Thomas McPherson Brown (1906–1989) was a rheumatologist who held unorthodox views about the basis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and believed it could be cured with

antibiotic An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of ...

s. Brown graduated from

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

then attended

Johns Hopkins Medical School The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

. He did his medical residency at the hospital associated with the Rockefeller Institute.At Rockefeller he did research on

synovial fluid Synovial fluid, also called synovia, elp 1/sup> is a viscous, non-Newtonian fluid found in the cavities of synovial joints. With its egg white–like consistency, the principal role of synovial fluid is to reduce friction between the articular ...

from people with RA and in 1937 found ''

Mycoplasma ''Mycoplasma'' is a genus of bacteria that, like the other members of the class ''Mollicutes'', lack a cell wall around their cell membranes. Peptidoglycan (murein) is absent. This characteristic makes them naturally resistant to antibiotics ...

'' in the fluid from some patients, leading him to believe that RA might be an infectious disease. His work was interrupted by service in World War II; after the war he obtained a position at George Washington University and began to experimentally treat some people with RA with antibiotics, which at the time were a new class of drugs. Some of the people he treated were members of Congress or ambassadors, and some of them responded positively. He presented his work at a conference in 1949; at the same conference, the new drug cortisone was presented, and it overshadowed his work and became the leading treatment for RA. Throughout his career, Brown fought to have his antibiotic treatments recognized by the medical establishment; they were not.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Thomas McPherson 1906 births 1989 deaths American rheumatologists 20th-century American physicians