Flexner, Simon

(b. Louisville, Kentucky, 25 March 1863; d. New York, N.Y., 2 May 1946)

pathology, bacteriology.

Flexner was the fourth child of Morris Flexner, member of an educated Jewish family in Czechoslovakia, who immigrated to Kentucky. Starting as a peddler, he became a successful wholesale merchant. Flexner’s mother, Esther Abraham, was born in Alsace. Flexner attended public schools in Louisville and was apprenticed to a druggist who sent him to the Louisville College of Pharmacy, from which he was graduated in 1882. He then worked in his eldest brother’s drugstore and studied medicine at the University of Louisville, receiving the M.D. degree in 1889. Although the medical school then provided little opportunity for laboratory study, Flexner acquired a microscope, with which he studied pathological tissues and made microscopic examinations for doctors who patronized the Flexner pharmacy.

In 1890, at the suggestion of another of his remarkable brothers, Abraham, Flexner went to Baltimore to study pathology and bacteriology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital with William H. Welch, who gave him a fellowship and in 1892, when the Jons Hopkins Medical School opened, made him his first assistant in the department of pathology. In 1893 Flexner visited Europe, working at Strasbourg with Friedrich von Recklinghausen and at Prague. On his return he became resident pathologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. By 1899 he reached full professorial rank. In that year, following the acquisition of the Philippine Islands by the United States, Flexner and two medical students spent several months in Manila studying health conditions. During this stay he isolated an organism that causes a prevalent form of dysentery. This Bacillus (now Shigella) dysenteriae is still commonly known as the “Flexner bacillus.”

Soon after his return to Baltimore, Flexner was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he organized an excellent staff, planned a new laboratory building, and carried out important researches on experimental dysentery, on experimental pancreatitis, and on immunological problems, especially with regard to hemolysis and hemagglutination. One of his associates was the brilliant young Japanese physician Hideyo Noguchi, who came from Japan inexperienced and penniless and found in Flexner a lifelong friend and guide.

When bubonic plague broke out in California in 1901, the federal government sent Flexner to San Francisco to study the epidemic. Within a month he and a few associates confirmed the presence of the plague bacillus and made a report to health authorities that aided them in eradicating the disease.

In 1901 John D. Rockefeller and his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr., were planning the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. Flexner, who by this time, at the age of thirty-eight, was beginning to be nationally known, was appointed to the institute’s board of scientific directors, which was composed of seven eminent medical men and headed by his friend and mentor William H. Welch. In 1902 Flexner was chosen to lead a department of pathology and bacteriology in the institute, and soon he established himself as head of the whole enterprise. He brought together a strong group of investigators, including Hideyo Noguchi, S. J. Meltzer, P. A. T. Levene, Alexis Carrel, Jacques Loeb, Eugene Opie, Rufus I. Cole, and Peyton Rous. Flexner’s colleagues found him a man of exceedingly keen intelligence, with a reserved manner that concealed a sympathetic heart. He directed his staff with great skill, giving free rein to those who showed independent competence while guiding with a wise hand those who needed advice. His financial acumen impressed the astute patron of the institute, who showed his confidence by successive additions to its funds.

To combat an epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis in 1906, Flexner produced a serum that remained the best treatment until the sulfa drugs were introduced. When in 1910 poliomyelitis was epidemic in New York, he and his assistants were the first to transfer the virus from monkey to monkey. This success enabled the investigators to keep the virus alive in the laboratory and thus ultimately, after development by others of a less expensive method of perpetuating it (by cultivation in hens’ eggs), led to the preparation, in the 1950’s, of protective vaccines.

The Rockefeller Institute, quite early in its history, came under strong attack from organizations opposed to the use of animals in experiments on the causes of disease. Flexner’s accomplishments in such work and his calm generalship made him a natural leader in the successful deterrence of these opponents.

In 1903 Flexner married Helen Whitall Thomas, member of a prominent Quaker family of Baltimore. She helped to expand his intellectual interests beyond the medical sciences, giving him an appreciation of literature and the arts. Of their two sons, William became a physicist and James Thomas a writer and historian of American culture.

Flexner’s medical and biological accomplishments led to public service in various health fields, as chairman of the Public Health Commission of New York State, as medical consultant of the U. S. Army during World War I, and as member of the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. When in 1902 William H. Welch wearied of the editorship of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Flexner took it over and for about fifteen years was its chief editor, giving the task much time and attention.

His executive competence was recognized by trusteeships of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Johns Hopkins University. A little-known but very important public service was his leadership in establishing fellowships of the National Research Council, provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, for promising young medical scientists. Oxford University called him in 1937–1938 to its Eastman professorship, at a time when his counsel was needed in the organization of Lord Nuffield’s endowment of medical professorships. A book, The Evolution and Organization of the University Clinic (Oxford, 1939), resulted from this experience. Flexner was elected member of the American Philosophical Society in 1901, the National Academy of Sciences in 1908, and foreign member of the Royal Society in 1919.

During his long career Flexner published several hundred scientific papers, lectures, and essays. At the age of seventy-eight he published jointly with his son James a notable biography, William H. Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine (New York, 1941). He quietly resigned the directorship of the Rockefeller Institute in 1935.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Flexner’s papers are in the library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

Secondary literature includes Stanhope Bayne-Jones, “Simon Flexner, 1863–1946,” in Year Book [for] 1946. American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1947), pp. 284–297; George W. Corner, History of the Rockefeller Institute (New York, 1965), passim; Memorial Meeting for Simon Flexner (New York, 1946), a pamphlet issued by the Rockefeller Institute that contains personal characterizations by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and others; and Peyton Rous, “Simon Flexner, 1863–1946,” in Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 6 (1948–1949), 409–445, with portrait and complete list of publications.

George W. Corner

FLEXNER, SIMON 1863-1946

Pathologist

Accomplishments

The accomplishments of Simon Flexner, pathologist and director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, were extraordinary in their diversity and impact. Flexner was the fourth of nine children born to Morris and Esther Flexner in Louisville, Kentucky. Abraham Flexner, the education specialist, was his brother. As a young man Simon Flexner was apprenticed to a druggist who sent him to the Louisville College of Pharmacy. After graduating in 1882, Flexner's interest in medicine led him to study at the University of Louisville where he earned an M.D. in 1889. This early education and Flexner's investigative nature set the stage for his remarkable career.

Early Work

After medical school Flexner turned his talents to research in the fields of pathology and bacteriology. He began his work at the Johns Hopkins Hospital where he became an associate in pathology in 1892. Flexner conducted his research under the tutelage of William H. Welch, whom he considered a major influence in his life. Flexner also studied in Europe at Strasbourg and at Prague.

Meningitis

An outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis in Maryland in 1893 gave Flexner experience in the area of infectious diseases. This experience proved valuable while Flexner was in Manila studying the diseases of the Philippine Islands. There he was able to isolate a widespread strain of dysentery, since known as the Flexner type.

Academic Career

By 1898 Flexner was promoted to full professor of pathological anatomy at Johns Hopkins. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania as a professor of pathology from 1899 to 1903. While in Pennsylvania Flexner researched problems in the areas of pathology, bacteriology, and immunology, and managed a governmental commission investigating bubonic plague in San Francisco. He also influenced the career of a brilliant Japanese physician, Hideyo Noguchi.

The Rockefeller Institute

Flexner is widely known for his work as the director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which was created in 1901. Excited by the possibilities presented by this new corps of investigators devoting all their time to medical research, Flexner accepted a position as one of the seven members of the institute's board of scientific directors. The board was headed by Flexner's mentor, William Welch. With Welch's advice Flexner organized the institute into several laboratory departments, instead of limiting its work to one particular subdivision of medical research. In 1924 Flexner was formally recognized for his outstanding contributions and named as director of the institution.

Research Breakthroughs

The Rockefeller Institute was gradually becoming internationally famous, partly due to the scientific achievements of Simon Flexner. Throughout his tenure at the institute Flexner still continued his research. In 1905, when New York was faced with an epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis, Flexner conceived the idea of injecting serum into the spinal canal. This method reduced the death rate from the disease by half. In 1907, during a poliomyelitis epidemic, Flexner found that the infectious agent was a filterable virus rather than a bacterial organism. His work in this area laid the groundwork for the development of the polio vaccine.

Honors and Achievements

Flexner was the editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine for nineteen years and published reports on his research in pathology and bacteriology. He was chairman of the Public Health Council of New York State and a trustee of the Johns Hopkins University and of the Carnegie Foundation of New York. His most notable achievement mayu be that of melding a group of individualistic senior colleagues into the renowned Rockefeller Institute.

Source:

Abraham Flexner, Abraham Flexner; An Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960).

Simon Flexner 1863-1946, American pathologist, b. Louisville, Ky., M.D. Univ. of Louisville, 1889; brother of Abraham Flexner . He served with the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockfeller Univ.) from 1903 to 1935 (as its first director, 1920-35) and was Eastman professor at Oxford from 1937 to 1938. He worked on experimental epidemiology and venoms and is known especially for his serum treatment of cerebrospinal meningitis and for his studies of poliomyelitis. He also isolated a bacillus of dysentery.