Medicine: Dr. Korell’s Reward

Almost 50 years ago, in a tiny hill town of Ohio’s Belmont County, young Dr. Frederick Archimedes Korell was confronted with a medical puzzler: a strange new children’s disease. Its symptoms: swollen glands, high fever, sore throat, coughing, abdominal pains. He was fresh from medical school and he had never heard of the disease. He treated the symptoms separately, and the children all recovered.

By 1896 he had seen 96 cases of “glandular fever,” so he wrote a paper describing the new disease, presented it before the county medical society. His elders scoffed at him, said he was making a great fuss over ordinary “biliousness,” or influenza.

Abashed, young Dr. Korell went home, locked up his manuscript. After 27 years of practice, he left medicine, turned to real estate and bill collecting, finally retired.

In a barbershop one day Dr. Korell fell to talking with Professor Charles William Pavey of Ohio State Medical School. He mentioned his experience with glandular fever. Dr. Pavey recognized the disease as infectious mononucleosis, described in 1886 by the Russian Nils Feodorovich Filatov, in 1889 by the German Richard Pfeiffer. Dr. Korell was the first U. S.

physician to recognize and describe this widespread disease, which even today is a mystery. Dr. Pavey told his colleagues about Dr. Korell, showed them the long-buried manuscript.

Last week, in Columbus, Ohio State faculty members gave a banquet for old Dr. Korell, presented his portrait to the medical school. The old country doctor smiled, ate the dinner, stammered a few words of thanks, wiped away a tear, went home to putter around his garden.