George Oliver (medic)

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George Oliver

George Oliver (* 13. April 1841 in Middleton-in-Teesdale , County Durham , † 27. December 1915 in Farnham , Surrey ) was an English doctor and 1893-1895 co-discoverer of the adrenal medulla - the hormone adrenaline and neurohypophysial -Hormons Adiuretin .

Members of University College London circa 1895. Shepherd in front center, Oliver behind him on left in a light-colored coat.

Life

Oliver studied medicine at University College London and received his MD in 1873 . Of his teachers, he was particularly impressed by the anatomist and physiologist William Sharpey (1802-1880). From 1875 to 1908 he worked as a resident doctor in Harrogate , a health resort in North Yorkshire . He spent most of the winters in London, where he took part in the activities of the medical societies and did his own research. In 1887 he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians . In 1901 he bought a house in Farnham, which he retired in 1908. With his wife Alice he had a son and a daughter. He was buried on December 31, 1915 in the Farnham village of Tilford near the small church "which he had attended so regularly".

Oliver experimented and wrote a lot. He constructed devices to measure hemoglobin in the blood, blood pressure and the diameter of arteries near the skin . A book "Bedside urine tests" appeared in several editions; he developed "Oliver's test strips" for this purpose. A book “Blood Pressure” also saw several editions. His discoveries probably came from the contemporary notion of “organ therapy”, according to which organs contained potent substances whose therapeutic benefits had to be found out.

The discovery of adrenaline

It was mainly with this discovery, 1893/94, that Oliver inscribed himself in the history of medicine and biology. One of the discoverers was Edward Albert Schäfer (1850–1935), whom William Sharpey had also impressed, who was in turn professor of physiology at University College London from 1883 to 1899 and who added the name “Sharpey” to his family name “Schäfer” in 1918, so that he has since “ Edward Albert Sharpey-Schäfer “was called.

Henry Hallett Dale (1875–1968), who worked at University College in the early 20th century, wrote some of the most important publications on adrenaline and its relatives, and shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Loewi , has the 1937 discovery rolled into one Lecture in Edinburgh told as follows (like all quotations from English):

"Dr. Oliver - I was told - was a general practitioner with a talent for inventing simple apparatus for experiments on people. He had made a small instrument with which, he claimed, one could measure the diameter of arteries, such as the radial artery on the wrist , through the intact skin . He seems to have experimented on his family. He tested the effects of subcutaneous injection of extracts from animal glands on a young son. ... So we have to imagine Professor Schäfer in the old Physiology Laboratory at University College, a shabby angle compared to our modern standards, as he finishes measuring arterial blood pressure on an anesthetized dog. ... Dr. Oliver with the story of the tests on his son, especially that subcutaneous injection of a glycerine extract from bovine adrenal glands clearly narrowed the radial artery. Professor Schäfer is said to have been incredulous that he thought the observation was a self-delusion. ... I don't think we can blame him; With all we know today about the extract's effects, who would believe that its subcutaneous injection measurably narrowed a boy's radial artery? Dr. But Oliver is stubborn; the professor is doing a circulatory test on a dog, and at least it doesn't hurt if he injects some of the adrenal extract intravenously. Professor Schäfer makes the injection in anticipation of a triumphant demonstration of nothing and has to see - like an astronomer, when a new planet swims in his field of vision, how the mercury rises rapidly to an unexpected height, almost out of it peripheral leg of the pressure gauge U-tube. This is how the active principle of the adrenal gland was discovered, which was later recognized as an ingredient exclusively in the adrenal medulla and was later shown in pure, crystalline form and called 'epinephrine' or 'adrenaline'. "

Experiment by Oliver and Schäfer: adrenaline increases blood pressure and causes the spleen to contract.

Dale related this in a "Sharpey-Schäfer Memorial Lecture", donated in memory of the co-discoverer of adrenaline. But as well-known as the story is, repeated for example by Dale himself and in the monumental work “ Catechins and other sympathicomimetic amines ” by Peter Holtz (1902–1970) and Dieter Palm (1924–2005), their truthfulness is not beyond doubt. Dale himself said cautiously that he was reporting what was passed on in University College and was amazed at the detectability of a narrowing of the radial artery. When asked, Oliver's offspring knew nothing about experiments on his son. Finally, Dales multiple references to subcutaneous injections contradicts the accounts of those involved. Oliver himself wrote in the publication of his first therapeutic attempts in 1895: “During the winter of 1893/94 I examined substances with an instrument I constructed myself, the arteriometer, to see whether they changed the diameter of arteries. I found that oral administration (administration by the mouth) of glycerine extracts from the adrenal glands of cattle and sheep had a strong vasoconstrictor. "Likewise, Schäfer thirteen years later:" In the fall of 1893, a gentleman I did not know visited me in my laboratory at University College as Dr. George Oliver introduced. He wanted to discuss with me the results of some experiments in which he had examined the effects of extracts from animal organs, administered orally, on the blood vessels on humans, using two instruments he had constructed, a blood pressure monitor and an arteriometer for the exact determination of the diameter of the Radial artery or other superficial arteries. ”Oral adrenaline effects are highly unlikely. Some details of the famous story of discovery are probably legend.

On March 10, 1894, Oliver and Schäfer went public for the first time with their animal experiments at a meeting of the Physiological Society in London: “The adrenal glands give off a substance to cold or hot water, alcohol or glycerine, which reacts to the Blood vessels, the heart and the skeletal muscles exert a very powerful effect ... “The following year a 46-page article followed, in the style of the time without statistics, but with a precise description of many individual experiments and 25 recordings on soot kymographs , for example next to documented reflex bradycardia and a contraction of the spleen after the increase in blood pressure . “After these investigations it seems certain that the adrenal glands, although without an excretory duct, are secreting glands . The material they make, which in any case only occurs in its active form in the marrow, has remarkable effects on muscle tissue, especially on the heart and arteries. It increases the tone of the muscle tissue, at least primarily through a direct effect. ”The above-mentioned first publication of therapeutic attempts appeared as early as 1895, although from today's point of view these were partly hopeless when Oliver used his preparations for two patients with diabetes mellitus, for example , a patient with diabetes insipidus and a patient with exophthalmos in Graves' disease . However, the Oliver-Schäfer discovery was extremely important not only for basic research, the first identification of a hormone, but also for therapy. Such successful drugs as the beta blockers and the β 2 -adrenoceptor agonists can be traced back to them.

The discovery of adiuretin

Immediately after their 46-page article in the Journal of Physiology in 1895, Oliver and Schäfer issued a “Preliminary Notice”. “At the same time as we were investigating the effects of adrenal extracts, we carried out similar studies with extracts from other glands, especially the pituitary gland .” The pituitary extract increased blood pressure. This was the first discovered effect of adiuretin, which is why it is also called "vasopressin".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Oliver, MD, FRCP In: British Medical Journal. 1, 1916, pp. 73-73, doi: 10.1136 / bmj.1.2871.73 .
  2. ↑ Merriley Borell: Organotherapy, British physiology, and discovery of the internal secretions. In: Journal of the History of Biology 9, 1976, pp. 235-286.
  3. ↑ H. Dale: Natural chemical stimulators . In: Edinburgh Medical Journal . 45, 1938, pp. 461-480.
  4. ^ H. Dale: Accident and opportunism in medical research . In: British Medical Journal . , Pp. 451-455. doi : 10.1136 / bmj.2.4574.451 .
  5. ↑ P. Holtz, D. Palm: Catechins and other sympathicomimetic amines. In: Results of Physiology, Biological Chemistry and Experimental Pharmacology . Volume 58, pp. 263-264, 1966.
  6. ^ H. Barcroft and JF Talbot: Oliver and Schäfer's discovery of the cardiovascular action of suprarenal extract. In: Postgraduate Medical Journal 44, 1968, pp. 6-8. PMC 2466464 (free full text).
  7. ↑ a b George Oliver: On the therapeutic employment of the suprarenal glands . In: British Medical Journal . , Pp. 653-655. doi : 10.1136 / bmj.2.1811.635 .
  8. ^ EA Schäfer: On the present condition of our knowledge of the function of the suprarenal capsules . In: British Medical Journal . , Pp. 1277-1281. doi : 10.1136 / bmj.1.2474.1277 .
  9. ↑ K. Starke: Pharmacology of noradrenergic and adrenergic systems - pharmacotherapy of bronchial asthma - doping. In: K. Aktories, U. Förstermann, F. Hofmann and K. Starke: General and special pharmacology and toxicology. 10th edition, Elsevier, Munich 2009, pp. 161–199. ISBN 978-3-437-42522-6 .
  10. ↑ G. Oliver, EA Schäfer: On the physiological action of extract of the suprarenal capsules. In: The Journal of Physiology 16, SI – IV, 1894. PMC 1514529 (free full text)
  11. ↑ G. Oliver, EA Schäfer: The physiological effects of extracts of the suprarenal capsules. In: The Journal of Physiology. Volume 18, Number 3, July 1895, pp. 230-276, ISSN  0022-3751 . PMID 16992252 . PMC 1514629 (free full text).
  12. ↑ G. Oliver and EA Schäfer: On the physiological action of extracts of pituitary body and certain other glandular organs. In: Journal of Physiology 18, 1895, pp. 277-279. PMC 1514634 (free full text)
personal data
SURNAME Oliver, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British medic
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Middleton-in-Teesdale
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1915
Place of death Farnham