Franklin P. Mall

Franklin Paine Mall (September 28, 1862 – November 17, 1917) was an American anatomist and pathologist known for his research and literature in the fields of anatomy and embryology. Mall was granted a fellowship for the Department of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins University and after positions at other universities, later returned to be the head of the first Anatomy Department at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. There, he reformed the field of anatomy and its educational curriculum. Mall was the founder and the first chief of the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution for Science. He later donated his collection of human embryos that he started as a postgraduate student to the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Biography

Early life Franklin Mall was born to German immigrants Franz Mall and Louise Christine Miller, on a farm in Belle Plaine, Iowa. At the age of ten, Mall's mother died, and his stepmother showed no affection towards him. Mall was unhappy in his childhood, and he had little opportunity to challenge his intellect both at home and in school. Mall later met John McCarthy, a teacher at the local academy who greatly impacted Mall's learning experience and life. Mall, in a personal correspondence, wrote that while he hated history as a child, Mr. McCarthy "showed [him] he liked it." With this newfound appreciation of academic pursuit, Mall was able to attain higher education. During his time at Ann Arbor, Mall was drawn to three of his professors: Corydon Ford, Victor Vaughn, and Henry Sewall. In 1885, Mall went to Leipzig to begin his career in research under the guidance of Wilhelm His. Mall's first project resulted in evidence that contradicted his mentor's position on the origin of the thymus, concluding that it develops from the endoderm instead of the ectoderm. His later revisited the issue and acknowledged the validity of Mall's work. During his time with His, Mall also started a collection of human embryos that he would continue to expand for the rest of his career.

Career

Early career In 1886, Mall returned to the United States to undertake a fellowship in pathology at the Johns Hopkins University. Training under William H. Welch, Mall studied the anatomy of the intestine and stomach. Mall's collaboration with William Halstead on connective tissue led to the development of a new method of surgical suturing for the intestine. Mall was also given the freedom to run the department and teach according to his ideals of medical education; his focus on explorative learning led him to set up a dissection teaching laboratory that was conveniently located close to the neighborhood abattoir.

He served as the seventh president of the Association of American Anatomists from 1905 to 1908.

Educational reforms As chair of the Department of Anatomy, Mall criticized the existing anatomy curriculum at Johns Hopkins and was especially particular about the lack of practical work such as dissection. Mall introduced a revised curriculum that rarely involved lecture; instead, he believed that self-directed learning, facilitated by practical experience, was optimal. However, Mall defended the importance of research, criticizing the implementation of policies that established full-time teaching faculty, treating their classroom obligations as an obstacle to scientific advancement.

Embryology Contributions to embryology Mall started his collection of human embryos in 1887 while working under William H. Welch at the Johns Hopkins University. The collection continued to grow while working with Wilhelm His, further expanding after his return to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In his 1917 paper studying abnormal embryo and fetus growth, Mall reported that his collection consisted of approximately 2000 embryos, growing quickly at the rate of about 400 a year.

Mall's collection became the foundation of the Carnegie Collection and his embryos were extensively used in scientific papers and reviews. Before founding the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution, Mall looked for ways to standardize the study of human embryology. In collaboration with Franz Keibel, Mall published the Manual of Human Embryology in 1912.

Mall was also the first person to stage human embryos using photographs of their external structure, first grouping 226 human embryos into 14 stages. This was then expanded to 23 stages by Mall's successor, George L. Streeter. Mall championed the recruitment of scientific talents and the conducive organization of research institutes to efficiently conduct research.

In early 1913, Mall received a preliminary grant of $6000 from the Carnegie Institute for Science to organize a broad-spectrum lab addressing scientific problems of varying disciplines.

Scientific research In his 1905 publication in the American Journal of Anatomy, Mall was the first to show that both the main arteries and the primary veins of the embryo pig could be reached by via the delivery of India Ink directly into the blood vessels of the liver.

In 1907, Mall identified a precursor of the internal jugular vein in the head, naming it as the anterior cardinal vein. In addition, Mall showed that the anterior cardinal vein was implicated in the formation of dural sinuses.

In a 1910 article entitled "Determination of the age of human embryos and fetuses" in the Manual of Human Embryology, Mall demonstrated that the nascent atrium of the heart could be identified based on the close proximity of endothelium to the heart muscle. This is in contrast to the significant distance observed between the endothelium and the heart muscle in other localities in the embryonic heart.

In 1913, Mall developed an empirical method for calculating the age of a human fetus. Namely, the age of an embryo could be obtained by:

Embryo Age (days) = sqrt of total foetal length in cm X 100.

Publications

Franklin P. Mall, Franz Keibel (1910). Manual of Human Embryology, Vol 1. Philadelphia and London, J.B. Lippincott Company.

Franklin P. Mall, Franz Keibel (1912). Manual of Human Embryology, Vol 2. Philadelphia and London, J.B. Lippincott Company.