Edward Sidney Hyman

Edward Sidney Hyman born in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 22, 1925 and died March 9, 2004. He was an American physician, medical scientist, inventor and biophysicist. His most important achievements were: the discovery of the etiology of two new diseases: Acquired Iron-Deficiency Anemia and Systemic Coccal Disease, and the invention of the Artificial Disposable Plastic Heart-Lung Device.
Early life and education
Hyman graduated from Louisiana State University in 1944 and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1946. From 1946 and 1947, he was an intern at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Washington University. From 1949-1951 he was a resident at Stanford Hospital Stanford Medical School. From 1951-1953 he was a resident at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Harvard University. He served on active duty in the U.S. Navy from 1947-1949.
Medical career
In 1953 Hyman established his private practice of Internal Medicine in New Orleans, to see diseases in the raw before they had been modified. In his adjacent bacteriology laboratory, he examined urines, and catheterized urine of women, of every patient to develop a method to detect bacteria in urine. Dr. Barry Wood had taught him to go from the patient to the laboratory and back to the patient. In 1953 as a clinical instructor in medicine at Louisiana State University Medical School and Director of the Kidney Unit at Charity Hospital, he introduced the kidney dialysis machine, personally dialyzed patients from seventeen months to seventy eighty-years and built an adjacent laboratory to do research in renal failure, salt and water metabolism, and renal excretion of salt water. .
His research extended to the disposable artificial plastic heart-lung device which he invented in 1954 and which was licensed and distributed by Abbott Laboratories. The device sustained a dog's circulation on a pump that drew blood from a central vein and pumped it about five feet and bubbled oxygen through it on a polyvinyl bag with silicone coating to prevent foaming. The aerated blood returned by gravity to a major artery. The device bypassed all the blood from the heart and took over the function of the heart and lungs allowing the surgeon to work with a "dry heart".
In 1983, he described a new disease which causes anemia, Acquired Iron-Deficiency Anemia. . The patient's immune system produced auto-antibodies targeting the iron transport protein on the cell surface of erythrocyte precursors. The binding of this auto-antibody blocked iron transport from the patient's serum into these precursor cells. However, due to the impaired ability of iron transport into erythrocyte precursor cells, the patient displayed the classic symptoms of anemia.
In 1992, he developed a novel method of detecting bacteria in urine that were undetected by conventional methods. He developed a chemical system to secure bacteria to microscopic glass slides and a method of staining, identifying, and counting bacteria, living and dead, in sediments of urine and other fluids. In 1993 and 1994 he described Systemic Coccal Disease. Diseases that are thought of as distinct and unrelated such as hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease, dermatomyositis, nephrosis, glomerulonephritis, lupus erythematous are variants of a single disease stemming from the same bacterial cause. To treat these diseases, he gave the patient an antibiotic and observed by his detection method the bacteria in the urine. If the antibiotic was ineffective in reducing the bacteria in the urine, the treatment was adjusted by changing the antibiotic dose, adding another antibiotic, or changing the antibiotics all together. After prolonged antibiotic therapy, the treatment resulted in the disappearance of the bacteria and the resolution of the of the illness. In 1997, he conducted a randomized double blind placebo-controlled study funded by the Department of Defense to treat Gulf War veterans who suffered from Gulf War syndrome. His study demonstrated that the Gulf War Syndrome was bacterial in origin and prolonged treatment with antibiotics resolved the illness.
Patents
Patent #3,101,083 Heart-Lung Device
Patent #3,305,457 Hydrocarbon Detection
Patent #4,673,637 Method For Detecting Bacteria In Urine And For Treating Rheumatoid Arthritis,
Essential Hypertension And Other Diseases Associated With Bacteriuria
Patent #4,992,365 Method Of Detecting Bacteria In Urine
Other activities
From 1965 to 1984 he conducted research in biophysics, studying the transfer of sodium ions across membranes. He studied the physical chemistry of sodium in aqueous solution, sodium potassium ATPase in cell membranes, chelation of magnesium, transport of irons across biological membranes, ionophores, and sphingomyelinases.
In 1979 he invented a method for transmitting electrocardiograms by telephone for long distance diagnosing of heart conditions.
From 1978-1980 he was a consultant for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. An activated carbon filtration system was proposed for purifying the public tap water in New Orleans. This system would have seriously contaminated the tap water with toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic. As a result of his testimony at Hearings in Washington, Dallas and New Orleans the defective carbon system was never implemented, thereby averting a public health crisis.
He also assisted in forming The Council of Medical Staff which later became known as Private Doctors of America, holding the position of Vice-President. Their mission was to support patient rights to choose a physician as well as for physicians to have complete autonomy in serving their patients without outside interference and preserve the right to privacy.

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