One stamp one story: Flexible endoscopy

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Need and desire to peep through small holes, to identify and treat human diseases was always there. Challenge was how to make it happen. Real efforts started early in 19th century with small tubes and candle light (Phillip Bozzini 1806; Uteroscope). Over next 100 years, we had long rigid tubes, and light bulb that could help us see inside an abdominal cavity (Hans Christian Jacobaeus, 1910; Laparoscope). Rigid scopes had a limitation, it was difficult and risky to insert them through a food-pipe or a wind-pipe. Further, these rigid pipes had a limited reach. Scientists were still trying, on how to make light travel along a curved line. In 1932, Rudolph Schindler developed a first semi-rigid gastroscope, that used a series of optical lenses at its distal end. This would change 25 years later in 1957, with birth of first truly flexible endoscope.

A series of coincidences

Basil Isaac Hirschowitz was born in 1925. His parents who were Lithuanian Jews had sought refuge from persecution, and had moved to South Africa a few years ago. None-the-less, Hirschowitz excelled in academics, and moved to England in 1947 after his initial medical training in South Africa. Over next six years, he trained at Hammersmith Hospital in London, and later in 1953 moved to University of Michigan.

In 1954 Keith Henley, a gastroenterology registrar at Hammersmith, London was on a visit to Michigan to search for a job. Henley met Hirschowitz, and the two had a luncheon conversation about optical fibres. At this time Hirschowitz was working on a miniature camera, to capture endoscopic images. In the same year, two physicists (Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany) had made a discovery. They could transmit light through a bundle of flexible transparent fibres, even if it was bent to 360 degrees. Hirschowitz immediately contacted Kapany, visited London, and travelled back with such optical fibres.

An invention, and its testing

Hirschowitz teamed up with Wilbur Peters, a physicist and Lawrence Curtiss, his student. Over the next two years, they could fashion a flexible endoscope, with a camera. Hirschowitz first tested the device on himself, then on a patient. In 1957, he demonstrated his device in a gastroscopy conference. His audience included Rudolph Schindler, inventor of the then prevalent scope.

Three years later in 1960, we had our first commercially available gastroscope. Three years later, first colonoscopes were born. Over next ten years, Olympus and Machida, two endoscope manufacturers, improved upon length, flexibility and controls of the instrument. By 1974 endoscopes could navigate deeper into the pancreatic opening. 1980’s was the beginning of the digital revolution, and by the year 2000 imaging was high definition.

Epilogue

Meanwhile Hirschowitz, inventor of first flexible endoscope settled in Alabama. Bestowed with various awards and recognitions, he lived till age of 87, and passed way in 2013. He was also an avid gardener, photographer, collected African antiques and Stamps. He was named a fellow of Royal British Society of Philately in 1992.