Scott Podolsky, MD

Educational History

  • 1993 A.B. (History and Science), summa cum laude, Harvard College
  • 1997 M.D., magna cum laude, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Podolsky is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Medicine and a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Since 2006, he has served as the Director of the Center for the History of Medicine based at the Countway Medical Library. He has co-authored Generation of Diversity: Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology (1997), authored Pneumonia before Antibiotics: Therapeutic Evolution and Evaluation in Twentieth-Century America (2006), and co-edited Oliver Wendell Holmes: Physician and Man of Letters (2009). His current research, concerning the history of antibiotics over the past half-century, looks at evolving interactions among physicians, patients, pharmaceutical companies, governmental agencies, and therapeutic reformers throughout this period.

Courses Taught

Introduction to Social Medicine

Pursing Inquiry in Medicine

Directed Study in the History of Medicine

Research Interests

History of 19th- and 20th-century therapeutics, with a focus upon the history of antibiotics, the evolving authority of the controlled clinical trial, and relationships among physicians, the pharmaceutical industry, and governmental agencies.

Current Projects

  • Antibiotics and the Dream of a Rational Therapeutics (book-length manuscript)
  • The Social History of the Controlled Clinical Trial

Select Publications

Manuscripts:

  • Scott H. Podolsky and Charles S. Bryan, editors, Oliver Wendell Holmes: Physician and Man of Letters (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2009).
  • Scott H. Podolsky, Pneumonia Before Antibiotics: Therapeutic Evolution and Evaluation in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
  • Scott H. Podolsky and Alfred I. Tauber, Generation of Diversity: Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Articles:

  • Scott H. Podolsky and George Davey Smith, “Park’s Story and Winter’s Tale: Alternate Allocation Clinical Trials in Turn of the Century America, ” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 104 (2011): 262-268. [See also at ]http://www.jameslindlibrary.org]
  • Scott H. Podolsky and Jeremy A. Greene, “Academic-Industrial Relations before the Blockbuster Drugs: Lessons from the Harvard Committee on Pharmacotherapy, 1939-1943, ” Academic Medicine 86 (2011): 496-501.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “Antibiotics and the Social History of the Controlled Clinical Trial, 1950-1970, ” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65 (2010) 327-367.
  • Charles S. Bryan and Scott H. Podolsky, “Dr. Holmes at 200 – The Spirit of Skepticism, ” New England Journal of Medicine 361 (2009): 846-847.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “Jesse Bullowa, Specific Treatment for Pneumonia, and the Development of the Controlled Clinical Trial, ” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 102 (2009): 203-207. [See also at The James Lind Library]
  • Jeremy A. Greene and Scott H. Podolsky, “Keeping Modern in Medicine: Pharmaceutical Promotion and Physician Education in Postwar America, ” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2009): 331-378.
  • Scott H. Podolsky and Jeremy A. Greene, “A Historical Perspective of Pharmaceutical Promotion and Physician Education, ” Journal of the American Medical Association 300 (2008): 831-833.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “The Importance of Archives for the History (and Practice) of Medicine and Science, ” Journal of the History of Dentistry 56 (2008): 127-130.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “Quintessential Beecher: Surgery as Placebo – A Quantitative Study of Bias, ” International Anesthesia Clinics 45 (2007): 47-63.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “The Changing Fate of Pneumonia as a Public Health Concern in Twentieth-Century America and Beyond, ” American Journal of Public Health 95 (2005): 2144-2154.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “Cultural Divergence: Elie Metchnikoff’s Bacillus Bulgaricus Therapy and his Underlying Conception of Health, ” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72 (1998): 1-27.
  • Scott H. Podolsky, “The Role of the Virus in Origin-of-Life Theorizing, ” Journal of the History of Biology 29 (1996): 79-126.
  • Scott H. Podolsky and Alfred I. Tauber, “Darwinism and Antibody Diversity: A Historical Perspective, ” Research in Immunology 147 (1996): 3-6.
  • Alfred I. Tauber and Scott H. Podolsky, “Frank MacFarlane Burnet and the Immune Self, ” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994): 531-574.