She was president of the American Society for Clinical Pathology in 1955 and 1956. She was the first woman to serve as president of a major medical society in the United States. She was a professor at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine and served as director of pathology at Charity Hospital in New Orleans for 30 years. She co-authored the 1953 book Atlas of Medical Mycology.

Sophie Rabinoff (1899–1957) was a Jewish pediatrician, public health educator, and researcher. She was known for her contributions to the field of preventative medicine.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Harvey, Joy Dorothy; Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie (2000). "Wollstein, Martha (1868–1939)". The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9780415920407 . Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Tebbe-Grossman, Jennifer (2009). "Martha Wollstein 1868 – 1939". Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  3. 1 2 3 "Martha Wollstein, American physician". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Britannica. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  4. Abrams, J; Wright JR, Jr (1 January 2018). "Martha Wollstein: A pioneer American female clinician-scientist". Journal of Medical Biography. 28 (3): 168–174. doi:10.1177/0967772017743068. PMID   29372645.
  5. Wright JR, Jr; Abrams, J (1 January 2017). "Founders of Pediatric Pathology: Martha Wollstein of Babies Hospital in New York City (1868-1939)-The First North American Pediatric Pathologist". Pediatric and Developmental Pathology. 21 (5): 437–443. doi:10.1177/1093526617738853. PMID   29216802.
  6. R. M. (1 December 1939). "Martha Wollstein, M.D. 1868-1939". Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. 58 (6): 1301. doi:10.1001/archpedi.1939.01990110165016.