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Leading past One Medicine/One Health physicians—“Giants”:

 

Rudolf Virchow, MD (the father of cellular pathology and coined the term "zoonosis")

“Between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines--nor should there be.  The object is different but the experience obtained constitutes the basis of all medicine.” 

Vichow's Contributions to Veterinary Medicine: Celebrated Then, Forgotten Now https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10810984/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Virchow

William Osler, MD (Father of Modern Medicine and founder of veterinary pathology)

From Osler to Olafson. The Evolution of Veterinary Pathology in North America https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3552167/

" ... by 1884, Osler had already left his indelible imprint on the students (both medical and veterinary) he had taught in Montreal, one of whom took over the teaching of pathology in the veterinary college. Another, who followed Osler's example and also studied in Berlin with Virchow, wrote the first book in the English language on veterinary post mortem technique in 1889."

1. Kahn LH, Kaplan B, Steele JH. Confronting zoonoses through closer collaboration
between medicine and veterinary medicine (as ‘One Medicine’) Veterinaria Italiana
2007; 43: 5-19. http://www.izs.it/vet_italiana/2007/43_1/5_19.pdf ; and
the One Health Initiative Autonomous pro bono team.
2. Bliss, Michael. William Osler, A Life in Medicine. Oxford University Press, 1999.
3. “The Life of Sir William Osler” by Harvey Cushing, 1925 Ed. (Courtesy Chris
Lyons, MA, Dip. Ed, MLIS, Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University)

Alexander Langmuir, MD, MPH (Creator of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service)

“Langmuir established the EIS program as an early warning system against biologic warfare. EIS officers then and now are physicians, veterinarians, nurses, and health scientists who serve 2-year assignments.”  https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/144/Supplement_8/S47/110320 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4550144/.

 Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. Resident Scholar, Center for Biosecurity, U. of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Service Professor. Dean Emeritus, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Pier IV Building, Suite 210, Baltimore, Maryland 21202

April 22, 2007, Dr. Henderson, legendary leader of the worldwide smallpox eradication program wrote to the One Health Initiative team:  

"I thank you for your email and congratulate you and your colleagues in promoting the “One Medicine” concept. It is an initiative that is long overdue but, at the same time, I don’t personally identify dramatic solutions that are apt to change the landscape in the short term. I would note that when one has had the good fortune to have enjoyed the tutelage of Jim Steele* during my tenure at CDC and periodically ever since, as a friend, the one medicine concept becomes well engrained. Indeed, when I came to Hopkins as Dean in 1977, I cast about to determine how we might link up with a veterinary school for research and educational purposes. Unfortunately, geography was simply too great a hurdle to overcome.

Bottom line: I would be more than happy to do whatever I could in support of your efforts."

*James H. Steele, DVM, MPH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3944871/

Ronald M. Davis, MD, MPH  (One Health leader and fostered the official adoption of the American Medical Association's historic "One Health" resolution)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20391399/

President, American Medical Association Director, Center for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention. Henry Ford Health System One Ford Place, 5C Detroit, Michigan 48202-3450

July 3, 2007 – Dr. Davis, American Medical Association (AMA) President wrote to the One Health Initiative team:

“I’m delighted that the AMA House of Delegates has approved a resolution calling for increased collaboration between the human and veterinary medical communities and I look forward to seeing a stronger partnership between physicians and veterinarians.  Emerging infectious diseases, with the threats of cross-species transmission and pandemics, represent one of many reasons why the human and veterinary medical professions must work more closely together.”

*Myron "Mike" G. Schultz, DVM, MD, Helped Identify the AIDS Crisis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6649340/

" ... With DVM and MD degrees in hand, Mike interned at the US Public Health Service Hospital (Boston, MA, USA). This internship led to his recruitment by Alexander D. Langmuir (1910–1993) and a transformative 2-year stint in Langmuir’s Atlanta-based Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) training program at the (then-named) Center for Disease Control (CDC). Mike’s EIS experiences included a 1964 deployment to Vietnam to investigate infectious disease threats in the war and an important friendship with *James Harlan Steele, DVM (1913–2013), the renowned veterinary epidemiologist/epizootiologist whose leadership helped to formulate their shared concept of “One Health”—the idea that humans, animals, and the environment are all part of an intertwined ecosystem with respect to disease occurrence and microbial evolution—and to shape the conceptualization of emerging infectious diseases (3). ..."

Note: A strong longstanding One Health advocate, Dr. Schultz, a trained Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (veterinarian) and Doctor of Medicine, MD (physician), detected a cluster of pneumonia cases in the early 1980s which helped public health officials identify the AIDS epidemic.  As an infectious disease epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Schultz created the Parasitic Diseases Drug Service to provide physicians with medicines to treat rare illnesses.  One was pentamidine.  Prescribed for patients with African sleeping sickness, it was also made available to treat patients with pneumocystis pneumonia in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when few alternatives were available.  He published more than 110 papers and book chapters, mainly on epidemiologic subjects.  He also published special articles on the history of medicine in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, and Emerging Infectious Diseases and served as an epidemiological consultant to the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Ministries of Health of the Republic of South Vietnam, Poland, Egypt, Haiti, Federal Republic of Germany, People’s Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan), Indonesia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe.

In July 2018, Dr. Schultz was posthumously awarded the American Veterinary Epidemiology Society’s (AVES) https://www.avesociety.org/ coveted Gold Headed Cane award.

Leading One Medicine/One Health Veterinarians—“Giants”—bridging the 20^th and 21^st Centuries

Calvin W. Schwabe, DVM, MPH, ScD – coined the term “One Medicine” and crystalized the concept (now called “One Health”) in the 20^th century

https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/inmemoriam/html/calvinwschwabe.htm

https://www.archive.onehealthinitiative.com/publications/Who%20coined%20the%20term%20One%20Medicine%20by%20B%20%20Kaplan%20and%20C%20%20Scott%20May19%202011-CS.pdf

*James H. Steele, DVM, MPH – established the veterinary division at the “Communicable Disease Center” https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html now known as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1947—Dr. Steele continued his extraordinary global public health and One Health leadership endeavors through the early 1st decade and three years into the second of the 21^st century.

https://www.newswise.com/articles/biography-of-zoonotic-disease-pioneer-james-steele-released

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/centennial-inventing-veterinary-public-health/

Read what one late great “One Health” advocate [Dr. Schultz- see above] said about another late great activist leader [Dr. Steele] ...

From: Schultz, Myron G. (CDC/CGH/DGHP)

Sent: Monday, July 21, 2014 12:56 PM
*Dr. Schultz’s response to the OHI team after reading their tribute to Dr. Steele
Subject: RE: In Memoriam: James Harlan Steele (1913–2013) POSTED One Health Initiative website July 20, 2014 https://www.archive.onehealthinitiative.com/news.php?query=James+H.+Steele%2C+dvm%2C+mph

"In the words of Isaiah di Trani (c.1180-c.1250):

“Who sees further, a dwarf or a giant? Surely a giant for his eyes are situated at a higher level than those of the dwarf. But if the dwarf is placed on the shoulder of the giant who sees further? . . . So too we are dwarfs astride the shoulders of giants. We master their wisdom and move beyond it. Due to their wisdom we grow wise and are able to say all that we say, but not because we are greater than they.”

We all stand on the shoulders of Jim Steele and are healthier and wiser because of him."

Best wishes.

Mike Schultz
Myron G. Schultz, DVM, MD, DCMT, FACP
Senior Medical Officer
Global Disease Detection Operations Center
Center for Global Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop A-08
Atlanta, GA 30333