Robert Edgar Hope-Simpson - Work On Chickenpox and Shingles

Work On Chickenpox and Shingles

At that time it was known that Chickenpox and shingles were related, but how? Experts at the time were suggesting that two different viruses existed. Edgar Hope-Simpson increasingly believed there was only one, but how to prove it? In the end, he took his small team of research colleagues to the Island of Yell in Shetland in 1953 and literally followed up every known case in a much closed community. He was empowered by local islanders' memories for occurrences and dates. By 1962, new microbiological techniques enabled him to prove his point. Edgar believed that a virus could commonly lie dormant in the human body, for years, indeed decades, and then reappear in another form. Only an unusually determined researcher could have pursued the idea through fieldwork in the natural history tradition. He delivered his conclusion in the Albert Wander lecture on the 10th of June 1964, very properly and modestly describing it as his "hypothesis." His report became one of the most cited general practitioner publications. This was world class research in clinical medicine and Hope-Simpson made probably the most important clinical discovery in general practice in the 20th century. Later the virus, now known as the varicella zoster virus (VZV), was identified and isolated, and the researcher responsible (Thomas Huckle Weller) received a Nobel prize, although for his work on Polio. Later still, a therapy for herpes zoster was developed (Aciclovir) and one of the researchers, Gertrude B. Elion, too, received a Nobel prize.