Seale Harris

Seale Harris (born March 13, 1870 – died 1957) was an American physician and researcher born in Cedartown, Georgia and nicknamed "the Benjamin Franklin of Medicine" by contemporaries for his leadership and writing on a wide range of medical and political topics. Dr. Seale Harris' most celebrated accomplishments were his 1924 discovery of Hyperinsulinism and his recognition of spontaneous hypoglycemia.

Life
Dr. Harris received a medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1894, and established a medical practice in Union Springs, Alabama. After the completion of postgraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Harris accepted the position of Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Medical College of Alabama in Mobile. During World War I, Harris was commissioned as as a Major in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army and served with distinction.

Returning to private practice in Birmingham, Dr. Harris was instrumental in building the 50-bed "Gorgas Hospital Hotel" which later became Montclair Baptist Medical Center. A prolific author and contributor to medical literature, in 1949 Dr.Harris was awarded the American Medical Association's Distinguished Service Medal for his research in hyperinsulinism. He was instrumental in establishing a camp near Mobile for children with diabetes, and in tribute to his life and work, it was later designated Camp Seale Harris.

The life of Seale Harris was one of a rare individual who applied his competence successfully in several fields and enriched all who came in contact with him. He brought to his practice of internal medicine a strong background of training received in this country and abroad. He opened the Seale Harris Clinic in Birmingham in 1922 and it became a medical landmark during his lifetime. The clinic and name are perpetuated by his successors. Shortly after the discovery of insulin, Harris visited Canada to study diabetes cases with the scientists who discovered the hormone. These studies led to his extensive research on the effects in nondiabetic patients of an excessive secretion of insulin and his recognition that hyperinsulinism, the condition caused by these excess secretions, results in hypoglycemia, an abnormal deficiency of sugar in the blood. His research on hyperinsulinism and its control brought international recognition to Harris, including the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest scientific award of the American Medical Association.

While serving in the Army during World War I, he edited the journal, War Medicine, published in Paris, and for 12 years he was the owner and editor of the Southern Medical Journal. His writings include more than 100 contributions to the medical literature and books in such diverse fields as clinical practice, biography and politics. Widely respected among doctors, Harris served at various times as president of the Southern Medical Association, Medical Association of the State of Alabama, and the American Medical Editors Association. Seale Harris lived as a true physician, ministering to his patients, advancing the science of his profession, and serving his community and fellow man.

Harris' syndrome
Harris' Syndrome is a historical term for hyperinsulinismus that may occur in insulin-producing tumours of the pancreas (insulinoma). Syndrome characterized by low blood sugar, weakness, hunger (epinephrine response), a sense of jitteriness, hunger, increasing nervousness, mild mental confusion or even personality alterations with erratic behaviour, and a compensatory hyperadrenalaemia with tachycardia and flushing and sweating. Other features include headache, visual disturbances, twitching, thick speech, transitory hemiplegia, seizures (cerebral response).

It occurs at all ages, in both sexes during the course of a wide variety of diseases and is the presenting sign of many other disturbances, such as functional disorders of the pancreas, hyperplasia of the islands of Langerhans, or insulinoma.

The concept of the syndrome was postulated by Harris in 1924 after he observed insulin produced hyperglycaemia. It is observed more frequently in adults but a small number of cases of so-called idiopathic hypoglycaemosis, sometimes familial, has been observed in infants.

See also Hers' disease, or Glycogen storage disease type 6, under Henri-Géry Hers, Belgian physiologist and biochemist.

†Source: Adapted from whonamedit.com

Harris v. Big Business
The discovery of insulin was the kind of modern medical miracle which the [sic] diseasestablishment knew how to exploit. Production of insulin was and is a boon to the pharmaceutical industry. Patients with diabetes presented a captive market, a million people in the early 1900s. The surge of sugar addiction in the 1920s ensured that this profitable market would increase annually. Insulin injections were expensive but manageable palliatives, not quick or cheap cures in any sense. Millions of diabetics would become dependent on insulin for the rest of their lives. Insulin was something that could be packaged and sold over the counter in drugstores--together with the attendant hardware, such as needles. It captured the imagination of a vaccination-happy, drug-oriented society. So diabetics were kept alive by the injection of insulin extracted from the pancreatic glands of animals from abattoirs. Many people who might have died survived--if they could afford insulin--to breed diabetic-prone descendants of their own. The classification of varieties of diabetes multiplied. Diabetes mellitus--honey inflammation causing copious passage of urine--was superseded by modern, symptomatic terminology: hypoinsulinism (underproduction of insulin).

Then, in 1924, a year after the discoverer of insulin was awarded a Nobel prize, Seale Harris discovered the complementary antagonist of hypoinsulinism. Inevitably, doctors and patients experimenting with insulin in its early years took too little or too much. An overdose produced symptoms of what came to be known as insulin shock. Harris began to notice symptoms of insulin shock in many people who were neither diabetic nor taking insulin. These people were diagnosed as having low levels of glucose in their blood; diabetics have high levels of glucose.

Dr. Harris officially reported his discovery that year: Low levels of glucose in the blood were declared to be a symptom of hyperinsulinism: excessive insulin. Up to that time, patients with symptoms of hyperinsulinism had been treated for coronary thrombosis and other heart ailments, brain tumors, epilepsy, gall bladder disease, appendicitis, hysteria, asthma, allergies, ulcers, alcoholism, and a variety of mental disorders.

A Nobel prize was not awarded, however, to Dr. Harris. His discovery was an embarrassment to the [sic] diseasestablishment, not a boon. The remedy he suggested for hyperinsulinism or low blood glucose was not a glamorous new miracle drug that could be packaged and sold across the drug counter in a bottle or licensed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Harris suggested the cure for low blood glucose or hyperinsulinism (also commonly and misleadingly called low blood sugar) was self-government of the body. The patient with low blood glucose must be prepared to give up refined sugar, candy, coffee, and soft drinks - these items had caused the troubles. Patients with hyperinsulinism could never be made dependent for a lifetime on anybody else. They had to fend for themselves. A doctor could merely teach them what not to do. Hyperinsulinism or low blood glucose therapy was a do-it-yourself proposition.

Predictably, the medical profession landed on Dr. Harris like a ton of bricks. When his findings were not attacked, they were ignored. His discoveries, if allowed to leak out, might make trouble for surgeons, psychoanalysts, and other medical specialists. To this day, hyperinsulinism or low blood glucose is a stepchild of the [sic] diseasestablishment.

†Source:Excerpt adapted from Sugar Blues, by William Dufty

Military career
With the advent of World War I, and with a commission of Major in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army, Dr. Harris was assigned to the staff of General William Crawford Gorgas. While serving overseas he was personally decorated for meritorious service by General John J. Pershing.

Alabama Hall of Fame
The Alabama Hall of Fame was established by Act of Alabama No. 646 (1951) to recognize "worthy citizens of the state who rendered outstanding service or who won fame on account of their achievements as to make them exceptional in the history of Alabama". Harris was posthumously elected in 1965 to the Alabama Hall of Fame.

Seale Harris Award
This award, named in honor of Seale Harris and established in 1958 at the Southern Medical Association meeting in New Orleans, is presented annually to a member of the Southern Medical Association in recognition of important research accomplishments in the broad field of metabolism, endocrinology, or nutrition, or for significant accomplishments contributing to a better understanding of the chemical changes occurring in disease.

Selected Bibliography

 * Banting's Miracle: the Story of the Discoverer of Insulin. Lippincott, 1946.
 * Woman's Surgeon: the Life Story of J. Marion Sims MacMillan, 1950.
 * The Nation's Greatest Need: A National Department of Health. American Journal of Public Health, 1920.
 * Nutrition, The Most Important Public Health Problem of Today. Southern Medical Journal, 1922.
 * Insulin and Diet In The Treatment of Diabetes. Lippincott, 1923.
 * Hyperinsulinism and Dyinsulinism. J.A.M.A., 1924.
 * The Sugar Fed Child. UAB Press, 1928.
 * Nomenclature of Disorders of Insulin Secretion. Annals of Internal Medicine, 1934.
 * The Diagnosis and Treatment of Hyperinsulism. Annals of Internal Medicine, 1936.

‡Source: Lite For Life