Biographical Memoirs Volume 65 (1994) / Chapter Skim
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3. George Washington Corner
3. George Washington Corner
Pages 56-93
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From page 57... ...
His immediate forebears mover! to Baltimore around 1850 and pursued prosperous careers in business, establishing a successful family mercantile and ship57
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From page 58... ...
His grandfather was one of the early trustees of Johns Hopkins Hospital and president of the board of the Samuel Ready School. His father was a trustee of Coucher College, president of the Baltimore YMCA, and followed his own father as president of the Samuel Ready School.
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From page 59... ...
He did well enough, if not brilliantly, but his standard education was significantly augmented by voracious reading of the magazines and books present in abundance on his family's bookshelves and especially by the cultivated and interesting conversation of the numerous distinguished guests whom his parents entertained. There was little science taught in his elementary schools, but avid curiosity and a high degree of manual dexterity led him to fabricate simple electrical and optical instruments, and summers on the working farm of favorite relatives, one a veterinarian, gave him an early taste of natural history and animal medicine.
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From page 60... ...
In the summer following graduation from college, still undecided how to shape his future course into medicine or zoology, Corner spent several productive months at the U.S. Fisheries Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, where the Johns Hopkins Biology Department hacl special privi
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From page 61... ...
This was particularly so in the Anatomy Department uncler Franklin P
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From page 62... ...
Vesalius's Fabrica, Diemerbroeck's Anatomy, and De Graaf's De succo pancreaticurn, among others, gave background to his growing interest in the honorec3 cirugs Mithriciatium and Theriac, on which he prepare(1 an essay that he presented to the Medical History Club. Faithful attendance at all the lectures, laboratories, clinics, ware]
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From page 63... ...
Worst of all, little research was being done in the field. With the conjunction of these two considerations, and especially because he was developing ideas about how such physiological research might be conclucted, Corner was in a highly receptive state of mine!
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From page 64... ...
As Corner reflected in his autobiography, "l accepted Evans' offer with a comfortable feeling that ~ hac3 found the way to a career." BERKELEY AND TWO MORE YEARS AT JOHNS HOPKINS From the standpoint of our present, late twentieth century knowledge, it is clifficult for us to appreciate the paucity of knowlecige about reproductive system phenomena available in the years prior to World War T The factors controlling the menstrual cycle, the time of ovulation, the origin and function of the corpus luteum, when and how the embryo implants in the endometrium all were unknown.
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From page 65... ...
Aside from his own scholarly work in the field he inaugurated courses for students that were well attended and in several cases established lifelong interest in medical history and the founding of recognized rare book collections. Furthermore, into all his routine courses in anatomy he injected provocative accounts of ancient ideas and concepts and frequently requires!
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From page 66... ...
He selected the Macacus rhesus as the most suitable one, and with funds Weed obtained for him bought eleven females which he housed on a balcony in the Hunterian Laboratory of the Anatomy Department. This was the first experimental breecIing colony of monkeys in the United States and numerous important discoveries were macle employing it.
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From page 67... ...
The series of findings in the monkey colony establishecl the similarity of the primate cycle to that of the sow, with the exception of the lack of estrus at the time of ovulation in the primate and the greater menstrual bleeding occurring when the primate corpus Juteum degenerates. Jumping ahead many clecades, it may be noted that the modern procedures of artificial insemination, "test-tube babies" and surrogate motherhood, have been cleveloped upon the basis of these classic discoveries and others to follow.
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From page 68... ...
ROCHESTER Corner's choice of the title Seven Ages of a Medical Scientist for his (definitive autobiography was highly appropriate, for his life's activities diet indeed fall into a number of clearly demarcatecl compartments; this, despite the consistent, unifying theme of his elevation to biology and scientific research, first recognized in that revelation of "belonging" when he sat clown to the microscope as a college sophomore. The Rochester "Age" lasted for eighteen years and was the most active ant!
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From page 69... ...
It was therefore arranged that Corner should spend a preliminary year in Europe at the school's expense. However, George Whipple, Corner's great and admired friend since college (lays, hacl aIrea(ly taken over as the future clean and so, before he left for Europe, Corner, as the first of the professors to be appointed, was cirafted to help Whipple with the planning for the school: the physical plant, the staffing ant!
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From page 70... ...
The final product was his first book, Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages, publishecl in 1927 by the Carnegie institution of Washington. He also wrote a brief history, Anatomy, for the CTio Meclica Series, which appeared in 1930.
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From page 71... ...
In a biographic sketch prepared some years after leaving Rochester Corner listed the major projects that he and the members of his department addressed during his seventeen years there. They included: continuation of the reproductive cycle studies in monkeys; demonstration of anovulatory menstruation in women; identification of the relation of endometrial changes in pregnant rabbits to embryonic implantation rather than to activity of the corpus luteum; isolation and preparation of progesterone; discovery of lactation-inducing property of anterior pituitary extracts; development of a hormonal theory of menstruation; and demonstration of the action of progesterone on uterine muscle.
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From page 72... ...
biochemistry. Excited by the opportunity to work with Corner he accepted a fellowship that stipulated that he drop out of medical school for one year and teach in the Anatomy Department while collaborating with Corner.
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From page 73... ...
ant! he became internationally recognized, resulting in invitations to membership in medical history societies and to extensive lecturing.
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From page 74... ...
The growing reputation of the young Rochester medical school brought a long succession of visitors from all over the worIcI. An impressive list of students who wouicl later attain distinction came to work specifically with Corner: Asclell from Cambridge; iVadclell from London; Saiti from Tokyo; Bunster from Chili; Hoffmann from Dusselclorf; ant!
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From page 75... ...
After due consideration he refused them all. His decision was influenced both by his pricle in the Rochester Medical School that he had helped build and his satisfaction with its continuing stanciarcis, especially those of his own Anatomy Department and his course in histology, and especially by his clesire not to interrupt in any way the flow of his research work.
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From page 76... ...
At the Department of Embryology Corner inherited a small, well-organizecI, closely knit organization with a history of clistinguishe(1 research behind it and important projects still in hand. Two of the senior staff members remained from the Streeter clays.
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From page 77... ...
One day, early in the war, he called together the full scientific, technical, anct custodial staff and told them that after much cogitation and following consultation with Carnegie Institution officers and trustees, the War Department, anct various other advisors, he had been unable to find any way in which a department of embryology per se could be of service to the war effort. Therefore, the members of the department were acivisect to seek war work incliviclually with the assurance that they would be welcomed back to their posts as soon as the war was over.
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From page 78... ...
He had completed the corpus luteum study, as noted above, published studies of normal and incomplete twinning, and most particularly, in the years after 1949, worked with ArpacI Csapo upon uterine muscle and the hormonal control of its action. As author and editor he was enormously busy through
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From page 79... ...
He gave the same lecture on the menstrual cycle of the Rhesus monkey twenty-one times as he visitec! colleges and
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From page 80... ...
She had been increasingly interested in medical history anti had aIrea(ly used her librarian's training and her agile pen to produce some short articles on John Fothergill, a me(lical contemporary of Rush and Shippin. William Shippen, fx, Pioneer in Medical Education was pubfished in 1951.
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From page 81... ...
Corner clesignatecl "the minor statesmanship of science" was ever more demanding. In 1940 he was elected to both the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences.
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From page 82... ...
Detlev Bronk, president of the Rockefeller Institute for Meclical Research in New York City, aske(1 him to undertake the writing of the history of the institute. Its trustees wished to publish such a record in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the institute's founding, soon to be celebrate(l.
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From page 83... ...
to a pleasant apartment near the Rockefeller Institute and a very agreeable interIucle commenced. It was soon apparent that the time Corner spent on the Rockefeller history outstripped that devoted to the uterine studies.
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From page 84... ...
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY It was an ideal post for Corner. He had an intimate acquaintance with historical Philadelphia through the work on Beniamin Rush's autobiography.
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From page 85... ...
First, George Whipple and His Friends: The Life Story of a Nobel Prize Pathologist, commissioned by the Rochester Medical Alumni. This was a real labor of love, for Corner's friendship and admiration for Whipple ciatecI back to his meclical school days, then to the stirring times in the founding of the Rochester Medical School.
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From page 86... ...
In 198T, his fifteenth book and masterful autobiography, The Seven Ages of a Medical Scientist, appeared, happily in time for him to see it in the
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From page 87... ...
Life uncler these new arrangements- he describecl this era as "Retired but not Retiring's in his characterization of his Seventh Agewas kept from loneliness by the continuing work at the Philosophical Society plus the companionship of many friencts there and at the Wistar Association. Old friends at a distance were brought near by extensive correspondence, which included the Belts in Los Angeles, the Richters in Baltimore, Csapo in St.
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From page 88... ...
in classics at Yale was a cruel blow. He was very proud of his obstetrician-gynecologist son, the fourth George Washington Corner, who happily survives.
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From page 89... ...
GEORGE WASHINGTON CORNER 89 granulosa cells which secrete the hormone estrogen. The wall of the follicle is composed of fibrous tissue, the theca.
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From page 90... ...
Publications of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, no. 222 (Contributions to Embryology, no.
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From page 91... ...
115:376-85. 1937 Salernitan surgeryin the twelfth century.
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From page 92... ...
New York: Basic Books. 1963 George Hoyt Cripple and His Friends: The Life Story of a Nobel Prize Pathologist.
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From page 93... ...
1981 The Seven Ages of a Medical Scientist. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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