Jump to content

Henry Austin Martin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry Austin Martin
Born(1824-07-23)July 23, 1824
DiedDecember 7, 1884(1884-12-07) (aged 60)
Alma materHarvard Medical School
Known forSmallpox vaccine
Scientific career
FieldsPublic health

Henry Austin Martin (23 July 1824 – 7 December 1884) was an English-born American physician known for introducing the method of production and use of smallpox vaccine lymph from calves. He was the first American physician to experiment successfully with a vaccine for the bovine virus.[1]

Early life

[edit]

Martin was born on 23 July 1824 in London, England. His father was Henry James Martin, Esq. M. R. C. S.[2]

Martin graduated from Harvard Medical School with an MD in 1845.[2]

Career

[edit]

Martin was a staff surgeon with the U. S. Vols and a Brevet Lieutenant Colonel "for gallant and meritorious services" in a wartime campaign.[2][3]

Martin is best known for standardizing a method of vaccine production from calves that had been used for at least a century, the technique of which was utilized by Aventis-Pasteur.[4] The vaccine was thought to have saved Boston from a potentially catastrophic 1873 epidemic, but he was widely criticized by medical peers and the general public.[4] Human lymph later became illegal in the United States since it no longer provided adequate immunity, and played a role in the 1905 Supreme Court case JACOBSON v. MASSACHUSETTS regarding compulsory vaccination.[4]

Vaccinia virus, a member of the poxvirus family, affected rodents and is believed to have become extinct in the late 1800s. It is a critical component of the modern smallpox vaccine. Survival of the vaccinia is credited to Martin, sons Francis and Stephen, and Martin's lineage of pupils who preserved the virus in a laboratory setting.[4]

Later in his career, Martin was an advocate for bovine vaccines which were thought to preserve potency and mitigate the risk of syphilis transmission.[4] He worked against anti-vaccination activists, and exposed fraudulent manufacturers whose vaccines were both unsafe and ineffective.[4]

He was the Vaccine Committee chair for the American Medical Association.

Personal life

[edit]

Martin married Francis Coffin Crosby (born 16 Nov 1825). They had the following children:

  • Henry Maclean (15 May 1849);
  • Stephen Crosby, MD (17 September 1850)
  • Austin Agnew, AB, LLB (3 November 1851)
  • Frances Moody (3 April 1855; 17 Mar 1857)
  • Francis Coffin, AB, MD (22 Mar 1858)

The family is buried in Lowell Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Awards and honors

[edit]
  • He is the namesake of Martin's Bandage, as well as Martin's cartilage clamp, Martin incision, Martin vigorimeter, and Martin's Disease (periosteoarthritis of the foot from excessive walking).[5][6][7][8]
  • He received an honorary A.M. from Dartmouth.[9]
  • Martin's vaccine contribution was commemorated by a historical marker at 27 Dudley Street, in the Roxbury section of Boston
  • In 1991, John Joseph Buder's dissertation at the University of Texas was Letters of Henry Austin Martin: The Vaccination Correspondence to Thomas Fanning Wood, 1877-1883.

Selected publications

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "The Cultivation of Vaccine Virus", Scientific American, vol. 43, no. 21 (November 20, 1880) p. 325. via Google Books.
  2. ^ a b c Crosby, Nathan (1877). A Crosby Family. Josiah Crosby, Sarah Fitch .. and Their Descendants. Stone, Huse & Company, book and job printers. p. 92.
  3. ^ College, Dartmouth (1880). General Catalogue of Dartmouth College and the Associated Institutions: Including the Officers of Government and Instruction, Graduates and All Others Who Have Received Honorary Degrees. Dartmouth Press. p. 167.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Buder, John (14 October 2002). "Heroes of Public Health: Henry Austin Martin (1824-1884)". H-Sci-Med-Tech.
  5. ^ "Martin, Henry A". TheFreeDictionary.com. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
  6. ^ The american illustrated medical dictionary. 1917. p. 578.
  7. ^ Byrne, William S. (1 November 1879). "Some Practical Remarks on the Use of Martin's Bandage". The Lancet. 114 (2931): 645–646. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)48064-6.
  8. ^ Martin, Henry A. (1878). "The India-Rubber Bandage For Ulcers And Other Diseases Of The Legs". The British Medical Journal. 2 (930): 624–626. ISSN 0007-1447. JSTOR 25248422.
  9. ^ University, Harvard (1915). Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Harvard University, 1636-1915. Harvard University Press. p. 608.
  10. ^ Martin, Henry Austin (1857). Hahnemann and Paracelsus.
  11. ^ Martin, Henry Austin (1880). A Few Words on "unfortunate Results of Vaccination" – via Google Books.