0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of iHeartRadio.

0:11

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye

0:14

and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Hey,

0:17

Tracy. I had my first MRI recently.

0:19

Yeah, do not recommend. Didn't

0:22

enjoy it. However, I do recommend. Yeah,

0:24

Yeah, I have had one, but I think I had the

0:27

easier version of it than you did. Did

0:29

you go in the tube? Only my leg

0:32

had to be in the tube? Oh the jealousy

0:34

I feel. My head did not have

0:36

to be in there. Yeah. I my

0:41

MRI tech Timothy, who was one of the kindest

0:43

people I have ever dealt with in medicine, was

0:46

very sweet and he let me flip so that my

0:48

head was the last thing in. But

0:51

my head was in the tube, and I'm claustrophobic,

0:54

and I definitely had some freaky outy

0:57

Yeah, but it was cool to get a ton

0:59

of information about what's going on in my body. Also,

1:02

I'm fine. If anybody's worried, hell a

1:04

little, we'll gall bladder eviction. But all well.

1:07

But as I was lying there

1:09

in that noisy, claustrophobic tube,

1:12

I literally was like, who on

1:14

Earth decided this was a good idea. This

1:16

is a torture device. It is a good idea,

1:19

you get really great images. But it

1:21

made me wonder how this whole thing came to be. And then

1:23

I started looking at it and I

1:25

discovered this is a very controversial

1:28

question of who

1:30

invented the MRI, and so I thought,

1:32

let's unpack that. So

1:35

let me be real. I love science, but

1:38

getting into the nitty gritty on quantum mechanics

1:40

to part of this and superconductors and similar

1:43

ideas is beyond what I can grasp.

1:45

Sure, so we're going to

1:47

talk about how the science came to be. We'll

1:50

talk about some of the science, but it's

1:52

definitely the layman's terms and

1:54

cliffs notes versions when it comes to any

1:56

of the hard science here. So if there are any

1:58

scientists in the crowd who are like Holly, that's not quite

2:00

right. I'm not surprised.

2:04

This is also a two parter because there were a lot

2:06

of people that worked on this technology

2:08

in different ways over the years, even people

2:10

that didn't know that their work

2:12

was going to become part of it, And as

2:15

much as possible, I really wanted to highlight

2:17

some of their key biographies because a lot of

2:19

these men have Nobel prizes. A lot

2:21

of these men really changed the world as we know it. So

2:24

it's two parts, and part one

2:26

covers some of the key moments

2:28

that led up to the idea of an MRI

2:31

even existing and the

2:33

developments in technology that got

2:36

to that point where someone was like, could we apply

2:38

this in a medical way? And then part

2:40

two is going to delve into how the first

2:42

MRI machine was built and

2:44

then all of the controversies that followed.

2:48

So we'll start with what magnetic

2:50

resonance imaging is at

2:53

its most basic, it's the use of a strong

2:55

magnetic field in conjunction with radio

2:58

waves to get imaging. The

3:01

most common versions of MRI

3:03

machines look like tubes that a patient

3:05

is slid into. This tube

3:08

is surrounded by a superconducting magnet

3:10

and that in turn is surrounded by

3:13

liquid helium. The machine

3:15

generates radio waves that stimulate

3:17

the protons of the hydrogen atoms in

3:19

the patient's body. There are other atoms,

3:22

but we'll talk about why hydrogen is the important

3:24

one later on. Those protons

3:26

spin out of equilibrium because of the magnetic

3:29

field, and then when the radio waves are

3:31

stopped and the protons hustle

3:33

to realign to normal. That

3:35

movement, which we'll talk about again later,

3:37

it's called relaxation, can be captured

3:40

by sensors in the machine, and this all

3:42

comes together to create detailed

3:44

imagery of everything going on in

3:47

the body. Sometimes dyes

3:49

are used to amplify the imagery that's

3:51

able to be captured, and then doctors

3:53

and radiologists can analyze that captured

3:56

information to identify disease

3:58

or issues that might need treatment. Like nowadays,

4:02

you know it's things like is there

4:04

misalignment in your knee or hip

4:06

or whatever. It can be used for a lot of different

4:08

things. So if you've ever

4:11

had an MRI, if you've talked to somebody

4:13

who has had an MRI, you

4:15

know they're loud, notoriously

4:18

loud, and also inconsistently, so

4:21

there are banging noises that

4:23

just change throughout the imaging session.

4:27

I think that's part of what makes them

4:29

seem stressful to people, is that this unpredictable

4:33

banging noise is happening. Go in

4:35

a tiny closet, someone is going

4:37

to bang against the walls of the closet with pots

4:39

and pants. It's cool, it's for medicine,

4:41

just saying tight. Yeah,

4:43

So all of that banging is

4:45

because the current that runs the magnetic

4:48

field is passing through three differently

4:50

aligned sets of coils. They

4:52

are associated with the x, y,

4:54

and Z planes of visual image

4:57

capture. This combination of

4:59

electric and mag forces is called

5:01

a Lorentz force, and that force is

5:03

acting on the coils. It causes them to vibrate.

5:06

As these different pulses are used to get

5:08

a complete picture, the vibrations changed,

5:10

so the different noises happen, and

5:13

the patient is sort of inside all

5:15

of this most of the

5:17

time. I

5:19

was lucky in that my head was like not fully

5:22

into it, so I had a little buffer. But that means

5:24

that everything is amplified in there. Yeah.

5:27

I read one thing that described it as like imagine

5:29

you're sitting in the middle of a drum while someone

5:31

is drumming, and it was like, oh, yeah, that's pretty accurate.

5:34

Actually, the huge benefit

5:36

of an MRI is that it is a non

5:38

invasive way to get excellent imaging

5:40

for analysis. It doesn't emit

5:43

radiation the way X rays or CT scans

5:45

do, and it can capture an awful

5:47

lot of detail. But it's also

5:50

not a technology that everyone can take

5:52

advantage of even if the issues

5:54

of cost, insurance, and availability

5:56

of machines were non existent. And

5:58

that's because of the magnet field and its

6:00

potential to interact with non tissue

6:03

objects. So if you have had a surgical

6:05

implant like a pacemaker or an insulin

6:07

pump or any number of other devices,

6:10

you shouldn't get in an MRI because the magnet

6:12

will pull on those. There are also

6:15

issues when it comes to patients with claustrophobia.

6:17

Boy don't I know it, Although there are

6:20

efforts to get around this problem. One of the

6:22

ways that this has been addressed is

6:24

through the development of open MRIs that are

6:26

open on the sides and even in some

6:28

cases the use of sedation. And

6:31

there are unsurprisingly a lot of

6:33

people involved in the development of this technology

6:36

and a lot of debate over who should

6:38

get the credit for it. This

6:40

is an episode that moves a little closer

6:42

to our current time than our episodes

6:45

usually do, because disagreements about

6:47

how to give credit continue up

6:49

to today. One part of the issue

6:51

is that different people develops different

6:54

ideas that will ultimately combined

6:56

to create magnetic resonance imaging.

6:59

That's not necessarily unusual,

7:02

but each stage of development was

7:04

also a huge advance, So

7:07

which moment should be credited

7:09

most, that's difficult to say. Another

7:12

thing that makes it such a puzzle is that some

7:14

of the work was done in the medical community

7:17

and some of it was done in the physics

7:19

community. So okay,

7:21

As Tracy just mentioned, there is lots

7:23

of science that builds on other science

7:26

to pave the way for this tech, but one

7:28

of the very earliest important

7:30

steps specific to this was made

7:32

by physicist Isidore Isaac Rabbi.

7:35

Robbie was born on July twenty ninth, eighteen

7:37

ninety eight, in Raimenov, which was part of Austria

7:40

Hungary at the time. Today it is part

7:42

of Poland, and when he was still a

7:44

small baby, his parents, David Robbie

7:46

and Janetigue, moved to New York City,

7:49

where he went to public school, and

7:51

after completing his early schooling, he attended

7:53

Cornell and got a bachelor's degree in

7:55

chemistry. But then when he went to

7:57

graduate school at Columbia, he changed

8:00

his field of interest to physics, and

8:02

he received his PhD in that field in

8:04

nineteen twenty seven. For

8:06

two years after receiving his PhD,

8:09

Robbie did research in Europe, working

8:11

alongside the likes of Nils Heinrich,

8:13

David Bohr, and Werner Karl

8:16

Heisenberg. Then he

8:18

returned to Columbia to teach theoretical

8:20

physics. In nineteen forty

8:22

he joined MIT to work on radar

8:25

and the technology behind the atomic

8:27

bomb. He would go on to work

8:29

with the Atomic Energy Commission starting

8:31

in the late nineteen forties. Was credited

8:34

with coming up with the concept for a

8:36

collaborative international laboratory

8:38

that eventually became CERN.

8:42

But the most germane part of his work, as

8:44

it relates to the topic of MRIs,

8:46

began in the nineteen thirties when he started

8:48

studying the nuclei of atoms

8:51

and how magnetic fields affected

8:53

them. He developed what he called

8:55

a resonance method for recording

8:57

the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.

9:00

That meant he was able to develop a method

9:03

for detecting and measuring the rotations

9:05

of atoms and molecules. He

9:08

won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work

9:10

in nineteen forty four. Yeah,

9:13

as we talk through all of these different biographies,

9:15

you'll see how many of these people overlap

9:17

with the same kind

9:20

of researchers and some of the same big names

9:22

that you have heard probably throughout your life. The

9:25

next person that we have to talk about is

9:27

one of those people who both overlaps with a lot

9:29

of famous people and is himself

9:31

famous, and that's Felix Block, who

9:33

was a physicist who was born in Zurich, Switzerland,

9:35

on October twenty third, nineteen oh five.

9:38

Felix had a somewhat difficult childhood.

9:41

When he started school at the age of six,

9:43

he apparently spoke with what's described

9:46

as an odd accent and other

9:48

kids made fun of him. And he

9:50

also lost his older sister, who he was

9:52

very close to, when she was just twelve,

9:55

and he is described as having been withdrawn

9:57

and depressed for several years after her

10:00

eyeing. The outbreak of World

10:02

War One only added to his depression,

10:04

but eventually he found

10:06

solace in learning, and while he got a comprehensive

10:09

education, math was absolutely

10:12

always his favorite subject. He

10:14

enrolled in Zurich's Federal Institute of

10:16

Technology in nineteen twenty four

10:18

with a focus on engineering, but

10:20

he eventually switched to physics, later

10:23

saying that that was a decision he just

10:25

could not help making. When

10:27

it came time to move into graduate studies.

10:30

Block worked under Werner Heisenberg. He

10:32

was Heisenberg's first graduate student,

10:35

and together they used quantum mechanical

10:37

theory to examine metal conductivity

10:40

and the relationship between thermal conductivity

10:43

and electrical conductivity. This

10:45

ultimately led to Block's thesis, The

10:48

Quantum Mechanics of Electrons and Crystal

10:50

Lattices that was published in

10:53

nineteen twenty eight. This work,

10:55

which involves the discovery of what are called

10:57

block waves, is often cited

10:59

is as opening the door for technologies

11:02

in radio, television, space

11:04

exploration, and more because

11:06

it catalyzed the ability to shift

11:09

from vacuum tubes to semiconductors

11:12

yep, it made everything smaller and more compact.

11:15

After touring Europe to work alongside

11:18

other researchers in physics, Block

11:20

became Heisenberg's assistant in Leipzig

11:22

in nineteen thirty. He continued

11:24

to publish, writing important work on ferromagnetism

11:27

and quantum theory. In

11:29

nineteen thirty two, he became a privat docent.

11:32

That's a lecturer who isn't paid

11:34

directly by a school as a salaried employee,

11:37

but as someone who makes their living through the fees

11:40

that students pay for their classes. But

11:42

this position allowed him to continue his own

11:45

research and his own writing as well.

11:47

But the Nazi Party was rising to

11:50

power, so Block sought away to leave

11:52

Leipzig. He applied for and

11:54

received a Rockefeller Fellowship, and

11:56

that allowed him to go just about anywhere

11:58

he might want to work. He had

12:01

a gap between when he left his teaching

12:03

job and when the fellowship began, and he spent

12:05

that time in Zurich. He moved

12:08

on to Rome once the fellowship began,

12:10

working alongside Enrico Fermi.

12:12

Then he was offered a job at Stanford, working

12:15

as an associate professor of physics.

12:18

That was autumn of nineteen thirty three,

12:20

and Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany.

12:23

The twenty eight year old Block took the job and

12:25

left Europe. Coming up, we're

12:27

going to talk about another big name

12:30

in science that is part of Felix Block's

12:32

story, but first we will pause for a sponsor

12:34

break. So

12:44

Felix block story has already brushed

12:46

up against a lot of notable scientists of the

12:49

early twentieth century, and that continued

12:51

once he moved to Stanford. For

12:53

example, he spent a lot of time

12:56

with Robert Oppenheimer, who was working

12:58

at Berkeley at the time. Two

13:00

of them even co taught a seminar that crossed

13:02

over between their schools, alternating

13:05

locations for each lecture. I feel

13:07

like that's kind of an unusual

13:09

and unprecedented and probably difficult

13:12

to do thing today. This

13:14

was a really exciting time though. In physics.

13:16

The neutron had been discovered by James Chadwick

13:19

in nineteen thirty two, and Block, Oppenheimer,

13:22

and all of their colleagues in the field were

13:24

working to understand neutron interactions.

13:27

Block was involved in a lot of noteworthy

13:29

moments in science history, and specifically

13:32

in regard to quantum mechanics. He

13:34

worked at Los Alamos during World War II

13:37

and worked in radar evasion tech

13:39

at Harvard. When World War

13:41

Two ended, Block returned to California

13:44

and he resumed his research at Stanford,

13:46

specifically focusing on nuclear magnetic

13:48

resonance. This work was published

13:51

as the paper Nuclear Induction, which

13:53

Block wrote with co authors W. W. Hanson

13:56

and Martin Packard in nineteen forty six.

13:59

Felix Block and his colleagues described

14:01

the way that nuclei of various elements

14:03

are influenced by magnetism, but

14:07

completely independently of Block's

14:09

lab. Another man, Edward M.

14:12

Purcell, also published a paper

14:14

in nineteen forty six titled Resonance

14:16

absorption by nuclear magnetic

14:18

moments in a solid describing

14:21

the same thing. Percell,

14:23

like Block, had co authors. These were HC.

14:26

Tory and RV. Pound. They

14:29

described the same discovery. This

14:31

would become an important piece of the bedrock

14:33

of MRI technology. Although neither

14:35

of these men were interested in medicine,

14:38

Percell, like Block, was a

14:40

physicist. The work of both

14:43

labs examined the way that nuclear

14:45

magnetic resonance, known more

14:47

commonly as NMR, affected

14:49

both liquid and solid matter.

14:52

So let's backtrack a little bit to

14:54

contextualize who Percell was.

14:57

Edward Mills Percell was born in Taylorville,

14:59

Illinois, on August thirtieth, nineteen

15:01

twelve. His father, Edward

15:03

A. Percell, worked as a manager at the phone

15:06

company, and his mother, Elizabeth Mills

15:08

Purcell, was a teacher before she married

15:10

and had Edward and his younger brother. Edward

15:13

is said to have just loved playing with the

15:16

discarded equipment from his father's

15:18

job, and that playing with it helped stoke

15:20

his interest in technology. And science.

15:23

He also routinely read his father's copies

15:26

of the Bell System Technical Journal,

15:28

which cracks me up a little bit. Edward

15:30

later said of that journal quote, they were fascinating

15:33

because for the first time I saw technical

15:36

articles obviously elegantly edited

15:38

and prepared and illustrated, full

15:40

of mathematics that was well beyond my understanding.

15:44

It was a glimpse into some kind of wonderful

15:46

world where electricity and mathematics

15:48

and engineering and nice diagrams all

15:50

came together. The nice

15:53

diagrams part of that quote charmed

15:56

me so much. It's so sweet

15:58

he I mean, seems

16:00

like he was probably a great dude. Yeah.

16:02

In nineteen twenty nine, Percell enrolled

16:04

at Purdue University to study electrical

16:06

engineering, but he fell in love with physics

16:09

as an undergraduate and started an independent

16:11

study course on the subject while

16:14

still maintaining his status as an electrical

16:16

engineering major when his

16:18

senior year ended. He stayed at the school

16:20

through the summer after graduation to work

16:22

on two papers that were eventually published,

16:25

one on electron diffraction and the

16:27

other on thin films manufacture.

16:30

On the heels of his graduation, Percell

16:33

was given an exchange fellowship that

16:35

took him to Germany, and this was

16:38

nineteen thirty three, so he was getting

16:40

into Germany just as Block would have been

16:42

figuring out a way to leave. So this

16:45

was kind of a strange time to have this opportunity,

16:48

to be sure, but it was also

16:50

life changing in an unexpected way. On

16:52

the ship across the Atlantic, ed Purcell

16:54

met a literature student from the US named

16:57

Beth Busser, and the two of them hit it

16:59

off. They went on a date in Europe

17:01

to a physics lecture, even though Beth didn't

17:03

understand any of it, apparently, and they became

17:06

a couple and they married a few years later. When

17:09

that year of study in Germany concluded,

17:11

Percell went back to the United States and

17:14

started a position in the physics department

17:16

at Harvard University, where he worked

17:18

on his dissertation on three dimensional

17:21

focusing properties of electrons.

17:23

When his thesis was finished, Percell became

17:25

a lecturer at Harvard. Like

17:28

many scientists, Percell was also

17:30

involved in technology research during

17:33

World War II. To help the war effort,

17:35

he worked at the MIT Radiation Lab

17:38

to improve radar. He took

17:40

a leave of absence from Harvard to do this work.

17:42

A lot of them took leaves of absence from their

17:44

established positions so that they could go to different

17:47

labs and work on this stuff. He was

17:49

head of the Advanced Developments Group at

17:51

Harvard, and his team's work moved radar

17:53

forward in a way that offered greater resolution

17:55

in imaging, particularly from an

17:57

aircraft, though real world function

18:00

was seriously hindered by atmospheric humidity.

18:04

Purcell was asked to stay at the MIT lab

18:06

after the war ended to work with a handful

18:08

of other scientists to document

18:10

their work that they had done during the war to

18:12

prepare it for publication. And

18:15

it was during that post wartime at

18:17

Harvard that he started to collaborate

18:19

with Robert V. Pound and Henry

18:21

C. Torre to, according

18:23

to Pound quote, jointly design

18:26

and undertake, in our spare time an effort

18:28

to detect resonant absorption of radio

18:31

frequency energy by atomic nuclei

18:33

in solid matter held in a strong

18:36

magnetic field. So

18:38

that of course led to the paper that dovetailed

18:41

right on the one that Felix Block had written, so

18:44

back to the nineteen forty six work in nuclear

18:46

magnetic resonance. The reason this

18:48

work was so important was because if you can

18:50

observe a specific type of matter reacting

18:53

to a strong stationary magnet,

18:55

and you can identify the unique way

18:57

that any given elements nuclei by hany

19:00

even that situation, you can create

19:02

a sort of map to read unknown

19:04

matter, apply magnetism,

19:07

watch the reaction of the nuclei, and then match

19:09

that reaction to the database of observations.

19:12

You'll figure out what you're dealing with. And

19:14

while this was not aimed at medical

19:16

use initially, you can see how it would

19:18

become important in that field because it

19:20

could be applied to tissue to detect

19:23

things like cancer. Block

19:25

and Purcell met for the first time in April

19:27

of nineteen forty six. They both attended

19:30

the meeting of the American Physical Society

19:32

that took place that month in Cambridge,

19:34

Massachusetts. They got to talking

19:37

and realized they had been working on the same

19:39

idea, although they didn't approach

19:41

it in exactly the same way. And

19:44

this is one of those rare and sort of lovely

19:46

instances where the two of them recognized

19:49

each other as competitors but also

19:51

became friends. In nineteen

19:54

fifty two, Block and Purcell shared

19:56

the Nobel Prize for Physics quote

19:58

for their development of new mal methods for

20:00

nuclear magnetic precision measurements

20:02

and discoveries in connection therewith.

20:05

In his Nobel speech, Felix Block

20:07

talked about all the scientists who had come

20:10

before him and laid the groundwork for

20:12

his research. When Felix

20:14

Block got the news of this joint award,

20:16

he sent Percell a telegram

20:19

in verse that read quote, I

20:21

think it is swell for Ed Purcell

20:23

to share the shock with Felix Block. If

20:25

that's not the cutest thing you've ever seen,

20:29

I kind of love these two. Love their I

20:31

love their friendship. Okay, So

20:33

Block and Purcell have the building blocks

20:35

figured out, so of course next there will

20:38

be a Eureka moment that leads to the MRI.

20:41

Not exactly, there is a big time

20:43

gap here. We'll talk about that

20:46

gap and how the idea of magnetism

20:48

to analyze matter made the jump from physics

20:50

to medicine after we hear from the sponsors

20:53

that keep the show going. Though

21:04

there was this recognition

21:06

in the form of a Nobel Prize of the importance

21:09

of the work of Block and Purcell, it

21:11

didn't lead to a sudden adaptation of this

21:13

information into medical use. In

21:16

a text written by al Luton titled

21:18

Magnetic Resonance Imaging, A Historical

21:20

Introduction, which was written in nineteen ninety

21:23

nine. The author notes, right out of the

21:25

gate quote, the discovery and development

21:27

of magnetic resonance imaging is

21:29

one of the most spectacular and successful events

21:31

in the history of medical imaging. However,

21:34

there is a time gap of almost thirty

21:36

years between the discovery of nuclear magnetic

21:39

resonance simultaneously and independently

21:42

by Block and by Purcell in nineteen forty

21:44

six and the first imaging experiments

21:47

in the nineteen seventies by Louderber and

21:49

by Damadian. We're going to be talking

21:51

about Louderber and Domadian at length

21:53

later on. In nineteen fifty

21:55

three, Eric Odeblad traveled

21:57

from Sweden to the United States

22:00

research as a Rockefeller Foundation

22:02

Fellow. Odoblad was born

22:04

on January thirty first, nineteen twenty

22:07

two, in Christenham, Sweden, and

22:09

in nineteen fifty two, after completing

22:11

medical school in Stockholm, his career

22:14

was really just beginning. He had

22:16

begun to work just the year before

22:18

at the Karolinska Institute, which

22:20

is a medical university, and his

22:22

Rockefeller Fellowship took him to Stanford

22:25

University where he met Felix Block.

22:28

Odeblod asked Block for the chance

22:30

to use the NMR spectrometer that

22:32

Block used in his lab to look

22:34

at human tissue samples. So he had

22:36

this idea, but Block

22:38

turned him down because he thought this was a machine

22:41

for physicists and not doctors. But

22:44

Odeblad did not let go of this idea,

22:46

and after he returned to Sweden he managed

22:48

to get an NMR spectrometer of

22:51

his own, and there he worked

22:53

with Gunner Lindstrom on research with human

22:55

tissue that would become the basis of the paper

22:57

Some Preliminary Observations on the Proton

23:00

magnetic Resonance in Biologic Samples

23:03

that was published in nineteen fifty five. Odeblad

23:06

and Lindstrom showed in their paper the

23:08

differences in proton signals of

23:11

various types of samples. At

23:13

the very beginning of the paper, for example, they

23:15

include side by side images of the proton

23:17

signals of water and living yeast

23:19

cells when the same magnetic field and operating

23:22

conditions were used on the two samples,

23:24

and its apparent even to the layman that

23:27

they're producing different signals. The

23:30

next big event on the MRI timeline,

23:32

and it's a big one. Takes place in the nineteen

23:34

sixties when doctor Raymond Damadian

23:37

was working with nuclear magnetic resonance

23:40

spectroscopy, but this

23:42

was still not working with human tissue.

23:45

He was examining chemicals contained

23:47

in test tubes after using

23:49

NMR to look for potassium

23:51

in dead sea bacteria samples

23:53

as an avenue of research prompted

23:55

by his colleague Freeman Cope. According

23:58

to Domanians, the county started to wonder if

24:00

this technology could be applied to scanning

24:03

human bodies. When Damadian

24:05

talked about this, it's apparent that the analysis

24:08

of the dead sea bacteria stoked

24:10

his imagination of what this tech could

24:12

do. Quote. I remember the

24:14

first time I saw a potassium signal.

24:17

This huge blip filled the ocilloscope

24:19

screen. I had never seen

24:22

an NMR machine, and it had a profound

24:24

effect on me. I mean, wow,

24:26

in a few seconds, we were taking a measurement

24:29

that would usually take me weeks sometimes

24:31

months to do accurately. I

24:33

had a reaction to the potency of this.

24:36

It was doing chemistry by wireless

24:38

electronics. So

24:40

let's take a minute and talk about who was

24:42

this passionately curious man. He

24:45

was born Raymond Vaughan Damadian

24:48

on March sixteenth, nineteen thirty six,

24:50

in Manhattan. His Armenian

24:52

American family lived in Queen's and both

24:54

of his parents worked. His father,

24:57

Vaughn, was a newspaper photo engraver, and

24:59

his mother, od was an accountant. Raymond

25:02

Damadian was clearly an incredibly

25:04

smart kid. He loved to build

25:06

model planes, and he loved to solve problems.

25:09

He also showed both talent and dedication

25:12

to violin, and he enrolled at Juilliard,

25:14

where he studied for several years until

25:17

he switched his life plan to science.

25:20

He received a Ford Foundation scholarship

25:22

and studied mathematics at the University of Wisconsin

25:25

before moving on to medical studies at

25:27

the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

25:30

After completing his medical degree, he

25:32

moved on to biophysics at Harvard,

25:34

and it was there that his interest in magnetic

25:37

resonance was sparked. He

25:39

next moved to a position at Downstate Medical

25:41

Center in Brooklyn, and there his research

25:43

and fascination with magnetic resonance

25:46

continued. Damadian cited

25:48

a couple of different inspirations for his

25:50

interests in applying this technology to

25:53

living tissue. One

25:55

mentioned in his biography Gifted Mind,

25:58

which he wrote along with the co author, was

26:00

that when he was ten and had seen his grandmother,

26:03

Jean Victoria, struggle through breast cancer,

26:05

which she eventually died from. He

26:08

described her last months as complete

26:10

agony and suffering, and wrote of the experience

26:12

quote, my precious grandmother's death cut

26:15

me deep inside, leaving a

26:17

lasting emotional scar. While

26:19

not the sole reason I pursued medicine,

26:21

I believe her death was one factor that

26:23

drove me into research, fueling

26:26

my passionate quest to find a cure for

26:28

cancer. Another was something

26:30

that happened to him when he was still at Harvard.

26:33

He started having really bad pain in his abdomen

26:35

and went to a doctor. X rays

26:37

revealed nothing, but he was still experiencing

26:40

pain, and it frustrated him that

26:43

he could get treatment based on like a best

26:45

guess at what might be the problem,

26:47

but could not get a definitive answer.

26:50

The only option was an exploratory

26:52

surgery, and that seemed like an extreme

26:55

step when the cause of an illness

26:57

could be relatively minor, like

27:00

there just had to be some better way to

27:02

get information about what was happening inside

27:05

of a patient's body. When

27:07

Domanian had his idea about

27:09

applying magnetic resonance to tissues,

27:12

he first started experimenting with rats

27:14

and using pulse radio waves. He

27:16

was able to see that rats that had

27:18

cancerous tissue bounced back

27:21

different radio signals than rats without

27:23

cancerous tissue. He had

27:25

identified values that are today known

27:27

as T one and T two and how

27:29

they could be used to identify cancer.

27:32

So for a very abbreviated

27:35

and simplified lay person's version

27:37

of what those values are, they are

27:39

measures of internal molecular

27:41

motion. Each of them is a

27:44

time constant, thus the use of the letter

27:46

T and each of them references what's called

27:48

relaxation. In this case,

27:50

relaxation means the process of returning

27:53

to natural equilibrium. When

27:55

magnetic force is applied to a molecule,

27:57

the nucleus spins, and when the magnetic

27:59

four versus removed, the nucleus returns

28:02

to its original state. That's

28:04

a really rough way to describe relaxation

28:07

in this context. T one,

28:09

which is also called spin lattice, references

28:12

the return to longitudinal magnetization.

28:15

The z axis, T

28:17

two, which is called spin spin is

28:19

the disappearance of transverse magnetization

28:21

on the x y plane. And

28:24

if you ask me to elaborate further,

28:26

I would get a sad look on my face because

28:28

I can't. That's my limited grasp.

28:31

Those words went from my eyes

28:34

directly to my mouth with

28:36

no comprehensive Yeah, it's

28:39

hard to wrap my brain around it. But

28:42

here's the important part. Not all

28:44

nuclei spin when they're

28:46

exposed to magnetic resonance. Only

28:48

atoms with an odd number of neutrons

28:51

or protons do so. Something like

28:53

carbon twelve, which is a carbon isotope

28:55

with six protons and six neutrons,

28:58

will not spin because it's very very

29:00

stable. This is why we mentioned

29:02

at the very beginning of the episode when talking

29:04

about the basics of MRI that it is

29:07

typically hydrogen that's the focus.

29:09

It has one proton, and it's one of the most

29:11

common elements of the body. There

29:13

are other elements that can be used in MRI

29:16

imaging, but hydrogen is the most

29:18

common. The meadian believed

29:20

that if he could show that magnetic resonance

29:23

could identify cancer, it would be proof

29:25

of concept to develop a machine to perform

29:28

that function that could be used by doctors.

29:31

He used his work with rats as the basis

29:33

of a paper titled Tumor Detection

29:35

by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance that was

29:37

published in Science in nineteen seventy

29:39

one. The paper explained

29:42

how the measurements of T one and T two

29:44

were taken on six different normal

29:46

tissues in rats muscle, kidney,

29:48

stomach, intestine, brain, and liver,

29:51

and also in two different kinds of malignant

29:54

tumors, one a novikov

29:56

hepatoma and the other a walker

29:58

sarcoma. The paper noted

30:01

that quote relaxation times for the two

30:03

malignant tumors were distinctly outside

30:05

the range of values for the normal tissues

30:07

studied, an indication that the malignant

30:10

tissues were characterized by an increase

30:13

in the motional freedom of tissue

30:15

water molecules. The

30:17

following year, on March seventeenth, nineteen

30:19

seventy two, Damadian filed

30:22

a patent for an apparatus

30:24

and method for detecting cancer in tissue.

30:27

That patent was granted on February fifth,

30:29

nineteen seventy four, with the number

30:32

three million, seven hundred eighty nine eight

30:34

hundred thirty two. It was the

30:36

first of many, many dozens

30:39

of patents he would file over the next several

30:41

decades with Domadian

30:43

on the precipice of taking the leap into

30:46

actually building a machine that could apply

30:48

nuclear magnetic resonance to a human

30:51

body as a diagnostic tool. We

30:53

will end part one. Part

30:55

two will cover Damadian's challenges

30:58

and work to realize his vision, as well

31:00

as the events that led to a lot of controversy

31:03

and bad feeling about this technology.

31:07

Now I have relatively relaxed

31:10

listener mail after all of that science

31:12

which breaks my brain, and I

31:14

wish I understood it better. This

31:17

is actually I have two pieces that

31:19

are both in regard to our barbed

31:22

Wire episode and are about pronunciation,

31:24

but so kind. The first comes

31:26

from our listener Elaine, who writes, Hi, I

31:28

live in the Chicago area or Chicago

31:30

Land as we call it, writing in a totally

31:32

friendly and non critical way to let you know the crazy

31:34

way locals pronounce to Calb

31:37

they say the L sound. We say it to Cab because

31:40

we both lived in Georgia up

31:42

yep into Cab County, specifically,

31:44

Yeah, to Cab County, voter, to Cab

31:47

County, jury duty, all that right, Cab

31:49

Avenue. Uh, and we don't pronounce

31:51

the L, and she writes,

31:54

they say the L sound. I don't know how to

31:56

spell that out phonetically, but it's basically pronounced

31:59

by saying all the letter want to know

32:01

how we say what looks to

32:03

someone like me de Plaine, We say

32:06

both s sounds, so it's does

32:08

planes. I guess I've lived here

32:10

a while now so that it actually confuses surprises

32:12

me when the phone directions say it in a more French

32:15

correct way. The town of Bourbonet,

32:18

just how it's spelled, is pronounced Burboynes.

32:20

For real, she

32:23

says, here's my friend's Bundy for pet

32:25

tax. That bunny as cute as pie.

32:28

Oh oh, I

32:30

haven't been around rabbits a lot since I was a kid.

32:32

Yeah, and I both like them

32:35

and have some mixed memories about them being hard

32:37

to cuddle, But my understanding

32:39

from friends that have rabbits, some are very cuddly,

32:42

some are not, just like any other animal. We

32:44

also got an email from our listener Caroline,

32:47

who says same things. Should

32:50

I've been enjoying your podcast for so many years and have

32:52

attended one of your live events in Chicago

32:54

before COVID, and I'm very excited

32:56

to see you both again soon in Indianapolis.

33:00

Quick note, you can, I think, still get

33:02

tickets for us at the Indiana Historical

33:04

Society, so jump on that if you're interested

33:06

in seeing us live show July nineteenth.

33:09

Yes, and she continues,

33:11

thank you so much for making the history of

33:14

everyone from everywhere so accessible for all

33:16

of us. As a longtime listener, I cannot

33:18

recall how many times you've mentioned how hard you both

33:20

work to pronounce people's names and place names

33:22

correctly, and I appreciate all of the hard work that goes

33:24

into that. So here's what I hope you'll read as a

33:26

gentle correction. A side

33:29

note. You guys are so polite and sweet about this. I

33:31

love it. The email

33:33

continues, I just finished listening to the barbed Wire

33:35

episode, and I got very excited to hear the name

33:37

of the city in which my family and I live. I

33:39

don't know if you've already received emails or other

33:41

communication about this episode and the

33:43

pronunciation of Decalb, which

33:46

is so hard for me to say. I'm

33:51

just gonna laugh at myself for a minute. Caroline

33:53

continues, as a Decalb, Illinois

33:55

residence, it was a little distracting to hear

33:57

the name of our city in county pronounce the

33:59

way it would be pronounced in Georgia.

34:01

Here we pronounce the L, so it

34:04

comes out sounding like the crossword puzzle

34:06

word for a white vestament worn by clergy

34:08

alb. That may be confusing coming

34:11

from people in a state who do not want you to say

34:13

the final s in Illinois, but there it is.

34:15

We've lived here since two thousand and five, and both

34:17

my husband and I have attended NIU, which

34:20

is the normal school. Our children grew

34:22

up here and know far more about barbed wire and

34:24

all of its history than I will probably ever

34:26

know. They were both marching barbs

34:28

for Decalb High School. We also

34:31

have the Decalb Library, which was sensitively

34:33

renovated to retain much of the original building.

34:36

Attached are my pet taxes. Penny

34:38

is the Blue Nose, Pepper is the black Beauty.

34:41

These are two of my grand kitties, Ducky

34:43

the Siamese Marmalade and Magpie the Burmese

34:46

best Carolyn, which I have been saying

34:48

the wrong way. I am obsessed

34:51

with your dogs. Penny

34:53

is so cute. I'm like,

34:55

I'm obsessed. This is the cutest picture of Penny

34:58

sleeping obsessed kitties.

35:00

Black kitties, which we both love,

35:03

an orange kitty, which we both love.

35:06

I love an orange cat. That's on my wish list

35:08

for future future kitty acquisitions,

35:10

as an orange baby because I haven't had one yet. And

35:13

this little sweet I

35:15

mean, the face that you would want

35:18

to give all of the food and snacks

35:20

to Pepper is so

35:22

cute. I feel like if I

35:24

were in your house, I would just spend all my time

35:26

kissing and hugging your animals. That sounds

35:29

correct. They may or may not want, which is the problem

35:31

that I have as a full time el my Reduff.

35:35

Thank you both for your gentle corrections.

35:37

I will tell you that I had a moment when I was listening

35:40

to the QA and I was like, oh, I think

35:42

they say that different in Illinois. But

35:44

we have both been traveling, and I was like, there's no

35:46

way we can get a pick up in this, so I'm just letting

35:48

it fly. So I had

35:50

a moment before we recorded

35:53

where I was like, I feel like there's

35:55

one of the cabs that says

35:57

it differently. Because

36:00

there are multiple places, they're

36:02

all named after the same person. Even

36:05

though not everyone says it the same way. And

36:09

normally when there are different pronunciations

36:12

for a place that is spelled the same,

36:15

when you go to four vo dot com, they're all

36:17

in there, yes, And in this case

36:20

there was only the cab. So

36:23

uh like that was my

36:26

because, as you said, we both were traveling. We

36:28

were trying to get episodes recorded ahead

36:30

of traveling, and that was like my super quick check

36:32

was at four voh and fourvo only had one pronunciation,

36:35

and I'm mentally moved on

36:37

with only to cab. We

36:40

did get an email from somebody who said who like

36:43

noted specifically that they are named after the same

36:45

person, which reminds me of like Peabody,

36:47

Massachusetts named

36:49

after George Peabody. Yeah,

36:52

multiple things. Yeah, like

36:54

George Peabody is probably how he said his

36:56

name, but we like, no, don't really know, uh,

36:59

but like it's all over the place whether

37:01

people pronounce things named

37:03

after him as Peabody or Peabody.

37:05

So yeah, yeah,

37:08

I chuck this one up to the Star Wars thing

37:10

of it's both ad at and atat.

37:13

Yeah,

37:18

I don't have anything further to add. My

37:23

quick check ahead of time did not yield

37:26

the fact that they're that this was specifically

37:29

a place that says the L. Also,

37:31

I will say, and this is not to dog anyone's

37:33

pronunciation, because we all have I mean, listen, we live.

37:36

I live still in a city where

37:39

the name Ponce de Leon is

37:41

Ponce de Leon. So like, this isn't I'm

37:43

not I'm not dogging anybody, and I live

37:45

in Massachusetts. Who even knows what we're doing?

37:47

Right? Saying decab

37:51

decalb is

37:53

so awkward from my mouth. Yeah,

37:55

it's like we had gotten

37:57

that information correctly ahead of time.

38:00

It might have been a long record. It might have been

38:02

a long record. I think more likely there would

38:04

have been times that we pronounced it the way we

38:06

have always pronounced it, and then

38:08

would have caught it in QA and we would

38:11

not have been able to fix it because

38:13

of our travel schedules. Yeah,

38:16

because we have each been traveling in Uh.

38:19

You know, there becomes a point where it's

38:21

like I cannot record a podcast

38:23

from my phone and have it sound

38:26

like the recording that was done in a studio.

38:28

Yeah, and it would just be a gigantic mess.

38:31

Yes, uh yeah, this is

38:33

these are the perils of globe trotting.

38:36

This is also reminded me. Do you remember a movie

38:38

phone that you used to be? I don't know if it's

38:40

to be able to call and at the movie phone the

38:43

movie listings. When I

38:45

was living in Atlanta, movie phone would tell us

38:47

the listings for AMC North de

38:49

Koll. But we were always like, what

38:51

are you saying it that way? Movie phone? Oh

38:53

yeah. This is one of my favorite things

38:56

about GPS is how GPS will pronounce

38:58

things that aren't aren't the way anybody

39:00

would pronounce them in any jurisdiction.

39:03

So sure, thank you for being so kind

39:05

and lovely in your corrections to both

39:07

of you. I really appreciate it. If

39:10

you have email you would like to send us, you

39:12

can do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio

39:14

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39:16

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