American doctors and engineers have extended life spans and enhanced human health, from head to toe
A Map of Medical Marvels
ILLUSTRATION BY TOBATRON
BY JENNIE ROTHENBERG GRITZ
Magnetic Resonance, 1938
Columbia University physicist Isidor Rabi discovered how to make atomic nuclei give off measurable signals in a magnetic field. His work won him a Nobel Prize and laid the foundation for MRI scanners, which produce detailed images of the body’s internal structures without radiation.
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Lasik, 1989
Iranian American ophthalmologist Gholam Peyman vastly improved laser eye surgery by operating beneath a thin flap of corneal tissue instead of directly on the cornea’s surface. His method reduced pain and scarring while giving millions of people the gift of clear vision.
Defibrillator, 1956
After treating patients with life-threatening arrhythmias, cardiologist Paul Zoll began working on a noninvasive method for correcting irregular heartbeats using electronic shocks outside the chest wall. His team at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, which included engineer Alan Belgard and surgeon Leona Norman Zarsky, used the defibrillator successfully in 1956 and also paved the way for implanted pacemakers.
Cancer Immunotherapy, 1996
Cancer researcher James Allison, then at UC Berkeley, discovered that a protein on the surface of T cells acted as a “brake” on the immune system. Blocking this protein allowed cells originating in the lymph nodes to fight cancer. In 2018, he shared a Nobel Prize with Tasuku Honjo, who had discovered another receptor that could be blocked for immunotherapy.
Tommy John Surgery, 1974
Frank Jobe was the orthopedic surgeon to the Los Angeles Dodgers when pitcher Tommy John tore the ulnar collateral ligament on the inside of his elbow. Jobe’s revolutionary technique, rebuilding a ligament out of a tendon from another part of the body, allowed John to pitch another 14 seasons. An estimated one-third of all major-league pitchers have now undergone this surgery.
Dialysis, 1960
Two scientists at the University of Washington—Belding Scribner and Wayne Quinton—developed a Teflon shunt that allowed doctors to hook patients up to a dialysis machine, flushing toxins from their body without damaging arteries and veins. Their invention turned kidney failure into a manageable condition.
Birth Control Pill, 1960
The first oral contraceptive was developed by reproductive biologist Min Chueh Chang and endocrinologist Gregory Pincus at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology and gynecologist John Rock at Boston’s Free Hospital for Women, with extensive financial support from Katharine McCormick, an MIT-trained biologist who had once smuggled 1,000 diaphragms from Europe to the United States. The pill gave women a new level of control over their own reproduction and health.
Prosthetic Limbs, 2009
American innovations on prosthetics go back to the Civil War, when tens of thousands of veterans needed artificial limbs. In the early 2000s, researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago—supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—developed a fully integrated system for multijoint, brain-controlled artificial-limb movement.
