Alice Stewart

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Alice Stewart, 1990

Alice Mary Stewart , née Alice Mary Naish (born October 4, 1906 in Sheffield , Yorkshire , England - † June 3, 2002 in Oxford , Oxfordshire , England) was a British epidemiologist specializing in the study of the harmful effects of X-rays on the specialized in the human organism.

Childhood and youth

Alice Mary Stewart was born in 1906 as the third of eight children of the medical doctor Albert Ernest Naish (1871-1964) and his wife Lucy (née Wellburn) (1876-1967) in Sheffield. Her father worked as a pediatrician at Sheffield Royal Hospital and Sheffield Children's Hospital and taught from 1932 as a professor of medicine at the University of Sheffield . He was one of the founders and from 1935 President of the British Pediatric Association (now: Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health ). Her mother was one of the first women in the UK who had studied medicine, and taught after the end of World War anatomy and osteology at the Sheffield Medical School .

Training and initial research

Alice Mary Naish (Stewart) studied medicine at Girton College , Cambridge . After the first phase of her studies ( pre-clinical ) she intended to complete the second phase of her training ("residency") at one of Sheffield's hospitals. At that time, however, they did not yet accept women in their “residency” programs. Alice Stewart had no choice but to complete the last part of her training at the London School of Medicine for Women, founded in 1874, and the Royal Free Hospital London (today: Royal Free and University College Medical School). The Royal Free Hospital London (also) trained women to become doctors since 1877. It was the first - and at that time only - teaching hospital where women were given this opportunity. Alice Stewart's mother had already taken advantage of this opportunity and completed her medical studies at this school / teaching hospital. In 1932 Alice Stewart successfully completed her medical degree at the Royal Free. After stints at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and the London School of Hygiene, she became registrar in the General Medicine Department at the Royal Free Hospital.

At the outbreak of World War II , she had already passed the postgraduate exams of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and obtained the MRCP (Membership of the Royal College of Physicians). She became a counselor at the Royal Free Hospital and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospitals in London (now University College Hospital (UCH) Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Wing), then at a first aid station in St. Albans . When Britain entered World War II, most male doctors were drafted into the army. In order to fill the gaps that arose in this way, women doctors were now in great demand in clinics, as company doctors and for medical training. Subsequently, on behalf of the Medical Research Council (MRC) , she investigated the health risks of workers in the defense industry who came into contact with TNT , a study that was only published after the end of World War II. She also examined the (health) damaging effects of carbon tetrachloride or the puzzling occurrence of tuberculosis among workers in shoe production.

The studies highlighted Alice Stewart's expertise in the field of epidemiology. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, she was offered to be 1st assistant to Leslie John Witts (1898-1982) in Oxford, which she accepted. In 1946 she co-founded the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. In the same year she was made a "Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians", a high honor for the forty year old.

In 1943 John Alfred Ryle (1889–1950) founded the Nuffield Institute of Social Medicine at the University of Oxford. Ryle had been appointed professor of social medicine, which was the first time this department (social medicine / epidemiology) was established at an English university. In 1947 Alice Stewart accepted a position as an assistant at this institute. Professor John Ryle, the director of this facility, wanted to strengthen the medical professions and the medical profession and to link them to the social needs of society by making the causes of illnesses, especially work-related illnesses, his research focus, in order to then seek appropriate improvements in social and professional environment. Alice Stewart was very interested in this research program and worked with Ryle until his death in 1950.

Then Alice Stewart took over the management of the department of social medicine, but the medical faculty developed in other directions and neglected this specialty, which was rejected at the time because of its (still unfamiliar) multidisciplinarity. Stewart was granted the position of a university lecturer, but only granted her a minimal budget “which was barely enough to pay the gas bill” (Alice Stewart). But Stewart began her (later) famous research into the causes of cancer in childhood and adolescence with a research grant of just £ 1,000.

research results

Although X-rays ( pelvimetry ) warned of the risks of a pregnancy diagnosis (for example by William H. Rollins (1852–1929)), these warnings went unnoticed for many years.

Alice Stewart had then in their 1953 raised to 1955 and 1956/58 published research has shown that children of mothers who during her pregnancy diagnostic X-rayed had been so often twice leukemia or other cancers diseased than other children and provided scientific evidence that there was a causal relationship between even low radiation exposure and cancer mortality .

Her study then, with epidemiologist and occupational physician Thomas Mancuso , on radiation-induced diseases in workers at the Hanford plutonium production facility in Washington State , once again underlined the health-damaging effects of even the lowest doses of radiation (low-dose radiation) on the human organism.

Honors

In 1986 Alice Stewart received the Right Livelihood Award . In 1991 she was awarded the Ramazzini Award for Epidemiology. At the 1st International Conference of the Society for Radiation Protection in Kiel in 1992, she was awarded honorary membership.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Guardian June 28, 2002: Alice Stewart - Obituary
  2. ^ The Telegraph August 16, 2002: Alice Stewart - Obituary
  3. ^ Royal College of Physicians - Lives of the Fellows: Alice Mary Stewart
  4. ^ Archives West: Alice M. Stewart Collection, 1984–1990
  5. ^ Royal College of Physicians - Lives of the Fellows: Albert Ernest Naish
  6. ^ Ancestry.com: Lucy Wellburn
  7. ↑ WikiTree: Lucy (Wellburn) Naish (1876–1967)
  8. ^ Worldcat.org .: Gayle Greene: The Woman who knew too much - Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation. University of Michigan 1999 (Here Part 1./2: "Dr. Lucy and Daddy Naish")
  9. ^ Royal Roll of Physicians - Lives of the Fellows: Alice Mary Stewart
  10. ↑ Chicago Tribune June 24, 1990: Scientist Who Warned Of Peril To Atomic Workers
  11. ^ Wellcome Collection - Library: Papers: Dr. Lucy Naish (Wellburn)
  12. ↑ Chapter 2 of the book: “The Woman who knew too much. Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation "by Gayle Greene
  13. ^ UCL - Bloomsbury Project: London School of Medicine for Women
  14. ^ UCL - Bloomsbury Project: Royal Free Hospital
  15. ^ The National Archives: Royal Free Hospital
  16. ^ UCL Bloomsbury Project: Royal Free Hospital
  17. ^ Lost Hospitals of London: Royal Free Hospital
  18. ↑ Telegraph August 16, 2002: Alice Stewart (obituary)
  19. ↑ Guardian June 28, 2002: Alice Stewart (obituary)
  20. ↑ Guardian June 28, 2002: Alice Stewart (obituary)
  21. ↑ Royal College of Physicians (Lives of the Fellows) Vol. VII, p. 618: Leslie John Witts
  22. ↑ Telegraph August 16, 2002: Alice Stewart (obituary)
  23. ^ Royal College of Physicians (Lives of the Fellows) Vol. IV, p. 595: John Alfred Ryle
  24. ^ Royal College of Physicians - Lives of the fellows: John Alfred Ryle
  25. ^ Royal College of Physicians - Lives of the Fellows: Alice Mary Stewart
  26. ↑ Alice Stewart: Learning from Ryle, in: American Journal of Public Health October 1995, Vol. 85, no. 10. p. 1460f. PMC 1615638 (free full text)
  27. ↑ Wolfgang Köhnlein: Obituary: Dr. Alice Stewart is dead. In: Strahlentelex No. 374-375 / Volume 16, August 1, 2002, pp. 1ff.
  28. ↑ European Environment Agency / Federal Environment Agency (UBA): Late lessons from early warnings. The precautionary principle 1896–2000. 2001, p. 37
  29. ^ Britta Martinez: In a New Light: Early X-Ray Technology in Dentistry, 1890–1955. Thesis, Arizona State University, May 2013
  30. ↑ American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacia Radiology (AAOMR): William H. Rollins Award
  31. ^ William Herbert Rollins: Notes On X-Light
  32. ↑ Stewart, A., Webb J., Hewitt, D .: A survey of childhood malignancies. In: British medical journal. Volume 1, Number 5086, June 1958, pp. 1495-1508, PMID 13546604 , PMC 2029590 (free full text).
  33. ↑ Stewart, A. et al .: Malignant Disease in Childhood and diagnostic Irradiation in utero. The Lancet 2 (1956): 447
  34. ↑ JF Bithell, AMStewart: Pre-Natal irradiation and Childhood Malignancy: A Review of British Data from the Oxford Survey. In: British Journal of Cancer 1975 (31), pp. 271-287
  35. ↑ European Environment Agency / Federal Environment Agency (UBA): Late lessons from early warnings. The precautionary principle 1896–2000. 2001, p. 40
  36. ↑ The Lancet July 31, 2004: Orbituary: Thomas F. Mancuso
  37. ↑ Kneale, GW, Mancuso, TF, Stewart, AM: Hanford radiation study III: a cohort study of the cancer risks from radiation to workers at Hanford (1944-77 deaths) by the method of regression models in life-tables. In: British Journal of Industrial Medicine 38 (1981), pp. 156-166.
  38. ^ The Right Livelihood Award
  39. ^ Collegium Ramazzini - Home
  40. ↑ Presentation of the Ramazzini Award for Epidemiology 1991 - Certificate
  41. ↑ Wolfgang Köhnlein: Obituary: Dr. Alice Stewart is dead. In: Strahlentelex No. 374-375 / 16. Volume, August 1, 2002, p. 1ff.
personal data
SURNAME Stewart, Alice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stewart, Alice Mary (full name); Naish, Alice Mary (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British epidemiologist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheffield , Yorkshire , England
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 2002
Place of death Oxford , Oxfordshire , England