“Academic racism” and the neglected scholarship of the anatomist M. Wharton Young,MD,PhD (1904–1986)

Introduction

During the 20th century African American scholars were underrepresented at most universities in the United States, and those holding professorial positions often faced distinctive challenges within their professional lives. Frequently, they were overlooked in their academic fields with their scholarship neglected. ¹ This article describes a possible case of this “academic racism” by examining the scientific work of Moses Wharton Young, MD, PhD (1904–1986), and the citations that his publications received.

M. Wharton Young was an African American Professor of Neuroanatomy at Howard University College of Medicine from 1934 to 1973. This article details his diverse interests in science, his devotion to teaching, his loyalty to Howard University (a historically black university), and his resistance to racial discrimination.

Brief biography

M. Wharton Young (Figure 1), the grandson of slaves, was born on 24 October 1904, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, ² and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where his father had a business and his brother was an engineer. ³ He received his BS and MD degrees from Howard University in 1926 and 1930, respectively. Young was an intern at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, DC, from 1930 to 1931, and a resident at People's Hospital in St. Louis, MO, from 1931 to 1932. He was a General Education Board Fellow at the University of Michigan, and received a PhD in neuroanatomy in 1934. He then returned to Howard University College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1942, and to Professor of Neuroanatomy in 1948. ² OPEN IN VIEWER

During his career, Young also taught at Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee (1939-1940), and Chicago Medical School (1956). He was a Fulbright Professor at Chiba Medical College in Japan from 1952 to 1953, and a U.S. State Department Visiting Medical Advisor to India from 1961–1963. It was, however, Howard University that Young served so admirably: he taught embryology, histology, gross anatomy, and neuroanatomy from 1934 until his retirement in 1973. He then taught as a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Maryland School of Medicine until 1979. Young lived in the Park View neighborhood of Washington, DC, and was a widower at the time of his death on 5 February 1986 at Howard University Hospital.^2,4

Research and publications

From 1932 to 1934, Young was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the laboratory of the noted anatomist Professor G. Carl Huber (1865–1934). ⁵ Young's doctoral research on the neuroanatomy of the rabbit telencephalon, published in 1936, was a detailed morphological description illustrated with carefully drawn figures. This article ⁶ is his magnum opus: over 100 pages in length, it was cited 119 times between 1945 and 1979, and currently has been cited 142 times. Young published four abstracts on the neuroanatomy of the rabbit from 1939 to 1942; these were cited 30 times from 1945 to 1979.

During the Second World War, Young initiated research on the pathology of blast injuries without monetary support from either the Government or Howard University. ⁷ Young's experiments mimicked the pressure wave of an explosion by using broad canvas bands wrapped around the thorax and abdomen of an anesthetized dog. Constriction of the canvas bands increased the pressure on the dog's body, and then the bands were loosened to relieve the pressure. Throughout the cycle of pressure changes, Young recorded the pressure in the lungs, jugular vein, carotid artery, and cerebrospinal fluid. These pressure changes—similar to those experienced in an explosion, but occurring over a more protracted time—caused hemorrhaging in the lungs and cerebral cortex. Young explained that pressure from blast caused an increase in pressure throughout the body, especially in the venous system where the flow of blood was reversed. This resulted in enlargement of veins and sinuses in the cranium, which damaged the brain since there was no means to relieve this pressure. ⁸ At a ceremony to honor Young at the Pentagon on 17 June 1975, Dr. James R. Cowan, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health and Environment) noted, “His work on blast pathophysiology in the early 1940s was original and so scientifically sound that it became the framework for all subsequent medical research regarding blast injuries.” ⁷

Young's research on the effects of pressure caused by explosions led him to consider another pressure-related effect on the human body, namely, blacking out in flight caused by abrupt changes in direction and velocity. Young ⁹ hypothesized that acceleration decreased blood flow to the brain while also increasing blood flow from the brain. The resulting inadequate blood supply led to cerebral hypoxia and blacking out.

Over the next three decades, Young published observations on asthma, glaucoma, and senile alopecia (baldness). His experiments on the latter excised curved pieces of scalp from rhesus monkeys and sewed together the edges of the remaining scalp. This surgery created tension in the scalp, which resulted in permanent baldness similar to that in humans. ¹⁰ No mention was made, however, of control experiments that would have used surgery on the scalp, but without excision of scalp segments. Later, Young observed that hairy areas of the scalp had well-vascularized muscle immediately below them, but beneath bald areas, there was no muscle and poor vascularization. Recordings from electrodes placed in both hairy and hairless areas of the scalp in bald men showed that hairy areas exhibited an electrical response indicating muscular activity, whereas bald areas lacked this electrical response. ¹¹ Young summarized his ideas:

The brain and cranium continue to grow and increase in size after adulthood which leads to stretching and thinning of the outer layers of the scalp, thus reducing the thickness of the vascular bed which supplies the hair follicles. The hair, therefore, falls out over the galea [aponeurotica] which is poorly vascularized but is retained at the periphery, over the richly vascularized muscle which shares its blood with the overlying tissues. Women with greater fat deposits and smaller brains do not experience this type of baldness. ¹²

Left unexplained was the reason why the brain would grow in adults to cause baldness, but Young later supplied this component of his argument: intellectual activity caused the brain to grow with the result that intelligent people were often bald—this in contrast to unintelligent people who were rarely bald. ¹³ Although death of hair follicles is involved in male-pattern baldness, its causes do not accord with Young's ideas. ¹⁴

Young published an article in Japanese entitled, “The anatomical basis of bronchial asthma.” Presumably, its contents are similar to an abstract with a similar title ¹⁵ that is speculative and contains no experimental evidence.

Young's “… new concept of the anatomical basis for glaucoma” ² denied that glaucoma involved obstruction of Schlemm's canal or the trabeculae, and concluded that it was caused by pressure in the vitreous humor, not aqueous humor. ¹⁶ His sole publication is an abstract and so the evidence cannot be evaluated, however, contrary to Young's ideas most cases of glaucoma occur when drainage of aqueous humor is prevented, causing increase in intraocular pressure, which damages the optic nerve. ¹⁷

Through most of his academic career, Young carried out research on the inner ear—often making use of metal casting to study its anatomy. Young simplified a technique developed by earlier anatomists ¹⁸ of using metals with a low melting point that were cast in the temporal bones of cadavers from which all soft tissue had been removed chemically. Molten casting metal was gently forced into the inner ear labyrinth that was maintained at the same temperature as the casting metal. When cooling had solidified the metal, acid was used to remove the surrounding bone.^19,20 The resulting casts (Figure 2) show the three-dimensional arrangement of the cochlea and vestibular system, and resemble recent models made by other techniques,^21–23 but Young's casts antedate this work by more than 60 years. OPEN IN VIEWER

The foregoing casting technique is limited to postmortem specimens. Seeking to study the inner ear in living animals, Young made use of mercury, because it is molten at body temperatures. Mercury was injected into the inner ears of living rhesus monkeys, and X-rays were employed to make serial stereoscopic images of the labyrinth and the endolymphatic and perilymphatic ducts. ²⁴ Young disputed the prevailing view that the perilymphatic duct was in contact with cerebrospinal fluid via the subarachnoid space. His work with metal casting in both living rhesus monkeys and postmortem human temporal bones indicated that perilymph was in a closed tube ²⁵ that ended in a “saccular dilation” that he termed a “perilymphatic sac.”^26–28 (For a fuller account of this work, see Heywood ²⁹ ). Young's account of the perilymphatic sac raised the question: if perilymph were not able to leave the perilymphatic duct via the subarachnoid space, was there another means of exit? Earlier Young had diffused dyes into the perilymph and had observed that these entered the lymphatic system, ³⁰ and now returning to this issue, he observed that mercury that had been diffused into the inner ear later exited into the lymphatic system through the fissula ante fenestram.^31,32 Neither the termination of the perilymphatic duct in a sac, however, nor the flow of perilymph through the fissula ante fenestram have been substantiated.^33,34

Young not only contributed to disparate fields of biology and medicine but also attempted to communicate this knowledge to non-specialist audiences, for example, he gave a lecture “Why Men Grow Bald” to the annual convention of the National Medical Association. ³⁵ Likewise, the News American Medical Writer, Joann Rodgers, chose Young because of his research on blast injuries to explain how the three Soviet cosmonauts in Soyuz 11 had died from increased pressure during their return to Earth—this pressure increase had similar pathological effects to that experienced by a person from a bomb blast. ³⁶

Neglect of Young's research

Young suffered the same discriminatory practices as other African American scholars and physicians.^37–40 In 1950 and 1957, the hotels where the national meetings of the American Association of Anatomists were being held refused accommodation to the African American attendees; Young responded by boycotting the meetings.^4,41 In 1961, the staff of a Chicago hotel, the site of a scientific convention where he was giving a paper, refused to honor Young's room reservation because of his race and denied him the use of the hotel's toilets. He sued the hotel for these indignities and for the loss of his luggage, but his suit was unsuccessful.^42,43

Racism that affected professional lives often took the form of omission, rather than commission, and this is more challenging to document. Winston in a 1971 article entitled, “Through the back door: academic racism and the Negro scholar in historical perspective” described the discrimination faced by African American scholars. He observed:

An example of the “peripheral” character of Negroes in American academic life is the still frequently heard complaint that even after years of rigorous and productive scholarship Negro scholars remain the “invisible men” of their profession. Except for one or two notable exceptions, they rarely, if ever are invited to present papers to the national meetings of their professional organizations, despite the “high regard” some of their work is supposed to enjoy. It is not unusual for their work to be omitted from consideration entirely, behavior Americans usually believe a monopoly of Soviet historians. ¹

Winston had interviewed Young while preparing the paper from which this quote is excerpted, however, no specific information about him is included.

To what extent was Young's scholarship “omitted from consideration entirely”? This was certainly not true for his paper on the neuroanatomy of the rabbit telencephalon, ⁶ which is highly cited. This research was conducted at a well-known university under the supervision of two prominent scientists, Drs. Crosby and Huber, and so it would be difficult to justify overlooking it.

Young's other scholarship has not received the same attention. In the case of his publications dealing with asthma, glaucoma, and baldness—which exist only as abstracts, with the exception of an article in Japanese—this is probably warranted as the quality of the work does not match Young's contributions in other areas. The abstracts on asthma and glaucoma present no experimental evidence, and so it is unsurprising that they are not cited. Although his work on baldness received some popular attention, it seems to be flawed and has received few citations.

Young's 1945 article on the mechanics of blast ⁸ provides a different example. It is clearly a seminal article as indicated both by the Assistant Secretary of Defense's assessment, “… original and so scientifically sound that it became the framework for all subsequent medical research regarding blast injuries,” ⁷ and by the fact that it is referenced frequently in recent articles about blast, having been cited 10 times since 2009. During the period 1945–1979, however, it had only 14 non-self citations—highlighting a differing assessment between the Department of Defense and the medical community. Did Young's article receive this scant attention in the years immediately after its publication, because it was conducted by an African American scientist at a historically black university who lacked association with well-known scientists in this field?

This leaves for consideration his work on the inner ear, and although Young had approximately as many publications on the inner ear as all his other publications combined, these received only 4 of the 183 non-self citations to his work during the period of 1945 to 1979. Consider a key aspect of this work: Young's “… discovery of a Perilymphatic Sac which is the first such gross discovery on the labyrinth in over a century.” ² Yet, this model of a perilymphatic sac that is not in continuity with the subarachnoid space seems to have been ignored and never challenged, for example, in the period from 1955 to 1979, there was a single non-self citation to only one of Young's abstracts on the perilymphatic sac. In particular, it is striking that an account of the anatomy of the perilymphatic duct in humans published in 1964 ⁴⁴ made no mention of Young's ideas. In contrast to the failure to recognize his otology research in the United States, Young's contribution was acknowledged in India where in 1963, he received the S. J. Joshi Gold Award in Ear, Nose, and Throat Research. ²

This lack of recognition accorded to Young's work has some similarities with the experience of another professor at Howard University: Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941), an African American developmental biologist who did outstanding research, but was never appointed to a position at a major university.^38,39 Just's scholarship, however, was recognized during his lifetime.

Young's response to his scholarship being overlooked was to continue to do what he did best: well into his seventh decade, he carried out research and presented his findings at national and international meetings. International recognition was forthcoming as he was chosen to chair sessions on ear research at the International Conferences of Anatomists held in Leningrad and Tokyo. ² He made one unusual effort, however, to make scientists in the United States aware about his contributions to otology: in the late 1960s, he took some of the casts with which he had studied the three-dimensional structure of the human inner ear, added hardware such as a tie clip, and plated the whole in gold to convert his research material into jewellery (Figure 2). He sent tie clips, earrings, and lapel pins made in this way to scientists such as the cell biologist J. Walter Wilson (1896–1969), a professor of biology at Brown University and Georg von Békésy (1899–1972), a Nobel Laureate who was an authority on the physiology of hearing. ²⁹ The possibility that, late in his career, Young was attempting to make scientists aware about his work and its applications is supported by the following note that accompanied his gift to J. Walter Wilson, “These casts are by-products of my early ear studies which led to our new concept of the structure and function of the ear in health (physiology) and in deafness (pathology) that is chronic and progressive (otosclerosis).” ²⁹

Young's relationship with Howard University

During his tenure at Howard University, the Students' Medical Council recognized Young as an outstanding teacher. His dedication to teaching was evident even during his senior year as a medical student when he was solely responsible for teaching a course in embryology to the entering class of medical students. In spite of this onerous commitment, in 1930, he received the “Dumas Prize for maintaining the highest scholarship for the entire 4 years in the College of Medicine, Howard University.” ²

Young was an advocate for medical education. On 24 October 1966, he wrote to the Executive Committee of the Howard Medical Alumni Association that “… the record of our school in both teaching and research leaves much to be desired.” ³ Evidently, his concerns about medical education were shared by some medical students because in 1969, they boycotted anatomy classes, and the anatomy instructor, Professor Montague Cobb, resigned as Chair of the Department of Anatomy. ⁴⁵ In his 24 October 1966 letter, Young made a number of suggestions for improving medical education at Howard, including enhancing the bone collection used in teaching. When this was not forthcoming “… he solicited funds and purchased over $5,000.00 in bones that were distributed through the Medical Students' Council until a new administration provided specimens from the department …' ²

In spite of being both an effective teacher and a productive scholar, Young encountered opposition within his university. Writing on 14 September 1952 to Louis T. Wright MD (1891–1952), an African American surgeon at Harlem Hospital, Young described the response to his being awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. This Scholarship in the Anatomy Department of Chiba Medical School, Japan, covered all expenses and was a major honor, but

Dr. Cobb, the head of my department refused my requested, first sabbatical leave in 18 years of service here, stating that I did not deserve a leave-of-absence and that I had not demonstrated the qualities that should represent us on foreign soil and other such biased and unsubstantiated reasons. Thus it appears I will be unable to accept the offer since the President will not over-rule a department head … ³

Although he did not receive Cobb's approval, Young spent a sabbatical leave at Chiba Medical School funded by a Fulbright Scholarship. While in Japan, he lectured at many medical colleges, and his wartime research on the mechanics of bomb injuries led to an invitation to visit the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. ² Upon his return to Howard University, he received a letter from Dr. Montague Cobb, dated 8 November 1953, scolding him for his absence “… without official permission.” The letter noted “… when you left the premises in September 1952 you … left with no word of any kind to anyone in authority.” ³ In disobeying Cobb, Young showed himself to be a determined and strong-willed individual and it is possible that these qualities had led to earlier clashes with Cobb who retaliated by denying approval of Young's sabbatical leave.

Cobb's opposition to Young's sabbatical seems unwarranted. By the time of the Fulbright award, Young had completed his PhD in 2 years—work that had yielded a lengthy paper and four abstracts, which were being cited frequently. He had developed techniques for studying the structure and function of the inner ear, and he had carried out innovative research on the mechanism of blast injuries. It is ironic that during the very time that African American academics faced such challenges of recognition within their fields that Young did not receive the whole-hearted support of his departmental chair.

Young rebelled against this injustice, but it was not his first clash with administrators: in 1939, he had rebuffed an attempt to dismiss him from Howard University. The wording of the charges is not known as they were not archived with Young's papers, but his response—67 pages long, carefully documented and well argued—was archived and clearly he prevailed. ⁴⁷ It is a measure of Young's loyalty to Howard University that, in spite of the opposition he had encountered, he served the institution so well and gave it such generous financial support.

Young was an aesthete and philanthropist. His collection of “Indian Arts and Crafts,” some of which were probably obtained during his 2 years in India were exhibited at the Howard University Art Gallery. ⁴⁸ In 1980, a bronze statue of Mercury that he had donated to the Class of 1930 was, in turn, given by the Class to Howard University to mark their 50th-year reunion. The report of this donation notes that Mercury was the messenger of Apollo who in Greek mythology was the Great Physician, and so it was appropriate that a physician should donate this to his medical school. Young observed that his gift “… was the finest of my art collection and I give to my alma mater nothing but my best …” ³

There were other instances of Young's generosity, for example, the citation for his Doctor of Science degree awarded by Howard University in 1977 noted, “He has personally financed and collected funds for scholarships for deserving students in recent years for the College of Medicine.” ² Additionally, when funding for the Dumas Prize was terminated, Young funded the prize anonymously. ² His devotion to Howard University continued after his death: in 2010, the Estate of M. Wharton Young gave $600,000 toward an endowed chair in his name. ⁴⁹

Young's generosity was probably made possible, at least in part, by a frugal lifestyle. In a lecture at Howard University, Professor Kenneth Manning of M.I.T. reminisced,

I remember spending many hours in the cold house of M. Wharton Young, a neuroanatomist, right around the corner from here. I used to say, why doesn't he turn up the heat? I mean, it would be so cold, so cold. He was telling me how he was trying to save money … He got fixated on the inner ear, which he was working on. When he died, he left Howard University a lot of money, and I'm sure it was from what he saved by turning down the heat. ³⁹

Young's 39 years of service to Howard University and his concern for research and teaching there has been recognized^50,51 in the form of an annual award to a student for scholastic distinction, and a Chair of Anatomy in his name—fitting tributes to a medical educator who gave to his alma mater nothing but his best.