It’s time for a little history of medicine—introducing a new feature in CCJM

In this issue of the Journal, we introduce a new feature. Adam Brown, MD, a rheumatologist at Cleveland Clinic, will periodically present an editorial related to an article in the same issue. Addressed affectionately in our editorial office as “Adam’s angle,” his editorials will explore somewhat tangentially the history of a topic related to the article.

In our current issue, Adam writes on an aspect of a Clinical Picture article that depicts a patient with skin manifestations of endocarditis in whom the diagnosis was confirmed after positive blood cultures led to cardiac imaging, emphasizing the importance of blood cultures in confirming the diagnosis.¹ In “The history of blood cultures: From the research laboratory to the bedside,” Adam traces the not-straightforward evolution of this now fundamental laboratory test.² He describes how, in the process of blood cultures becoming a routinely available laboratory test, their development benefitted from an interesting family relationship in the research laboratory. Adam also notes that until blood cultures became available, the pathobiology of endocarditis as an infection could only be hypothesized. Osler’s earlier postulated concept of endocarditis as an infection was validated when the presence of bacteremia was demonstrated in patients with clinically suspected endocarditis, and the specialty of infectious disease was off and running.

Adam is a member of our editorial board and an associate program director of the Rheumatology Fellowship Program at Cleveland Clinic. For those of you who are fans of medical podcasts, his Rheuminations podcast often includes his self-described “medical mysteries and other ripping yarns.”

I enjoy learning about how researchers and clinicians with only rudimentary tools, diligence, curiosity, and superb reasoning skills at their disposal were able to initially define principles of disease and human physiology that we now accept as common knowledge. I hope you will also.

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