Setting the Record Straight: The Birth of Chemotherapy at Yale




His first admission to New Haven Hospital (later to become Yale-New Haven Hospital) came in February 1941, for what had begun as enlarged tonsils and had grown to a full-blown lymphosarcoma, a malignant tumor of his lymph nodes. Throughout 1941, doctors tried to reduce his tumors with radiation, but the treatment provided no significant benefit.




Unfortunately, whatever cells did remain had become resistant to the nitrogen mustard. J.D.’s lymphosarcoma made a relentless return. He went downhill quickly, suffering from bone marrow depression, bleeding and respiratory distress. On December 1, 1942, the 96th day of his hospital stay, J.D. died.

In the chaos of those war years, J.D.’s medical records were misplaced. An article appeared in a 1946 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association about his case, but it was based on personal recollections rather than the facts that would have been contained in a medical file. As a result, there were many inaccuracies relating to the course of J.D.’s treatment, the pathology of his illness and even details about his life such as his occupation.

Two years ago, Yale physicians John Fenn and Robert Udelsman became fascinated by J.D.’s case and determined to try to locate his medical records. The problem was, they had no name, date of birth, medical record number or precise dates of treatment. They had his initials, but there were many “J.D.’s” in the files from the early 1940s. For months they sifted through the records, including pathology reports, of every “J.D.” they could find. They finally found one with lymphosarcoma, but the medical record number contained errors. Thanks to a persistent archivist who sequenced the numbers and corrected the numbers, they narrowed the possibilities down to one patient. J.D.’s records were found.


“It was all there,” said John E. Fenn, M.D., clinical professor of vascular surgery at Yale School of Medicine. “In one patient, there was the revelation that cancer would respond to chemical injections, and that chemotherapy also had potentially lethal implications in the depression of bone marrow.”

J.D.’s willingness to undergo a new treatment led to decades of advances in cancer prevention and care, where the promise of chemotherapy was often fulfilled and sometimes crushed but was ceaselessly pursued. “That first proof of chemotherapy’s efficacy as well as its side-effects paved the way for decades of improvement in these life-saving agents,” said Robert Udelsman, M.D., M.B.A., professor and chair of surgery, Yale School of Medicine.

Fenn says, “J.D. gave us hope for the future. This one patient was responsible for the birth of medical oncology.”


PRESS CONTACT: Helen Dodson 203-436-3984


Robert Udelsman, M.D. and John E. Fenn, M.D. (Photo courtesy: Charles Gershman)

From the medical records of patient J.D.
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From the medical records of patient J.D.
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Categories Cancers