Background

Samuel James Meltzer was born on March 22, 1851, in a small Jewish settlement Traupis near Ponevyezh, Russian Empire (now Panevezys, Panevezio Apskritis, Lithuania) to the family of Simon Meltzer, a melamed (a teacher in Jewish school), and Taube Kowars. The family were orthodox Jews. Meltzer's interest in European philosophy was a reason for oppressive behavior from his father's side.

Education

Samuel James Meltzer’s early education was obtained at a rabbinical seminary, but he decided against a religious vocation. After his marriage, impressed by philosophical literature, he and his family moved to Königsberg, Prussia, the city of Kant, where he studied at the Realgymnasium which he graduated in 1875. He decides that he should devote his life to philosophy. His wife with two young children returns to his parental home, and he left to study in Berlin.

In 1876 Meltzer entered the University of Berlin. As a student, he attracted the attention of the Jewish philosopher Herman Steinthal, an erudite scholar and a brilliant lecturer, active in social reform. Befriending the young student, the teacher took a fatherly interest in him, inviting him to his home and generally guiding his footsteps. He urged Meltzer to abandon the study of philosophy and undertake the study of medicine so as to be more certain of acceptable material existence. Meltzer, who was in severe financial straits, was quick to follow this sage advice. The medical faculty at Berlin, during the years that Meltzer attended the university, was one of the most profound in the world in the period. Here Meltzer came to the attention of Hugo Kronecker, who had been a pupil of the great pioneer and master teacher of physiology, Karl Ludwig of Leipzig. Like Steinthal, Kronecker was impressed by the sincerity and ability of this impoverished young man and became his dear friend, inviting him to his home and acting as his counselor and guide. Under his direction, Meltzer pursued experimental studies on the mechanism of swallowing. He received his medical degree in 1882.

Career

In 1882, when he graduated from medical school, Meltzer was thirty-one years of age. He was offered several positions on the condition that he be baptized into the Christian faith, but he refused. Instead, he undertook several voyages as a ship doctor in order to accumulate funds before emigrating to the United States.

On July 1, 1883, Meltzer began practicing medicine in Harlem, then an affluent residential neighborhood of New York City. He was to reside in this area for the remainder of his life. Meltzer's medical practice was very lucrative. Within two years he was able to send for his wife and his two children after ten years of separation.

During this period of his life, despite the demands of his practice, and some twenty years before he was asked to join the faculty of the new Rockefeller Institute in 1903, Meltzer was drawn to the laboratory by his intense drive to engage in research. He paid for the privilege of using facilities at several places, including Columbia Medical School, Bellevue Hospital, and Harlem Hospital, as he carried out his ideas, usually at the expense of his sleep and his personal life. Recognizing and openly declaring the stagnant state of medical science in New York, he made urgent pleas for the formation of societies for the exchange of ideas and the promotion of knowledge.

In 1903 Meltzer joined the staff of the recently created Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; he was head of the department of physiology and pharmacology until his retirement in 1919.

Meltzer’s intimate acquaintance with both medical practice and research allowed him to serve as a liaison between practitioners and scientific investigators. He played an important role in the founding and early development of several scientific or medical societies, including the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine - familiarly called the Meltzer Verein for many years.

Meltzer also made contributions to pharmacology, pathology, and clinical medicine, as well as to physiology, his major field of interest. He was too inclined to speculate about his experimental results and to seek the general principles that govern physiological phenomena. In his 1882 medical dissertation on the swallowing reflex, he first outlined the theory of inhibition, which influenced much of his subsequent work. During the course of his studies on the act of swallowing, he noted that reflex stimulation of inspiratory muscles is accompanied by reflex inhibition of expiratory muscles, and vice versa. He postulated that this reciprocal arrangement must exist for other antagonistic muscles in the body for the purpose of efficient motor action. In 1893 Charles Sherrington, apparently unaware of Meltzer’s work, showed that the contraction of an extensor in the limb is accompanied by a relaxation of its opposing flexor, and vice versa (specifically predicted by Meltzer). Sherrington called this relationship reciprocal innervation.

One of Meltzer’s most important experimental studies dealt with the pharmacological effect of magnesium salts. These compounds were shown to produce a state of unconsciousness and muscle relaxation in animals which was readily reversed by the injection of calcium chloride. This work added magnesium to the elements known to play a part in the activity of the cell, and Meltzer believed he had found the element in the body that is especially concerned with inhibition.

Another important series of researches dealt with artificial respiration. Meltzer and John Auer developed the technique of intratracheal insufflation, whereby the lungs are kept inflated by blowing a stream of air through a tube inserted into the trachea. By including an anesthetic vapor in the air stream, anesthetization could be produced at the same time as artificial respiration. The technique was valuable in thoracic surgery as a simple means of keeping the lungs inflated after the chest had been opened.

Meltzer’s other significant contributions included the hypothesis that bronchial asthma is a phenomenon of anaphylaxis, the introduction of the engineering term “factors of safety” to describe the reserve powers of organisms, and researches with his daughter Clara on the effects of adrenaline on the blood vessels and on the muscles of the iris.

During World War I, Meltzer was a major in the Medical Reserve Corps, and when the American Association for Thoracic Surgery was organized in 1918 he was elected president.

Meltzer was occupied in research in various fields almost to the time of his death. He retired from the headship of the department on June 30, 1919.

Achievements

• Meltzer was one of the leading American physiologists of his generation. Although he was a most productive scientist, it was in the field of public relations that he excelled and where his influence was most strongly felt. He was an able "ambassador" for the Institute to medical greats at home and abroad, as well as to the practitioners of medicine in the numerous societies to which he belonged. He was especially popular with the younger men because of his progressive views and his helpfulness in directing their efforts. Because of his extensive travels and a broad circle of acquaintances, his advice was often sought for faculty considerations. With John Auer, he devised a method of artificial respiration, described in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
  
  In 1914 Melzer was nominated for Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Works

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  • Some Remarks on My Hypothesis of the Self-Regulation of Respiration, and Dr. Cowl's Discussion of It 1890
  • Die Athemhemmenden Und Anregenden Nervenfasern Innerhalb Des Vagus in Ihren Beziehungen Zu Einander Und Zum Nervenmechanismus 1892
  • Ueber die fundamentale Bedeutung der Erschütterung für die lebende Materie 1894
  • On the Respiratory Changes of the Intrathoracic Pressure, Measured in the Mediastinum Posterior 1892

Religion

Samuel James Meltzer remained in Judaism even though at some point his conversion to Christianity was a necessary step for obtaining a job as a physician in Germany.

Views

Meltzer's strong belief in the cosmopolitanism of science led Meltzer to organize the Fraternitas Medicorum, an international medical brotherhood, during World War I, and thousands of American medical men joined the organization before its activities were suspended when the United States entered the conflict.

Meltzer developed the idea of combined action of opposing processes into a general theory. He believed that every excitation or stimulation of tissue was accompanied by a corresponding inhibitory impulse. Physiological phenomena are a result of the compromise between these two fundamental, antagonistic life forces - excitation and inhibition. Although his dualistic conception of life processes did not gain wide acceptance, it was an important stimulus to his own experimental work.

Quotations: "The fact that your patient gets well does not prove that your diagnosis was correct."

"The constitution does not keep you down exclusively to science, but let me tell you: beware of practice. It is a bewitching graveyard in which many a brain has been buried alive with no other compensation than a gilded tombstone."

Membership

When the American Association for Thoracic Surgery was organized in 1917 Meltzer was elected its first president. He was succeeded by his friend Willy Meyer in 1918.

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  American Association for Thoracic Surgery , United States

  1917 - 1918

Personality

Samuel was a man of clear mind, tireless energy, and a devotion to high ideals. Meltzer's training, knowledge, and phenomenal memory, as well as his charm and compassionate character, were driven by boundless energy. He possessed an idealism peculiarly fitting him for intensive laboratory studies, though perhaps not easily coinciding with the practical side of life.

Quotes from others about the person

• "The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body, and soul. No one ever had a more inspiring life than Dr. Meltzer so far as life was concerned in scientific endeavor and efforts on behalf of other investigators. For this poor Russian emigrant accomplished the impossible." - Leonard George Rowntree, Canadian physician and medical researcher

Connections

At nineteen Samuel James Meltzer married Olga Sara Levitt, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do merchant. He used the customary dowry money to leave his home and its intellectually oppressive environment. They had two children including Clara Meltzer Auer who worked as a Research Scholar for the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research from 1901-1903 as an Ophthalmologist.

Father:

Simon Meltzer

Mother:

Taube Kowars

Wife:

Olga Sara Levitt

Daughter:

Clara Meltzer Auer

son-in-law:

John Auer

mentor:

Herman Steinthal

mentor:

Hugo Kronecker

Friend:

Willy Meyer

References

• Memorial number for Samuel James Meltzer, M.D., founder and first president of the Society for experimental biology and medicine
  2017
• Dictionary of Scientific Biography: Volumes 9 & 10
  1981