The Discovery of Heparin

THE DISCOVERY of heparin came as a result of my determination to accomplish something by my own ability. Just when this motivation arose in me and what factors nurtured this determination, which was not necessarily fully developed before I went to Johns Hopkins, are difficult to date. I believe the mile posts were the death of my father, John T. McLean, M.D., when I was 4 years old, the remarriage of my mother when I was 9, the earthquake fire in San Francisco when I was 15, the letter of my stepfather when I was 22 discontinuing any further support of my studies in 1922, and a talk with my cousin, Herbert McLean Evans (my father's sister's son), on academic behavior as a student at Johns Hopkins. I was reared without a father, and a child knows when there is no breadwinner to rely upon. My stepfather was unsympathetic to my plans for a medical education at Johns Hopkins. The earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906 stripped us of all accumulated assets; our house burned, my stepfather 's place of employment burned, and the outlook was stark. Despite these handicaps, I made the decision to become a physician during my last year at Lowell High School in San Francisco (1908-1909). At this time I read Flexner's Medical Education in the United States. I have remembered he described the "chem lab " of one school as "consisting of a cigar box of broken test tubes. " I entered the University of California at Berkeley (1909), and while there firmly hitched my future to Johns Hopkins Medical School and a career in academic surgery. At that time (1911) one could enter the University of California Medical School with two years of college preparation, but Johns Hopkins required at least three. I was forced at the end of my sophomore year, May 1911, to make the choice. My stepfather argued that the University of California Medical School had sufficed for my father (M.D. 1867) and for his 15 year old brother, Robert Armistead McLean (M.D. 1876), Professor of Surgery and Dean, Emeritus, in 1911. After his death in 1918, he was honored in the medical literature as "California's First Master Surgeon. " My argument was that Johns Hopkins offered me more preparation in the field of academic surgery, that is, research and teaching, for a lifetime career. Also I felt deeply the responsibility of being a physician. I doubted if I possessed the qualifications to become one; and I deliberately chose the fiercest student competition, as Johns Hopkins' matriculants were meticulously chosen. My stepfather had paid for my board and room, $27.50, during my freshman and sophomore years at college; the rest I earned. IIe offered to continue this for four years of medical school at the University of California iii San Francisco. If I had decided to go to Johls Hopkins, his aid would be stopped at the cvitl of my sophomore year, May 1911. Summer work would not yield enough in savings to finance my third college year, so I was forced to leave college for fifteen months. Some of my Sigma Chi Fraternity brothers were going to the Mojave Desert gold mine, The Yellow Aster, at Randsburg, for practical experience in mining engineering. I followed them-got a job as "mucker " (twenty-five cents an hour)-rose to chucktender, apprentice miner, and then to a millhand, where we processed the ore into beautiful gold bricks. I stayed there until August 1912, fifteen months in all, with enough money saved to re-enter college then for the third year of preparation for Johns Hopkins. My spare time was devoted to various part-time jobs. Robert Sproul, now President of the University of California, and I both worked in the Recorder's office. I did blood counts and urinalyses in the College Infirmary, worked in the Museum of Invertebrate Zoology, and book-stores. I also worked scrubbing the decks of ferry boats plying in San Francisco Bay