1940–1949
AAA Presidents
1940-1942
Philip E. Smith
1942-1943
Edgar Allen
1943-1946
J. Parsons Schaeffer
n 1940
1946-1948
George W. Corner
1948-1950
George W. Bartelmez
n 1946
Beginning of international information exchange
Autoradiography
AAA reaches out to other national anatomical associations to exchange membership lists
and meeting information.
Charles P. Leblond invents the method of autoradiography.
Leblond is also well-known for his work showing how cells
continuously renew themselves, regardless of age.
The Batson Plexus
Oscar V. Batson publishes the article
“The function of the vertebral
veins and their role in the spread
of metastases.” This network of
valve-less veins in the human
body becomes known as the
“Batson Plexus.”
Blood sludging
Oscar V. Batson
Melvin Knisely first observes
the pathological clumping of
red and white cells, in vivo, at the capillary level.
He identifies this phenomenon as
“blood sludging” and points out its
negative effect on oxygen transport
to the tissues and the removal of
toxic metabolic byproducts.
n 1941
“The quality of
the radiographs
was so much
better than
before, and that
made things
easy to see, compared with earlier,
crude contact techniques. And dogged
persistence, tenacity, and stick-toitiveness helped, too.”
— Charles Philippe Leblond
on autoradiography
Melvin Knisely examining a child’s eye through the microscope.
Practice of immunocytochemistry is established
Albert H. Coons first introduces immunofluorescence in 1941,
using specific antibodies labeled with a fluorescent dye to localize
substances in tissues. In the following years, the controls for
immunocytochemistry are taken from this method and other nonmicroscopic techniques that use antibodies to identify specific
proteins.
Autoradiography. Light microscopic
examination of tritiated proline
incorporation into the basement
membrane as a function of time
subsequent to tritiated proline
injection.
n 1947
AAA joins as a member of the National Society for Medical Research
n 1948
“Barr body”
Murray L. Barr discovers the
inactive X chromosome found in
female somatic cells. This important
cell structure becomes known as the
“Barr body.” In men and women
with more than one X
chromosome, the number
of Barr bodies visible at
interphase is always one
less than the total number
of X chromosomes.
Albert H. Coons
Image of ovaries using
immunocytochemistry
technique
Charles Mayo Goss
Lois Adell Gillilan
Lois Adell Gillilan’s monograph, “The connections of the basal optic root,” is published by
The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology.
Charles Mayo Goss is
the editor of the 25th to
29th Editions of Gray’s
Anatomy (commonly
called the American
Gray’s). He serves as the
Editor-in-Chief of the
Anatomical Record for 20 years.
Left to right, Bertram Ewart and Murray Barr
n 1942
Wendell J. S. Kreig
Wendell J. S. Kreig’s illustrations for the first edition of Functional Neuroanatomy earn him
lasting fame.
n 1944
Creation of the kidney dialysis machine
A clinically useful dialysis apparatus is developed by Willem Johan
Kolff in 1944.
Launch of the Cajal Club
Willem Johan Kolff
The Cajal Club is formed by
AAA members with an interest in
neuroscience. They decide to hold
meetings in conjunction with AAA’s
annual meetings beginning in 1950.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Charles Mayo Goss
Mildred Trotter
Mildred Trotter
Mildred Trotter writes a report summarizing her work at the Central Identification
Laboratory of the American Graves Registration Service, where she helped identify the
remains of American servicemen killed and buried in the Pacific Zone during World War
II. Her work with Goldine C. Gleser in 1952 creates statistical regression formulas for the
calculation of stature estimates from human long bones. These formulas are still widely
applied in the field.
n 1949
Development of new polio vaccine methods
n 1945
First publication of transmission electron
micrograph of a cell
David Bodian, Isabel Morgan, and the Johns Hopkins team
publish “Differentiation of Types of Poliomyelitis Viruses,” in the
American Journal of Hygiene. The work becomes a milestone in
the development of new polio vaccine methods.
This publication by Keith Porter, Albert Claude,
and Ernest Fullam in The Journal of Experimental
Medicine opens the field of morphological studies at
the ultrastructural level, providing the beginnings of
focused cell biological structure-function correlations.
David Bodian
Image from Porter KR, Claude
A, Fullam EF. 1945. “A study
of tissue culture cells by electron
microscopy: methods and preliminary observations.”
“The plexus.... is not a simple network
but [looks] as if you had taken several
fisherman’s nets and superimposed them.
It is characteristic of this net of Nature’s,
however, that the meshes of one layer
are always attached to those of another,
and it is impossible to remove anyone of
them alone; for, one after another, the rest
follow the one you are removing, because
they are all attached to one another
successively.”
— Galen (c. 0130 – c. 0200)
Aelius Galenus
Batson’s venous plexus (marked with arrows)
enveloping the intraspinal contents and the
radicular blood vessels in intimate contact with
both the spinal cord and nerve rootlets.
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