A history of the American Society for Clinical Investigation

Abstract

One hundred years ago, in 1909, the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) held its first annual meeting. The founding members based this new society on a revolutionary approach to research that emphasized newer physiological methods. In 1924 the ASCI started a new journal, the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The ASCI has also held an annual meeting almost every year. The society has long debated who could be a member, with discussions about whether members must be physicians, what sorts of research they could do, and the role of women within the society. The ASCI has also grappled with what else the society should do, especially whether it ought to take a stand on policy issues. ASCI history has reflected changing social, political, and economic contexts, including several wars, concerns about the ethics of biomedical research, massive increases in federal research funding, and an increasingly large and specialized medical environment.

Figure 1. The Rockefeller Institute, New York City.

Founded by John D. Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Institute not only symbolized a new sort of science, it was a key early supporter of the ASCI and the JCI. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center.)

Figure 2. The New Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, site of the first ASCI meeting in 1909.

Several decades previously, US President Ulysses S. Grant used to relax in the lobby of the Willard. People wishing to influence him would come and talk with him there — according to one version of the history, this led to the term “lobbyist.” (Courtesy of Willard Intercontinental Washington.)

Figure 3. Samuel Meltzer’s physiology laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute.

Meltzer’s ideas and leadership led to the formation of the ASCI. He emphasized the importance of not relying on older ideas of autopsy-based research, but rather of using the latest in laboratory techniques. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center.)

Figure 4. ASCI members have approached research topics by using the latest and most sophisticated technology.

At the initial ASCI meeting, the dominant new technology was the newly invented Riva-Rocci cuff for measuring blood pressure. (Reproduced from ref. .)

Figure 5. The Traymore Hotel was the site of many ASCI meetings in Atlantic City.

The ASCI no longer meets in Atlantic City, and the Traymore Hotel was demolished in 1972. (Reproduced with permission from the New York Public Library.)

Figure 6. During World War II, the role of physicians and of medical research was redefined.

Medical research was widely supported in areas including the development of new vaccines to prevent typhoid and epidemic typhus. After the war, federal support for research dramatically increased. (Ω Corbis.)

Figure 7. The postwar research environment came to be dominated by the increasing use of new, complex laboratory technology, such as this mass spectrophotometer.

(Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.)

Figure 8. As federal funding for laboratories expanded, more and more of ASCI members’ research came to be done not on human beings but on laboratory animals, such as this Norwegian rat in a photograph from the 1950s.

(Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.)

Figure 9. New tools and technologies have come to replace those of a century ago.

This chimeric male knockout mouse is shown with its offspring. (Ω Jenny Nichols/Wellcome Images.)