S-1139. SABIN, Almer L., 1852-1908.

The role that popular medical literature played in informing the American public about recent developments in laboratory science and the implications of these discoveries on the diagnosis and treatment of disease is a topic that has received scant attention from medical historians. The testimony of a family practitioner of the 1880s provides an interesting perspective on this question: “The discovery in the last few years that nearly all diseases are caused by living germs taken into the body, has created a vast revolution which amounts to a distinctive era in medical practice, and these results have not heretofore been placed before the people in the shape of a family practice, but they have been kept together within the ranks of medical profession, and the claim is commonly made by the physician that the producing germs of disease are so intricate and minute that the nonprofessional man cannot sufficiently investigate them so that the knowledge which he obtains will be of any practical importance to him. While their claim may be true, yet it does not interfere with the fact, that the scientific man can lay before the common people the results of his investigations in a perfectly plain and simple manner” (p. [xvii]-xviii). A few pages later Sabin adds, “The recent discoveries of medical science have been quite as marvelous as those made in any field of science. Medical works written a few years ago are therefore necessarily much behind the times … Many diseases which have hitherto been looked upon as accidental in their origin have been traced to living germs … Thus a new world has been brought to light, a flood of information which has shown the utter futility of old methods of treatment in a vast number of cases” (p. xxi-xxii).

Sabin received the first of his two medical degrees from the Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine & Surgery (Chicago) in 1880, and was licensed to practice in Illinois that same year. The 1886 (1st) edition of Polk places Sabin in Washington, Ind. In 1891 Sabin received his second medical degree from the College of Physicians & Surgeons in Chicago.