美国国务院国际信息局（IIP）《美国参考》Mark Trainer从华盛顿报道，美国国家卫生研究院（U.S. National Institutes of Health）是世界上声望最高的科学研究机构之一。然而，致力于创建这一机构的人却曾遭人谩骂乃至追杀。

 

1900年夏天，约瑟夫•金荣（Joseph Kinyoun）大夫在旧金山成了加利福尼亚州最被痛恨的人，有人悬赏7000美元要他的脑袋。当时有多达100名军警保护他的安全，无论他走到哪里，都会成为众矢之的。

 

他在进入医学界时可能不会想到自己会陷入这样的处境。

 

乔（Joe）•金荣——他一直喜欢别人这样称呼他——童年时期就随当外科医生的父亲学医，后来进入纽约贝尔维医学院（Bellevue Hospital Medical College）深造。

 

他对研究家畜疾病产生了兴趣，随后申请到海员医院服务部（Marine Hospital Service）就职，并被派到埃利斯岛（Ellis Island）附近的斯塔滕岛海员医院（to Staten Island Marine Hospital）工作。埃利斯岛是霍乱等疾病从欧洲传入美国的一个主要通道。金荣在创建“卫生实验室”（Hygienic Lab）不到两个月后就在美国首次成功分离了霍乱杆菌，成为全国的一条重大新闻。

 

戴维•莫伦斯（David Morens）博士在国家卫生研究院就金荣的生平发表演讲时说：“他显然是一个有全局观的人物，一个在幕后做贡献的人物。”莫伦斯是一位流行病学家，对金荣的生平做过广泛深入的研究。他说：“他未必是一位一呼百应的风云人物，但他受到了科学界同行们的极大钦佩和爱戴。”

 

在整个19世纪90年代，金荣将传染病研究推向前进，在很多方面取得的成果都对现代卫生发展具有至关重要的意义。1894年，他推动了白喉抗毒素的改良和推广使用。他是美国首位成功地用血清治疗天花的医生。他发明了早期熏蒸消毒器和杀菌设备。他还是美国第一位尝试啮齿目动物生物防治的人。

 

然而，金荣在“卫生实验室”工作了13年后，于1899年被美国卫生总监派往旧金山，并在那里受到了种种非议。卫生总监当时希望他能阻止19世纪末在全世界蔓延的大规模瘟疫疫情传播到美国。旧金山被认为是瘟疫传入美国的可能性最大的一条通道。

 

金荣努力改善城市卫生，并设置了检疫站以备瘟疫爆发。商界领袖和加州政界人士对金荣的举措予以抵制，他们担心一提起瘟疫便会不公平地让加州背上不安全的恶名，损害加州经济，并招致没有必要的联邦干预。

 

1900年3月，金荣确认了美国发生的第一例瘟疫。加州卫生委员会（California Board of Health）就此出具了瘟疫在加州并不存在的证明。加州州长居然指责金荣把病菌植入死于其他原因的人的尸体内。加州议员要求绞死他，加州居民竭力反对他要实施的隔离检疫。他生活在恐惧之中，但仍继续开展这项不受欢迎的工作。在最初的两年内，瘟疫病例增加到了100例。

 

莫里斯介绍说：“在麦金利([William] McKinley)总统办公室里达成了这样一笔交易：加利福尼亚州同意让海员医院服务部派人来负责消灭瘟疫，但有两个条件：首先该州根本不必承认发生过瘟疫，其次是撤金荣的职。他们撤了他的职。”

 

金荣的朋友亨利•卡特（Henry Rose Carter）恳请他不要放弃他的工作。卡特给金荣写信说：“别这样做，老伙计。请相信我……你的……一生和有价值的工作是绝不会被遗忘的。”卡特本人也是公共卫生史上的一位重要人物，他后来帮助沃尔特•里德（Walter Reed）发现了黄热病是如何传播的。

 

在金荣被解职以后，卫生总监召来了3名全国最著名的细菌学家，他们都证实了金荣所作判断的准确性。就在金荣离开海员医院服务部时，国会已着手颁行由金荣本人起草的《生物制品管制法》（Biologics Control Act），将生物制品的生产标准化，并为此而成立食品和药物管理局（Food and Drug Administration）。国会还通过了扩大“卫生实验室”并使其正式确立的立法。这是创建后来成为国家卫生研究院的这一机构的首次正式立法。

 

10年后，参议员罗伯特•欧文（Robert L. Owen）提出一项成立由一位内阁成员领导的国家卫生部的议案。他在一次发言中提及旧金山爆发瘟疫的事件，并支持金荣和海员医院服务部当时采取的行动。

 

金荣在1906年的一次讲话中说：“我相信有必要有一个全国性卫生机构，这个机构将与各州卫生当局合作，支持并帮助他们防止传染性疾病的蔓延。应当安排最优秀的人才来研究这些问题。”

 

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Dr. Joseph Kinyoun in 1887 while in the Marine Hospital Service

Washington — The U.S. National Institutes of Health is among the world's most respected scientific organizations. Yet it owes its existence to a man who was reviled and even hunted.

In the summer of 1900, Dr. Joseph Kinyoun was in San Francisco with a $7,000 bounty on his head, as many as 100 policemen and soldiers protecting him and — as one of the most hated men in California — a loaded gun wherever he went.

This was probably not where he expected to find himself when he went into medicine.

Joe Kinyoun, as he always wanted to be called, apprenticed with his father, a surgeon, when he was a child and eventually attended the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York.

After he developed an interest in farm animal disease, Kinyoun applied for a position in the Marine Hospital Service and was sent to Staten Island Marine Hospital, near Ellis Island, a major entry for cholera and other diseases coming from Europe. Within two months of starting his “Hygienic Lab,” Kinyoun made national news by isolating cholera for the first time in the United States.

“He was clearly a big-picture guy, a behind-the-scenes guy,” said Dr. David Morens in a lecture on Kinyoun’s life at the National Institutes of Health. Morens is an epidemiologist who has done extensive research on Kinyoun’s life. "He was not necessarily a mover and shaker, not necessarily a leader of men, but greatly admired and beloved by his fellow scientists.”

Throughout the 1890s, Kinyoun pushed the study of infectious diseases forward with advances that have been essential to modern health. He helped refine and distribute a diphtheria antitoxin in the United States in 1894. He was the first physician to successfully treat smallpox with serum. He invented early fumigators and disinfecting equipment. He was the first to attempt biological control of rodents.

But his greatest notoriety would come when, after Kinyoun had spent 13 years at his Hygienic Lab, the U.S. surgeon general sent him to San Francisco in 1899 in hopes of preventing the plague pandemic that had been spreading around the world in the last years of the 19th century from spreading throughout the United States. San Francisco was considered to be the plague's most likely route of entry into the country.

Kinyoun worked to improve sanitation in the city and to prepare quarantine stations in case of an outbreak. Business leaders and California politicians fought Kinyoun, fearful that talk of a plague would unfairly brand their state as unsafe, harm the economy and encourage unwanted federal intervention.

In March of 1900, Kinyoun confirmed the first case of plague in the United States. The California Board of Health responded by certifying that plague did not exist in their state. The governor went so far as to accuse Kinyoun of planting disease bacteria on corpses that had died from other causes. California legislators called for his hanging, and residents fought the quarantines he tried to impose. He lived in fear, continuing with his unpopular work. The total number of cases of plague climbed to 100 within the first two years.

“In President [William] McKinley’s office," reported Morens, "a deal was cut as follows: The state of California would allow the Marine Hospital Service to come in and take charge of plague eradication on two conditions: They never had to admit the plague existed in the first place and Kinyoun would be fired. They fired him.”

Kinyoun’s friend Henry Rose Carter, himself an important figure in the history of public health who would go on to help Walter Reed discover how yellow fever was transmitted, pleaded with Kinyoun not to leave his work. “Don’t you do it, old man!” Carter wrote to Kinyoun. “Believe me … your … life and good works will never be lost.”

In the wake of Kinyoun’s ouster, the surgeon general called in three of the top bacteriologists in the country, each of whom verified the accuracy of Kinyoun’s work. Even as Kinyoun was leaving the Marine Hospital Service, Congress was enacting legislation that Kinyoun had himself drafted: the Biologics Control Act, standardizing the production of biologics and leading to the formation of the Food and Drug Administration, and legislation that expanded and formalized the Hygienic Laboratory. This was the first formal legislation creating what would become the National Institutes of Health.

Ten years later, Senator Robert L. Owen introduced a bill to create a national department of health headed by a Cabinet secretary, recalling in a speech the San Francisco plague outbreak and defending Kinyoun and the Marine Hospital Service’s actions.

“I do believe in a national sanitary organization, which would cooperate with, aid and assist the state sanitary authorities ... in preventing the spread of communicable diseases,” Kinyoun said in a 1906 speech. “The best available talent should be utilized in the study of these problems.”