Venous disease in limbs with KTS is a major source of morbidity in affected patients. Limbs with KTS are characterized by complex reflux patterns, severe valvular incompetence, calf muscle pump impairment, and venous hypertension, thus explaining the advanced clinical severity (VCSS) and CEAP grade.
In this article, the authors offer a new perspective on how the administration of Compound E (ie, cortisone) to a volunteer Mayo Clinic patient with rheumatoid arthritis and the patient’s subsequent miraculous improvement led not only to a major, successful clinical trial but also a Nobel Prize. The early and late side effects as an undesirable outcome of treatment of corticosteroids would soon follow. Corticosteroid side effects became known in popular culture, first through an indepth article in
The New Yorker
by medical journalist Berton Roueché, and later through a major fiction film,
Bigger than Life
, directed by Nicholas Ray. The film used cortisone as a plot device to “unmask” what the filmmaker perceived to be the lie of middle class prosperity in America of the 1950s.
Bigger than Life
is also a cinematic argument against the use of cortisone. Dr. Philip Hench was also connected to
Bigger than Life,
and the Ray-Hench connection is further explored based on newly found material. The discovery of “wonder drug” cortisone and its potential side effects—all carefully described in the Roueché article but exaggerated in Nicholas Ray’s film in the 1950s—show how medicine can be portrayed in popular culture.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.