Images in Clinical Medicine
Endoscopy in Its Infancy
N Engl J Med 1999; 340:772March 11, 1999
- Article
Figure 1 While still a teenager, Chevalier Jackson (1865–1958) concocted a tool that enabled him to recover an expensive drill bit lost underground during oil-well drilling on his father's Pennsylvania farm. In 1890, four years out of medical school, he devised an endoscope with which he retrieved foreign bodies from the esophagus: teeth from an adult, a coin from a child. Jackson went on to design the rigid bronchoscope that bears his name, and he taught its use to the next generation of peroral endoscopists. Using tubing, cadavers, and dogs and zealously emphasizing safety, he demonstrated diagnostic, therapeutic, and biopsy techniques in most of the world. Sidelined by tuberculosis in midlife, Jackson spent three lengthy “cures” completing his classic textbook Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery (St. Louis: Laryngoscope Company, 1915). In keeping with his belief that patents restricting the clinical availability of scientific advances were morally offensive, Jackson refused to profit financially from his many inventions. At lectures he used his own illustrations. This drawing of an endoscopic view, done in chalk on what appears to be a desk blotter, was found in the basement of a former sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York.
L. Fred Ayvazian, M.D.
3 James Ave., Northampton, MA 01060
