Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Okay,
Speaker 1: so true confession on this one. This episode is inspired
Speaker 1: by one of my cats. Yeah, but simultaneously fascinating. It
Speaker 1: a lot older than I thought. Yes, Um, it's not
Speaker 1: about kiddies or animals really at all, although they are
Speaker 1: mentioned in terms of um medical testing. Nothing particularly gruesome,
Speaker 1: but just f y, I if that's troublesome for you. Um,
Speaker 1: it is in fact about science because my cat, Azzle
Speaker 1: was hyper thyroid and so we opted to have radio
Speaker 1: iodine therapy treatment for him. And as my vet was
Speaker 1: describing this to me and she's like, Oh, it's just
Speaker 1: like how they do it in humans, blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I have never thought about this before.
Speaker 1: Where did this all begin? Um? So it just got
Speaker 1: me wondering about the origins of this treatment because it
Speaker 1: is a very um successful treatment and it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that both humans and animals seem to respond
Speaker 1: well to, which just was fascinating to me because, as
Speaker 1: you know, I love a little bit of science. So
Speaker 1: that is what we were talking about today, the advent
Speaker 1: of radio iodine therapy. So first we're gonna talk just
Speaker 1: a little bit about your thyroid and how it works.
Speaker 1: Your thyroid is a small organ that sits below your larynx,
Speaker 1: and in the most basic terms, its job is to
Speaker 1: convert the iodine and the food you eat into hormones
Speaker 1: that regulate your metabolism. Thyroid cells are the only ones
Speaker 1: in the human body that take an iodine, but all
Speaker 1: of the other cells in the body are affected by
Speaker 1: the work that the thyroid does. So the hormone known
Speaker 1: as thyroxine abbreviated as T four and the hormone tri iodithyronine,
Speaker 1: known also as T three are vital to normal metabolic function.
Speaker 1: But the thyroid, which makes those again out of iodine,
Speaker 1: isn't out there just functioning so low. It is regulated
Speaker 1: by the pituitary gland, which is in turn regulated by
Speaker 1: the hypothalamus. If your thyroid isn't producing enough hormone, that's
Speaker 1: called hypothyroidism, and it doesn't present really obvious symptoms at
Speaker 1: the beginning a lot of the time, but it can
Speaker 1: lead to other problems, including obesity and heart disease. Normally,
Speaker 1: hypothyroidism is treated with synthetic hormones to get the level
Speaker 1: of thyroid function back up to normal. And if your
Speaker 1: thyroid is producing too much hormone like my cats, that
Speaker 1: is known as hyper thyroidism, and in this case it
Speaker 1: sort of overclocks the body's metabolic function. So in this case,
Speaker 1: unintentional weight loss and rapid heart rate and even irregular
Speaker 1: heartbeat are all symptoms which obviously can lead to some
Speaker 1: pretty serious problems if they're left unchecked. The advances in
Speaker 1: thyroid treatment that we're going to talk about today it
Speaker 1: took place less than a hundred years ago, but thyroid
Speaker 1: disease has been part of recorded history going all the
Speaker 1: way back to a seven hundred b c E. When
Speaker 1: seaweed was prescribed in China to treat goiter. The gorder
Speaker 1: is a swelling of the thyroid that's most commonly caused
Speaker 1: by low iodine, but the thyroid itself wasn't even recognized
Speaker 1: and illustrated until Leonardo da Vinci drew it in fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1: The name thyroid didn't exist until sixteen fifty six, when
Speaker 1: Thomas Wharton named it using a word for shield because
Speaker 1: of the resemblance in shapes to ancient Grecian shields. In
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty, Jean Francois Quande made the connection between iodine
Speaker 1: and goiter and began to use iodine as a treatment.
Speaker 1: By eighteen thirty one, iodine used as a prophylaxis to
Speaker 1: prevent thyroid disease was proposed by a Brazilian doctor, but
Speaker 1: even so conclusive scientific literature establishing iodine as a necessity
Speaker 1: to thyroid function was not published until nineteen o seven
Speaker 1: in a paper by doctor David Marine, and it was
Speaker 1: Marine's work in thyroid research that eventually led to iodized
Speaker 1: salt as a standard approach to preventing thyroid disease as
Speaker 1: a public health initiative. I like, how uh it was
Speaker 1: nineteen o seven when that happened, But using seaweed to
Speaker 1: treat goiter from thousands of years before they were onto it.
Speaker 1: They just hadn't done all the math on what exactly
Speaker 1: in the seaweed was fixing. The seaweed has lots of
Speaker 1: iodine and it that's what was up with that. In
Speaker 1: the late eighteen nineties, knowledge about the thyroid really started
Speaker 1: to accelerate as Adolph Magnus Levy made the connection between
Speaker 1: thyroid function and metabolic rate. Radium was used to treat
Speaker 1: a patient's goiter in nineteen o five by physician Robert Abbey,
Speaker 1: and the term hyper thyroidism was coined in nineteen ten
Speaker 1: by Charles H. Mayo, but descriptions of that condition actually
Speaker 1: date back to the eighteen twenties, and for a long
Speaker 1: time the only real treatment for hyper thyroidism was surgery,
Speaker 1: but it was so risky that often doctors waited until
Speaker 1: the patient its illness was pretty advanced to perform the surgery,
Speaker 1: and that meant that the patient by that point was
Speaker 1: already in a weakened state, which only reduced the likelihood
Speaker 1: of a successful outcome. There was actually a pretty high
Speaker 1: mortality rate for that surgery. In George de Heavnessy developed
Speaker 1: the idea of radioactive tracers to study metabolic pathways. A
Speaker 1: tracer per Meriam Webster as a substance used to trace
Speaker 1: the course of a chemical or biological process. He went
Speaker 1: on to receive a Nobel Prize for his work, but
Speaker 1: not for another two decades, and in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: research into thyroid function and disease was taking place in
Speaker 1: a number of different hospitals and medical research centers, because
Speaker 1: it really had, as we said, accelerated in terms of
Speaker 1: what we knew about thyroid and thyroid disease in the
Speaker 1: decades leading up to that, But it was not until
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties that a breakthrough idea occurred to a
Speaker 1: physician to use radioactivity in the treatment of hyper thyroidism.
Speaker 1: And to get into that, we have to talk about
Speaker 1: Saul Hurts. Saul Hurts was born on April twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents, Erin and Bertha Hurts,
Speaker 1: were Polish immigrants who raised Saul and his six brothers
Speaker 1: in an Orthodox Jewish household. After a public school, Saul
Speaker 1: went to the University of Michigan and then on to
Speaker 1: medical school at Harvard. After he got his medical degree
Speaker 1: in ninety nine, he did his internship and residency in
Speaker 1: Cleveland before moving to Boston. Starting in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: he was at the thyroid clinic at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital,
Speaker 1: and five years into his time at that position, in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen thirty six, he attended a lunch at
Speaker 1: Harvard Medical School in which Carl Compton was giving a lecture,
Speaker 1: and Compton, who was the president of m i T
Speaker 1: at the time, had entitled his talk what Physics Can
Speaker 1: Do for Biology and Medicine, and in it he discussed
Speaker 1: the concept of making radioactive isotopes of common elements. After
Speaker 1: the lecture was over, Hurts asked Compton a question, could
Speaker 1: iodine be made radioactive? He was thinking about a practical
Speaker 1: application stion of the science that Compton had discussed in
Speaker 1: the talk, which was using radioactive iodine, which theoretically only
Speaker 1: the thyroid could absorb, to address thyroid issues. Compton didn't
Speaker 1: really know the answer to the question off hand, so
Speaker 1: he noted the question, intending to follow up with Hurts later.
Speaker 1: It took a month, and when Compton followed up on it,
Speaker 1: he apologized. That letter is dated December six and it reads,
Speaker 1: dear doctor Hurts, to my chagrin, I have just come
Speaker 1: across the memorandum which I made on your question about
Speaker 1: the radioactivity of iodine. Iodine can be made artificially radioactive.
Speaker 1: It has a half period of decay of twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes in amidst of gamma raise and beta raise electrons.
Speaker 1: Is put in parenthesis with a maximum energy of two
Speaker 1: point one million volts. It is probable that there are
Speaker 1: several other periods of decay, but if so, they correspond
Speaker 1: to types of radioactivity like the one indicated, and they
Speaker 1: are not yet very definitely established and his response letter data.
Speaker 1: Eight days later, on December, Hurts thanked Professor Compton and wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the fact that iodine is selectively taken up by the
Speaker 1: thyroid gland when injected into the body makes it possible
Speaker 1: to hope that iodine, which has made radioactive and which
Speaker 1: loses its radioactivity as rapidly as you indicated, would be
Speaker 1: a useful method of therapy in cases of overactivity of
Speaker 1: the thyroid gland. And then promised Carl Compton that he
Speaker 1: would relay the results of any of the tests that
Speaker 1: they conducted on animals using radioactive iodi and Saul Hurts
Speaker 1: was ready to start exploring this idea in the lab,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that after we first
Speaker 1: pause for a little sponsor break. Saul Hurts, along with
Speaker 1: James Howard Means, who was his supervisor at the hospital
Speaker 1: and was actually the man who established Massachusetts General Hospitals
Speaker 1: Thyroid Unit, reached out to the physics community. To put
Speaker 1: their plan into action, they joined forces with Robbie Evans
Speaker 1: and Arthur Roberts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to
Speaker 1: combine the work of the physicists and physicians to treat
Speaker 1: hyper thyroidism. The team started working with the isotope iodine
Speaker 1: or just I in rabbits. They used a test group
Speaker 1: of four dozen animals. The rabbits thyroids took up the I,
Speaker 1: which was of great indicator that Hurts his idea would work.
Speaker 1: When the rabbits were tested after the I was administered,
Speaker 1: it was found that their thyroid glands had quote nine
Speaker 1: times the concentration of radioactive iodine as that found in
Speaker 1: the liver. Additionally, the rabbits, among the group with hyper
Speaker 1: plastic thyroid glands, which were glands that had additional growth
Speaker 1: from cell proliferation, had an even greater retention of radioactive
Speaker 1: iodine in the thyroid tissue than those who had healthy
Speaker 1: thyroid glands. So the rabbits with abnormalities and their thyroids
Speaker 1: actually took up more of this radioactive isotope than the
Speaker 1: as that were healthy. And at this point, the I
Speaker 1: was being used as a tracer to diagnose thyroid issues,
Speaker 1: it was not yet at the phase where it was
Speaker 1: being used as a treatment. In a write up of
Speaker 1: this initial success, Hurts and his team stated, quote, it
Speaker 1: is therefore logical to suppose that, when strongly active materials
Speaker 1: are available, the concentration power of the hyperplastic and neoplastic
Speaker 1: thyroid for radioactive iodine maybe of clinical or therapeutic significance.
Speaker 1: This offered up hope as well for an alternative to
Speaker 1: thyroid surgery, one that was far less invasive and consequently
Speaker 1: less dangerous. This was, however, very early on. There was
Speaker 1: also one fundamental problem that twenty five minute half life.
Speaker 1: In very basic terms, the isotope decayed so quickly that
Speaker 1: it had to be used immediately after creation or it
Speaker 1: would just be useless before it could actually treat the
Speaker 1: thyroid tissue. Hurts is Boston group was sharing their information
Speaker 1: with another team on the West coast at the University
Speaker 1: of California, Berkeley. The California team, headed by Mayo Soli
Speaker 1: and Joseph Hamilton's conscripted the help of two other scientists,
Speaker 1: Glenn Seaborg and Jack living Goood, who had access to
Speaker 1: a cyclotron that's an early particle accelerator apparatus that accelerates
Speaker 1: atomic and subatomic particles in a constant magnetic field, and
Speaker 1: the cyclotron had only been patented for four years before this,
Speaker 1: so it was still a very new technology. Using the cyclotron,
Speaker 1: Seaborg and Jack living Good were able to create new
Speaker 1: iodine isotopes. First, I won thirty with a half life
Speaker 1: of twelve hours, and eventually I won thirty one. I
Speaker 1: won thirty one has an eight day half life. These
Speaker 1: longer half lives made these isotopes good candidates for Hurtz's treatment.
Speaker 1: The longer half life meant that doctors would have time
Speaker 1: to treat the problematic thyroid tissue between the isotopes creation
Speaker 1: and the point where it became useless. And as the
Speaker 1: California team was working with the cyclotron to create those
Speaker 1: new isotopes, the Boston team was working with humans to
Speaker 1: test whether they ear thyroids like those of the rabbits
Speaker 1: in the earlier tests, would uptake the radioactive iodine, and
Speaker 1: they had positive results. The data collected from those early
Speaker 1: tests was also used to determine procedure and dosage guidelines
Speaker 1: for human patients once they moved into the treatment phase,
Speaker 1: and once those new isotopes were established and could be
Speaker 1: replicated at the Boston Lab after it had acquired its
Speaker 1: own cyclotron, it was time for a true clinical trial.
Speaker 1: In January, Saul Hurts treated his first human patient with
Speaker 1: hyper thyroid using a combination of I one thirty and
Speaker 1: I one thirty one. This is a patient identified in
Speaker 1: his notes as Elizabeth D. It was the birth of
Speaker 1: nuclear medicine. It is often referred to as the first
Speaker 1: and the gold standard and targeted radio nuclide therapy. Hurts
Speaker 1: that his team treated additional patients at the rate of
Speaker 1: one a month, tracking their progress after receiving the radio
Speaker 1: iodine therapy, and most of them had significant improvement in
Speaker 1: their conditions. The Cleveland Press ran a story about Hurts
Speaker 1: his work under the headline former Clevelander developed first atomic
Speaker 1: medical cure. After initial success with the treatment, Hurts began
Speaker 1: to take on more patients as candidates for radio iodine treatment,
Speaker 1: and in two he expanded his work with radio iodine
Speaker 1: therapy and began clinical trials of treatment for patients with
Speaker 1: thyroid cancer. And this was actually something that he had
Speaker 1: begun working on, at least in its theoretical form as
Speaker 1: early as nineteen thirty seven, when those initial rabbit trials
Speaker 1: for hyperthyroidism were underway. This three starch had gotten the
Speaker 1: attention of the medical community early on. In two the
Speaker 1: Mayo Clinic arranged for one of their physicians, Dr. F.
Speaker 1: Raymond Keating, Jr. To spend six months in Boston working
Speaker 1: with the researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital to learn about
Speaker 1: their work with radioactive iodine. Later, the Mayo Clinics Dr
Speaker 1: Samuel Haynes wrote of this period quote, when ray Keating
Speaker 1: finished his fellowship, we asked Howard Means to let him
Speaker 1: go to the m g H for six months. We
Speaker 1: were a specially interested in having him see what Means
Speaker 1: Salt Hurts and Rulan Rawlson were doing with radio iodine,
Speaker 1: a program which as you know, was carried out with
Speaker 1: Robilie Evans and Wendell Peacock from m I T raised
Speaker 1: day in Boston was very successful, and when he came
Speaker 1: back he had arranged with Evans to have small amounts
Speaker 1: of I one one sent to him to be used
Speaker 1: in some studies in chicks. Haines also described the Mayo
Speaker 1: clinics first use of I one in thyroid treatment in
Speaker 1: the same writing, which was a letter that he was
Speaker 1: writing to a colleague at Cornell, and he wrote of
Speaker 1: the patient, who was a woman who had been quite
Speaker 1: ill and for whom surgery would have been a highly
Speaker 1: dangerous prospect. He wrote that she had a good outcome
Speaker 1: with the I one thirty one treatment. So this treatment
Speaker 1: developed through Hurts. His work was indeed one spreading to
Speaker 1: other clinics and being used by other doctors, and was
Speaker 1: saving people from very high risk surgeries. But Hurts had
Speaker 1: the unfortunate timing of developing this breakthrough treatment at the
Speaker 1: same time that World War Two was brewing. Saal Hurts
Speaker 1: put aside his medical research temporarily in nine in forty
Speaker 1: three and joined the Navy to fight against Hitler's Nazi regime.
Speaker 1: But before he shipped out, Hurts, who did not want
Speaker 1: work in this new field to be hampered by his absence,
Speaker 1: met with a private practice doctor who worked part time
Speaker 1: at m g H, and that was Dr Earl M. Chapman.
Speaker 1: Chapman had continued to make time for medical research even
Speaker 1: while running his own practice, and he was ineligible for
Speaker 1: military service, so Hurts asked him if he would keep
Speaker 1: working with Hurts his roster of thyroid patients, and Chapman
Speaker 1: probably flattered agreed and continued the work that Hurts had begun.
Speaker 1: But when Saul Hurts returned from the war, there were
Speaker 1: problems between the two men. Chapman didn't want to give
Speaker 1: up the project and give it back to its originator
Speaker 1: after his two years of involvement, and of course Hurts
Speaker 1: wanted his research project back, but he wasn't given his
Speaker 1: old position at MGH. Instead he took a position at
Speaker 1: the Beth Israel Hospital. Yeah, there are many um stories
Speaker 1: that are told among their colleagues about the fights that
Speaker 1: broke out of this issue. Uh. And then those two
Speaker 1: former colleagues eventually found themselves just each running their own trials.
Speaker 1: And then they both wrote papers about them. And Chapman
Speaker 1: actually finished his paper first and submitted it to the
Speaker 1: Journal of the American Medical Association for review and publication.
Speaker 1: This kicked off some drama, and we'll get to that
Speaker 1: paper and the rivalry between the two of them and
Speaker 1: how that was stirred up after we take a quick
Speaker 1: break and hear from one of our sponsors. So though
Speaker 1: Chapman had beaten Hurts to the finish line, on writing
Speaker 1: the paper itself, he didn't get published. First, the Journal
Speaker 1: of the American Medical Association returned his paper and said
Speaker 1: it needed to be edited for length before it could
Speaker 1: be published. And in the meantime, the editor, who knew
Speaker 1: that Hurts had been the one to spearhead the work
Speaker 1: in this field and yet had not even been mentioned
Speaker 1: in Chapman's paper, reached out to Saul Hurts and encouraged
Speaker 1: him to do his own right up as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: So Hurts, along with Arthur Roberts, finished his own paper
Speaker 1: recounting the methods and results of his trials treating hyper
Speaker 1: thyroid patients with IE one. The end of all this
Speaker 1: jockeying was that the Journal of the American Medical Association
Speaker 1: published both the Chapman and Hurts papers, both on the
Speaker 1: same topic, both researched in the same hospital, printed in
Speaker 1: the same issue on May eleven six. Both scientists findings
Speaker 1: were made available to the Journal of the American Medical
Speaker 1: Association's readership, and if nothing else, two papers on exactly
Speaker 1: the same topic with only minor differences and treatment methodology
Speaker 1: achieved one thing. It made nuclear medicine a really hot
Speaker 1: topic and established radio iodi in therapy as an effective
Speaker 1: way to treat thyroid disease. Yeah, they had been writing
Speaker 1: other papers leading up to that, but that was really
Speaker 1: the paper that was, like, we have figured out how
Speaker 1: to treat hyper thyroid. Here's how we do it. Here
Speaker 1: the methods, And they both essentially did the same thing.
Speaker 1: Depending on whose account you read, chapman approach was a
Speaker 1: little less careful in terms of dosage and like how
Speaker 1: he he managed patient treatment, but um, they were still very,
Speaker 1: very similar. And interestingly enough, that was not the end
Speaker 1: of the squabbling over academic papers and who got credit
Speaker 1: for the research that led to this game changing treatment.
Speaker 1: In reference to an earlier paper on the radio iodine
Speaker 1: work they were doing, an mg H Saul Hurts wrote
Speaker 1: the following letter to a doctor gold forbe on April twelfth.
Speaker 1: He writes quote with reference to the article submitted for
Speaker 1: publication by doctors s. Hurts and Arthur Roberts, A change
Speaker 1: is desired with the addition of Professor Robili D Evans
Speaker 1: as a third co author. He has shared considerably in
Speaker 1: the time devoted to this problem, and we have decided
Speaker 1: that full credit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cannot
Speaker 1: be given without including him as co author. His title
Speaker 1: is Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Speaker 1: and we would appreciate the addition to the authorship of
Speaker 1: him on the publication. But many years later, in Dr
Speaker 1: Arthur Roberts wrote a scathing letter to Dr John Stanbury,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book titled A Constant Ferment, The History
Speaker 1: of the MGH Thyroid Clinic and the work that was
Speaker 1: done there from en n Apparently Stanbury interviewed Evans and
Speaker 1: spoke very highly of him in the book. Roberts, who
Speaker 1: had received pre publication manuscript, just tour into Evans. In
Speaker 1: this letter. Roberts had actually worked for Evans at m
Speaker 1: I T. And, according to his account quote Evans made
Speaker 1: it condition of my employment. I wish I still had
Speaker 1: the letter that his name was to appear on all publications.
Speaker 1: Even at the time, this was unusual and occasioned much comment.
Speaker 1: It led to the contretemps concerning the late edition of
Speaker 1: his name to our first paper. It was on the
Speaker 1: second paper, But after that Saul and I felt sufficiently
Speaker 1: secure that we ignored him in our subsequent publications. Had
Speaker 1: he actually participated it in the work there would have
Speaker 1: been no problem including him. Roberts continued his takedown of
Speaker 1: Evans over the course of several pages, calling him, among
Speaker 1: other things, quote a thoroughly unprincipled racist manipulator. Also cautioned
Speaker 1: author Stanbury, quote I would believe nothing on this subject
Speaker 1: from Chapman, whose self interest is obvious, and who bungled,
Speaker 1: whether deliberately or not. The follow up on Hurts's original
Speaker 1: series when Hurts joined the Navy, apparently despite all of
Speaker 1: roberts and passioned rhetoric, though Stanbury did not make changes
Speaker 1: to its manuscript, this whole mess of exchanges is a
Speaker 1: good reminder that even people who do important and groundbreaking
Speaker 1: work are often mired in their own personal conflicts that
Speaker 1: are not necessarily apparent to the outside. I yeah, it's
Speaker 1: such a This sort of thing does happen in academia
Speaker 1: with some frequency. Um, if you have any friends who
Speaker 1: are maybe professors or researchers, they probably have similar stories.
Speaker 1: I should also note that, Um, in the midst of
Speaker 1: that big shake up, Evans went with Chapman while Roberts
Speaker 1: went with Hurts, So they sort of set raided into
Speaker 1: two teams. And that's kind of why there is so
Speaker 1: much friction between them. But as for Saul Hurts, he
Speaker 1: continued his work in radio iodine therapy. In fall of
Speaker 1: ninety six, he set up the Radioactive Isotope Research Fund,
Speaker 1: and a few years later that fund paid for the
Speaker 1: establishment of the Radioactive Isotope Research Institute, with offices in
Speaker 1: Boston and New York. Hurts believe that the study of
Speaker 1: thyroid cancer and research into its possible treatments could lead
Speaker 1: to breakthroughs in the treatment of all cancers, and he
Speaker 1: was happy to discuss this work with the media anytime
Speaker 1: they asked. Unfortunately, though, that work was cut short. Saul
Speaker 1: Hurts died suddenly at the age of forty five, and
Speaker 1: they had a heart attack on July. His daughter, Barbara,
Speaker 1: who was just three when her father died, has become
Speaker 1: the steward of his story and legacy and has worked
Speaker 1: with professionals in the medical community to make sure that
Speaker 1: his contributions to medical science are documented and remembered. To
Speaker 1: that end, she's set up a digital archive online and
Speaker 1: has made some of a correspondence and research available. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used a lot of that in any of these
Speaker 1: letters that were quoting back and forth, often came from
Speaker 1: her her archive. UH. In the Society of Nuclear Medicine
Speaker 1: and Molecular Imaging established the Doctor Saul Hurt's Lifetime Achievement
Speaker 1: Award to recognize those who have quote made outstanding contributions
Speaker 1: to radio nuclide therapy. That's awesome. Yeah, so my personal
Speaker 1: thanks to Dr Saul Hurts because now my cat has
Speaker 1: benefited directly from his work. Uh. And that is because
Speaker 1: this process that he came up with in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: literally just after hearing a lecture and going, hu, I
Speaker 1: wonder if I could use that UM still works. It
Speaker 1: is a very common treatment with a really high rate
Speaker 1: of success. Uh. So much so that with only minor changes,
Speaker 1: it is really pretty much one of the recommended treatments
Speaker 1: today in both people and animals. Yeah, thank you, Saw Hurts.
Speaker 1: I know people who have had it, and only one cat,
Speaker 1: which is yours. Yeah. Yes, he went to what I
Speaker 1: called radio I had. I'd sleepaway camp for a few
Speaker 1: days because he was radioactive. Now he's home. We haven't
Speaker 1: had his follow up blood work yet, but all signs
Speaker 1: point to successful outcome. UM. But it is just fascinating
Speaker 1: and cool. It's like I said, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that it is literally a ninety year old treatment
Speaker 1: that has come up with just through like this moment
Speaker 1: of insight, and yet it is still like really benefiting
Speaker 1: people's lives and is still, as we said, the gold
Speaker 1: standard of treatment. I have another sort of um medical
Speaker 1: thing in listener mail is from our listener Stephanie, and
Speaker 1: she writes, Dear Tracy and Holly, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for the Dr Alice Hamilton episode, which I listened to
Speaker 1: with much chagrin. I'll admit when I read this letter
Speaker 1: that scared me a little, but yeah, I always kind
Speaker 1: of brace for impact. Her next sentence illustrates why. She says,
Speaker 1: I spent nearly twenty years working in toxicology, occupational health
Speaker 1: and environmental health information and never heard of her. In fact,
Speaker 1: I spent several years helping to create the site talks Tutor,
Speaker 1: which included looking at textbooks and histories of toxicology and
Speaker 1: occupational health, and I did not come across her name,
Speaker 1: which makes me sad. Uh So she also sent us
Speaker 1: some some cute things, some pens and little notepads. Um.
Speaker 1: She writes with warm regards, Stephanie, thank you so much, Stephanie.
Speaker 1: I feel like she is one of those people Alice
Speaker 1: Hamilton's who just doesn't get credit for really all the
Speaker 1: ways many of us have benefited from her work every
Speaker 1: day without even knowing it. So thank you. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, you can do
Speaker 1: so at History podcast at house to Works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media as Missed
Speaker 1: in History and Missed in History dot com is the
Speaker 1: website where you can find all of our episodes that
Speaker 1: have ever existed and show notes for any of the
Speaker 1: ones that Tracy and I have worked on. Would you
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