John Goodsir: discovering Sarcina ventriculi and diagnosing Darwin's dyspepsia. Issue 2 (May 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Donaldson, Ken; Henry, Christopher
• Is Part Of: Scottish medical journal. Volume 65:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 40
• Page End: 45
• Publication Date: 2020-05
• Subjects: John Goodsir -- Sarcina ventriculi -- water brash -- dyspepsia -- Charles Darwin; Medicine -- Periodicals; 610.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0036933020912329
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0036-9330

Abstract

In 1842, when John Goodsir was Conservator to the Museum of the RCSEd, he saw a 19-year-old male patient who vomited a large volume of acidic, fermented-smelling, watery fluid every morning. Under his microscope, Goodsir found the vomitus to be populated with a micro-organism he named Sarcina ventriculi, which he considered to be causative. In so-doing, Goodsir became one of the first people to link a specific micro-organism with a disease. Goodsir recommended small doses of creosote as an antiseptic and claimed that the boy was eventually cured of the vomiting condition. In August of 1863 Charles Darwin was hugely celebrated by the scientific community and the public, but he had suffered from severe stomach problems all his adult life and at this point, he was vomiting daily. He read Goodsir's paper and contacted him and asked if he could send some vomitus samples to Edinburgh in the hope that Goodsir might find Sarcina in it and solve the mystery of his debilitating stomach symptoms and perhaps cure them with creosote. Goodsir examined samples in his microscope, but failed to find Sarcina . Sadly, Darwin went on to suffer constantly from severe stomach problems, recently attributed to lactose intolerance, until he died in 1882, some 20 years later.