What is the most unusual circumstance that a major medical breakthrough was discovered?

 

What is the most unusual circumstance that a major medical breakthrough was discovered?

In 1909, a 25-year-old businessman living in New York heard a knock on the door from a stranger, Dr. Addison Davis Hard, that turned his world upside down. Never could he imagine that he wasn’t who he thought he was but his birth was a medical first.

Twenty-five years earlier, his parents visited a Philadelphia physician named William Pancoast, desperate to have a baby. After careful examinations, the doctor realized that his 31-year-old patient was failing not through any fault of her own, but because her husband’s semen was absolutely void of sperm.

After two months, Pancoast could not treat the husband’s problem and concluded that his seminal ducts were permanently obstructed and he was sterile.

Instead of telling the couple, he took a semen sample taken from one of his medical students, later Dr. Addison Davis Hard, and inseminated his patient while she was anesthetized during what she thought was a routine gynecological exam.

Nine months later, the woman gave birth to a healthy boy, much to their delight. Pancoast later repented his action and informed the husband what had happened. Surprisingly, the husband was not offended and conspired with Pancoast in sparing her the truth. The medical breakthrough was kept secret for 25 years until Dr. Addison Davis Hard finally fessed up in a letter in Medical World.

For most of history infertility has primarily been a woman’s disease. It was believed that as long as a man could still ejaculate, he wouldn’t be considered sterile. Pancoast’s procedure was the first successful example of a woman falling pregnant following artificial insemination with sperm from a donor, upending the theory that infertility was a female problem. Pancoast became a pioneer in the practice of sperm donation and artificial insemination, but also a case study of unethical practices in medicine.