Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

“Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure, and money.”
—Albert Szent-Györgyi, 1937

Inventions can be created either following a sudden enlightenment (for which Claude Bernard coined the term être frappé—to be punched or after a long investigation). Relatively few physicians have invented technical devices themselves. Here are some examples:

Denis Papin (1647 – c. 1712), French physicist, physician, and mathematician, was best known for inventing the steam digester, an early pressure cooker used to soften hard bodies by boiling them at high pressure.^1,2

Sir Christopher Michael Wren (1632–1723), a polymath, was a founder of the Royal Society and was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.³ As described by JMS Pearce⁴:

Wren … illustrated Willis’s famous book Cerebri Anatome (The Anatomy of the Brain). …

Wren made advances in many other fields of medicine, with observations on the pulse, muscular control of respiration, nutrition, and embryology. He designed and improved surgical instruments; he also devised new surgical techniques, such as the use of ligatures to tie off blood vessels during amputations to reduce bleeding. He described his meticulous surgical techniques in Operation and Method of Cure, and successfully removed the spleen in dogs followed by years of useful survival.

The two assistants of the doyen of French obstetrics Étienne Stéphane Tarnier, (1828–1897),⁵ became known inventors: the famous René-Théophile-Marie-Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781–1826), who invented the stethoscope in 1895 and published his invention in the classic treatise De l’Auscultation Médiate^6,7; and Adolphe Pinard (1844–1934), who invented in 1895 a special stethoscope for listening to fetal activity referred to as a “Pinard horn” or fetoscope.^8,9

Alexander Wood (1817–1884), a Scottish physician, invented the first true hypodermic syringe and was elected President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1858.¹⁰ Neil Arnott (1788–1874), also Scottish, invented the waterbed or water mattress—“He was a notable medical practitioner, a public health reformer, a practical innovator, an educator and general man of affairs.”¹¹

John Boyd Dunlop (1840–1921), a Scottish veterinary surgeon “who spent most of his career in Ireland…invented pneumatic tyres for his child’s tricycle and developed them for use in cycle racing,” and “the company that bore his name, Dunlop Pneumatic Tire Company, was not incorporated until later.”^12,13

The first medical thermometer was created in the late 1800s by Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt (1836–1925), a famous English physician and inventor. According to Pearce,¹⁴ he was appointed in 1864 to the staff of the General Infirmary at Leeds, lectured on the practice of physic and anatomy, and was one of the first to use the ophthalmoscope in Britain, extending its use for diagnosing and recognizing optic atrophy and papilledema in neurology.

In 1902, Willis Haviland Carrier (1876 –1950), an American engineer, invented the first modern air-conditioning system in 1931, and H.H. Schultz and J.Q. Sherman invented the first room air conditioner. John B. Gorrie (1803–1855), an American physician and scientist, invented mechanical refrigeration and, in 1833, moved to Apalachicola, Florida, where he worked as a physician at two hospitals and “cooled rooms with ice in a basin suspended from the ceiling.”^15,16 He began producing artificial ice in 1844 and abandoned his medical practice to pursue refrigeration products. His patent to produce ice cubes was registered in 1851. A statue of him is located at the United States Capitol.

Dr. Samuel Friedman, born in 1879 in Austria, immigrated to the US and attended the NYU School of Medicine from 1892 to 1895. He became a popular general practitioner who provided free services to the poor. During the influenza pandemic, he treated around 2,500 patients with a novel approach: instead of the open-air cure, he advocated continuous and profuse perspiration, hot drinks, closed windows, and warm coverings. He also invented a snow removal machine, for which Acting Mayor F.H. LaGuardia was present at the first demonstration of in 1920. Friedman was honored by the Medical Society of the State of New York.¹⁷

References

1. Storni M. Denis Papin’s digester and its eighteenth-century European circulation. Br J Hist Sci. 2021;54(4):443-463.
2. Kyle RA, Shampo MA. Denis Papin. JAMA. 1983;249(24):3325.
3. Christopher Wren. Biographies.net. https://www.biographies.net/people/en/christopher_wren
4. JMS Pearce. Christopher Wren’s contributions to medicine. Hektoen International Science, Winter 2023. https://hekint.org/2023/01/31/christopher-wrens-contributions-to-medicine/
5. Stéphane Tarnier. Wikipedia. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stéphane_Tarnier
6. Laënnec and the Stethoscope. JAMA 2019;322(5):472. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.15451.
7. Cheng TO. How Laënnec invented the stethoscope. Int J Cardiol 2007;118(3):281-5.
8. Dunn PM. Adolphe Pinard (1844-1934) of Paris and intrauterine paediatric care. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2006 ;91(3):F231-9.
9. Adolphe Pinard. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Pinard
10. Alexander Wood (physician). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Wood_(physician)
11. Bayliss RA, Ellis CW. Neil Arnott, F.R.S., reformer, innovator and popularizer of science, 1788-1874. Notes Rec R Soc Lond 1981;36(1):103-24.
12. Lochmann EH. John Boyd Dunlop: veterinary surgeon and inventor. Veterinarian 1966;4(2):71-81.
13. John Boyd Dunlop. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_Dunlop
14. Pearce JMS. Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74(10):1443.
15. John Gorrie. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gorrie
16. Mike Plummer. The Old Story of John Gorrie, and the One You Never Knew. WFSU Local Routes 2023. https://wfsu.org/local-routes/2023-06-28/john-gorrie-inventor-of-ice-machine/
17. Rosner F. Samuel Friedmam (1874-1947). NY State J Med 1968;68(2):1864.