Leonard Rowntree, Louis Wilson, Fielding Garrison, and the origins of teaching medical history at the Mayo Clinic.

A visiting surgeon described his disappointment with an aspect of the Mayo Clinic in 1914, stating that there was "the almost lack of anything that could be dignified by the term 'lecture.'" One year later, the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research was founded. By 1917, the foundation declared history of medicine a graduate-level subject, and history of medicine questions were included in final oral examinations. In 1920 and 1921, lectures were given on historical topics; however, these lectures petered out, and there were no historical lectures in the official curriculum of 1923 or 1924. Enter Leonard Rowntree, who in 1926 proposed a lecture series on the history of medicine. Rowntree wrote to Fielding Garrison in early 1927 to ask for assistance selecting speakers. The two men corresponded and developed a list of eminent medical historians to invite, including Sir Charles Ballance, William Welch, and Garrison himself. These lectures served to enrich the greater Midwestern medical community as well thanks to Louis Wilson. Then head of the Mayo Foundation, Wilson wrote to nearby institutions to create a lecture circuit for speakers who traveled to the Mayo Clinic. Ultimately, the lectures were published as a book in 1933.

SMC5/6 is required for replication fork stability and faithful chromosome segregation during neurogenesis.

Mutations of SMC5/6 components cause developmental defects, including primary microcephaly. To model neurodevelopmental defects, we engineered a mouse wherein Smc5 is conditionally knocked out (cKO) in the developing neocortex. Smc5 cKO mice exhibited neurodevelopmental defects due to neural progenitor cell (NPC) apoptosis, which led to reduction in cortical layer neurons. Smc5 cKO NPCs formed DNA bridges during mitosis and underwent chromosome missegregation. SMC5/6 depletion triggers a CHEK2-p53 DNA damage response, as concomitant deletion of the Trp53 tumor suppressor or Chek2 DNA damage checkpoint kinase rescued Smc5 cKO neurodevelopmental defects. Further assessment using Smc5 cKO and auxin-inducible degron systems demonstrated that absence of SMC5/6 leads to DNA replication stress at late-replicating regions such as pericentromeric heterochromatin. In summary, SMC5/6 is important for completion of DNA replication prior to entering mitosis, which ensures accurate chromosome segregation. Thus, SMC5/6 functions are critical in highly proliferative stem cells during organism development.

Evolution of out-of-hospital emergency cardiac care: Heart attack therapy for a retired president helped modernize American emergency medical services.

In the late 1960s, American emergency medical services (EMS) began to upgrade from mere Red Cross first aid to systems that now provide sophisticated advanced life support. This revolution in EMS stemmed from two pioneering Belfast reports in The Lancet that described how early out-of-hospital coronary care saved lives. Inspired, a handful of American physicians implemented avant-garde programs in the USA. One such physician, Richard Crampton of the University of Virginia, supported by the university and by Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad staffs, led an early effort to provide out-of-hospital drug treatment and defibrillation via a mobile coronary care unit (MCCU) ambulance. Half a dozen high-profile local cases, including successful treatment of retired President Lyndon B. Johnson, demonstrated MCCU efficacy to the Virginia and American public via local and national press coverage. The economic feasibility of the MCCU system was established. With two Virginia colleagues, Crampton successfully lobbied for a bill to permit trained nonphysicians to render out-of-hospital cardiac care with no on-site physician. This MCCU-augmented EMS system reduced coronary deaths in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia. It also stimulated nationwide progress in care by EMS systems that yielded countless lives saved in the succeeding half-century.