 |
Introduction
Wilfred Bigelow
James Dauphinee
James Ferguson
Wilbur Franks
Brenda Gallie
Arthur Ham
Louis Jaques
Gordon Murray
William Mustard
Samuel Solomon
|
|
Home » Hall of Fame » Arthur Ham
- A Davis Cup tennis star in the 1920s
- Author or the definitive textbook on histology (the study of tissue structures at the microscopic level) used by medical students worldwide
- A noted authority in cancer research and on bone development and repair
Born 20 Feb. 1902 in Brantford, Ontario, the son of John Taylor and Isabelle (Anderson) Ham.
Married first, Dorothy Carlotta Ross (d. 1976) in August 1925, and they had one son, David; married secondly, Toronto Star journalist Lotta Dempsey Fisher (d. 1988) in February 1981.
Died on 6 Sept. 1992 at Seven Oaks Nursing Home, Scarborough, Ontario, at the age of 90.
BRF connections
Arthur Ham's lengthy association with the Banting Foundation dates back to the mid-1930s, when he received the first of numerous grants spanning some thirty years and various areas of research, including the effem of scurvy, bone growth and repair, and cancer studies. In 1938 he was appointed an honorary secretary of the BRF; he continued to serve as a trustee until 1969.
Ham's research career began shortly after he joined the University of Toronto in 1932 as an associate professor in the Department of Anatomy. He had graduated M.B. at Toronto in 1926, but showed "more preference for a racquet than a probe" during his medical studies and for several years therafter. In his graduation year Ham "became Ontario's tennis singles champion," and between 1926 and 1928 he played internationally on Canada's Davis Cup teams.
Ham's interests shifted to medical research during two years as a fellow in pathology under Professor Oskar Klotz. "He got me started on bones," Ham later explained. "I began reading about it and discovered nearly everybody disagreed on the subject, and my curiosity was aroused. "Then in 1930, as an instructor in cytology (the study of cells) at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, he decided to forego the Davis Cup circuit in favour of a scientific investigation in Kenya. With his department head, Dr. E. V. Cowdry, Ham studied the parasite causing tick fever in cattle. "One night hyenas broke into the enclosure and ate all the cattle. . . . But they left the ears, with plenty of ticks on, so we were able to continue our work. Ham's work with Cowdry resulted in a 1932 paper in
the journal Parasitology.
Career highlights
In 1943 Ham published Doctor in the making: the art of being a medical student in collaboration with Dr Mary B. Salter of the Department of Psychology. This light-hearted guide to "what keeps students from doing well in medicine" was inspired by his experiences on a "counselling committee which interviewed first-year students" of the faculty.
The same year Ham was placed in charge of the anatomy department's program in histology. This position led to his major contribution to the medical literature. Despite his claim
that he "had been a lousy histology student," Ham was an effective instructor with "a knack for simplifying complex subjects." His mimeographed course notes formed the basis of a 700-page textbook on histology. First published in 1950, Ham's history is "often cited as a model for its clarity, has since been revised and reprinted eight times and in five languages, and is used by medical students worldwide. In the words of Dr. David Cormack, who collaborated with Ham on the eighth edition (1979) and revised the ninth (1989), "it always was -- and always will be -- known as Ham's Histology, like Gray's Anatomy."
In addition to his books, Ham produced over 50 scientific papers "on such varied subjects as hardening of the arteries, diabetes, bums, vitamin deficiencies and cancer" --- and above all on his first research interest, the growth, repair, and diseases of bones. "I think what I know best today is how fractures heal and what happens to a bone when it is transplanted " he commented in 1949.
By this time he was also heavily involved in cancer research, specifically in cultivating tumours taken from mice and rats in fertile eggs. Supported by the National Cancer Institute, this project used over $1,000 worth of eggs annually -- a low figure "compared with what the cost of animals would be" and produced large supplies of malignant cells for experimental chemotherapy not only within the department but also in cancer centres in the United States. His associates on this project were three women doctors, Margaret 1. Armstrong, Marjorie Mosbaugh, and Alice E. W. Grey; Dr Grey in particular had an impressive career in microbiology, becoming Director of Laboratories at Toronto's Women's College Hospital in 1952. Ham himself was director of the Ontario Cancer Institute's Division of Biological Research between 1957 and 1962; his Banting Foundation grants for this period were used to fund work by junior investigators there.
Fellow cancer researcher and BRF grantee Dr Arthur Axelrad, who had worked with Ham at both OCI and the university, remembered him as "'a sweet man . . . it's hard to overestimate the kind of love people felt for him as well as the respect he earned as a scientist and teacher.'"
|
