Peyton Rous
Abstract
For his pioneering research on the link between viruses and cancer, the pathologist Francis Peyton Rous was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1966. Working primarily at the mainly at the Rockefeller Institute after 1909, Rous first came to notice for his theoretical construction of the first blood bank for use in France during World War I, a plan ultimately implemented by his assistant, Oswald H. Robertson. Subsequently, he left an important imprint on the development of experimental medicine, partly through his own research on the origins of cancer and his administrative activities at the Rockefeller, but also as editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine from 1921-1970.

The Rous Papers include correspondence, lectures, articles, reports, laboratory records, reprints, and photographs that document all aspects of the life and work of Peyton Rous. Reflecting his work at the Institute are letters of colleagues, information on assistants, and reports to the directors (1909-1959). Additional material relates to Rous' diverse organizational interests, including the American Cancer Society, Century Association, Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research (at Yale University), Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Johns Hopkins University, National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, New York Academy of Medicine, Royal Society of Medicine Foundation, and Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research

Background note

Peyton Rous

A pathologist, Francis Peyton Rous, was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1966 for his discovery of carcinogenic viruses. Born in Texas in 1879 and raised in Baltimore, Rous received his professional indoctrination entirely at Johns Hopkins, where he received both his bachelors (1900) and medical degrees (1905). After beginning his internship -- again at Hopkins -- he was quickly confirmed in his preference for research over clinical work, and therefore decided to accept a lower-paying position at the University of Michigan, rather than continue down the clinical path. Relegated to a position that had him working essentially as a technician, Rous found compensation in Ann Arbor through his department head, Alfred Warthin, who encouraged him to apply for and accept a fellowship in 1907 to study morbid anatomy at Dresden, where he honed his skills as a researcher.

Rous returned from Europe to take up a grant from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to pursue research on lymphocytes, during the course of which, he caught the eye of Simon Flexner, and earned a call to the staff at Rockefeller. From the time of his remove to New York, Rous' research gained enormous momentum. In 1909, his most important series of experiments examined the transmission of spontaneous cancerous tumors in chickens. Preparing a cell-free filtrate from a malignant sarcoma isolated from a chicken leg and injecting it into healthy hens, Rous discovered that the recipients developed precisely the same tumors as the donors, and that the tumors could be transmitted either by direct injection or through injection into fertilized eggs, hypothesizing that a virus was the agent responsible for transmission. Other tumors, too, turned out to be similarly transmissible, with similar fidelity in producing cancers of the donors in the recipients.

Using mice, however, Rous' initial efforts to assess whether tumors could be transmitted in mammals were unavailing until in 1932, his friend and Rockefeller colleague, Richard Shope, asked Rous to investigate the benign papillomas commonly found in wild rabbits which were shown to be transmissible by cell-free extracts. Despite mounting evidence for Rous' viral theory of cancer, there was considerable resistance among medical researchers to its acceptance, who argued that Rous had discovered a condition peculiar to birds and benign tumors, rather than malignant cancers. It was not until the 1950s that subsequent research in virology changed the situation and led to its inculcation as a central element in the theory of cancer origins.

Several other projects in which Rous participated resulted in important medical advances. During the First World War, he and Oswald Robertson were instrumental in developing a citrate-dextrose solution that, when added to preserved blood, provided nourishment and prevented clotting, extending its shelf life for up to four weeks. The practical result was the establishment of the first blood banks in 1918. Rous also exerted an influence over medical research through his position as long-time co-editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine and from the administrative heights of his perch at the Rockefeller.

Rous retired from the Institute at age 65 and accepted emeritus status. An innovative and remarkably productive researcher in a high-profile area in medical research, he was recipient of the laurels of his profession. A foreign member of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Medicine in England, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society (1939), the National Academy of Sciences, and several similar societies in Denmark, Norway, and France, and he received honorary degrees from eight universities, including Cambridge, Michigan, Yale, and Chicago. A winner of the Kovalenko Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Service Award of the American Cancer Society, the Lasker Award, the National Medal of Science, the Paul Ehrlich-Ludwig Darmstädter Award, and the United Nations Prize for Cancer Research, his career was capped with receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1966, shared equally with
Charles Brenton Huggins, M.D., Professor of Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
Rous had three daughters with his wife, Marion Eckford DeKay, one of whom, Marion, married the Nobel laureate Alan Hodgkin. Rous died on February 16, 1970.
 
 

Scope and content
The papers of Peyton Rous are a large and diverse assemble of correspondence, manuscripts, and photographs relating to the medical researcher and Nobel laureate who developed the viral theory of the origins of cancer.

The collection includes a substantial series of files relating to Rous' involvement as editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, providing a glimpse into his editorial philosophy, and more generally, his philosophy on medical research.

Arrangement

Series I. Correspondence  ca.1917-1970  47 linear feet
Series II. Oswald H. Robertson Material  1917-1960  0.5 linear feet
Series III. Card files and miscellaneous  1909-1950s  12 linear feet
 
 

Administrative information
Restrictions on use
None.

Preferred citation
Cite as: Peyton Rous Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Provenance
Gift of Francis Peyton Rous, 1969; the Rous estate, 1970; and Paul F. Cranefield, 1973 (accession numbers 1969-756ms, 1970-1563ms, and 1973-2538ms).
 

Additional information
Related material
The papers of Rous' former assistants, Oswald Hope Robertson (call no. B R546) and James B. Murphy (B M956), contain correspondence with Rous and information on their work in establishing blood banks during the First World War and after. Rous appears as a correspondent in several other collections, including the papers of Simon Flexner, Eugene Opie, Leon Cole, and Harold Amoss.

Separated material
Two sets of Rous's reprints were transferred to the Printed Materials Department for storage. These includes two boxes of reprints by Rous (call no. 616 pam.r) and seven boxes of reprints by other researchers (616 pam.ro).

Language(s) represented
English.

Bibliography
Renato Dulbecco, "Francis Peyton Rous, October 5, 1879 - February 16, 1970," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 48 (1976). Call no.: 506.73 N18b v.48.

"A notable career in finding out : Peyton Rous, 1879-1970," Rockefeller University Occasional Paper 16 (1971). Call no.: B R77r.

Other finding aids
Also described in Lily Kay, Molecules, Cells, and Life
 

Added entries
Subjects
American Cancer Society
Blood banks
Blood--Research
Cancer--Research
Century Association (New York, N.Y.)
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Johns Hopkins University
Journal of Experimental Medicine
Medical sciences
Medicine, Experimental
Medicine--Research
Medicine--Research--Finance
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
National Research Council (U.S.)
New York Academy of Medicine
Nobel Prize
Pathology
Paul Ehrlich Stiftung
Rockefeller Institute
Royal Society of Medicine Foundation
Science publishing
Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research
Viruses
World War, 1914-1918--Medical care

Contributors
Addis, Thomas, 1881-1949
Andrewes, Christopher Howard, Sir, 1896-
Baudisch, Oskar
Bayne-Jones, Stanhope, 1888-1970
Beard, Joseph W., 1901-
Berenblum, Isaac, 1903-
Blankenhorn, Marion Arthur, 1885-1957
Bronk, Detlev Wulf, 1897-1975
Cattell, James McKeen, 1860-1944
Compton, Arthur Holly, 1892-1962
Corner, George Washington, 1889-1981
Crutcher, Katherine G.
Cutler, Richard B.
Dean, Henry R.
DeMaeyer, E. M.
Dolman, Claude E., 1906-
Dubos, René J. (René Jules), 1901-
Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946
Gasser, Herbert Spencer, 1888-1963
Gilding, Henry P.
Gregg, Alan, 1890-1957
Gye, Will E.
Hevesy, George von, 1885-1966
Huggins, Charles Brenton, 1901-
Johnson, Earl
Karsner, Howard Thomas, b. 1879
Kidd, John Graydon, 1908-
Krumbhaar, E. B. (Edward Bell), 1882-
Landsteiner, Karl, 1868-1943
Lipschutz, Alexander
Loeb, Leo, 1869-1959
LuckGe, Baldwin
MacNider, William de Berniere, 1881-1951
McDermott, Walsh, 1909-
Mooser, Hermann
Osler, William, Sir, 1849-1919
Robertson, Oswald Hope, 1886-1966
Rogers, E. Stanfield
Rous, Peyton, 1879-1970
Shope, Richard E., 1901-1966
Smith, Frederick
Stanley, Wendell Meredith, 1932-
TenBroeck, Carl, 1885-1966
Warthin, Aldred Scott, 1866-1931
Whipple, George Hoyt, 1878-
Wyckoff, Ralph W. G. (Ralph Walter Graystone), 1897-
Zinsser, Hans, 1878-1940

Genre terms
Articles
Lectures
Photographs
 Contact information

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Sponsor:
Encoding made possible by a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to the Philadelphia Consortium of Special Collections Libraries. 

From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1963-1970, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam

Peyton Rous was born in Texas in 1879. His mother's ancestors were Huguenots who settled in Virginia after the Edict of Nantes. Just before the Civil War in the 1860's her father, foreseeing disaster, bought land in Texas, moving his big family there after it ended. There he became a judge «riding three counties», and the family throve.

His father, a Baltimorean of English forebears, married his mother while visiting Texas, and returning home became an exporter of grain to Europe. His father died early, leaving his mother with three small children and only scanty means to support them. Yet she would not return to the security of her Texas kin because she was bent on obtaining the best possible education for her children; and what with makeshifts of one sort or another in Baltimore she did it!

During his second year in the Johns Hopkins Medical School - after getting a B. A. from its University in 1900 - Peyton Rous scraped the skin of a finger on a tuberculous bone while doing an autopsy and soon a «corpse tubercle» formed there. The disease travelled to his axillary glands, and after their removal he was told no more could be done than «to go away and try to get well». Peyton Rous went to Texas, there an uncle got him a job «for his keep» on a ranch near Quanah; and in early spring a friend living in the town told him he was sending «two covered wagons» full of hardware to the Spur Ranch, 125 miles west of the railway, and asked if Peyton would like to go along with them. On reaching «The Spur» Peyton Rous was given the job of helping on horseback in the «round ups» of cattle scattered on its huge expanse, and of course he slept on the ground like everyone. During exhilarating months there Peyton learned a superb fact not taught at college, namely that uneducated men can be as great-hearted and lovable as those who know much. This has been a continual source of cheer to him ever since.

Back at the Medical School after having lost (!) a year, he graduated in 1905 and became an interne in its Hospital. Then, finding himself unfit to be a «real doctor», he turned to medical research instead, and for this purpose became an Instructor in Pathology at the University of Michigan on a beggarly salary. His work in the laboratory turned out to be mainly that of a technician because the University had small funds only, but with noble generosity Professor Alfred Warthin, head of the Department, came to his rescue, actually offering to «teach Summer School» in his stead, and give Peyton the sum thus earned, if he would study German hard and use the money to go for the summer to a certain hospital in Dresden where morbid anatomy was taught. Dresden in 1907! Exquisite city in an exquisite land, with no hint of war in the air!

After his return Dr. Warthin told Peyton Rous that the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was casting a wide net of grants for beginners, and he asked him if Peyton would like him to apply for one that would free Peyton for experimental work. That grant enabled Rous to find out enough about lymphocytes to be deemed worth publishing in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, edited by Simon Flexner, who was also the director of the Institute; and after another few months Flexner asked Rous to take over the laboratory for cancer research which Flexner was quitting to learn more about poliomyelitis, then crippling many American children.

Since these happenings in 1909 the life of Peyton Rous as a working scientist has been halcyon. Soon after beginning it he was able to prove that some «spontaneous» chicken tumours, to all appearances classical neoplasms, are actually started off and driven by viruses which determine their forms as well. These findings led him to spend several years trying to get similar agents from mouse cancers; but, failing in this, he left off working with tumours in 1915, turning instead to the study of other problems in physiological pathology. The results of the study encouraged Rous to undertake further efforts in the same field, and he did not return to the theme of cancer until 1934 when a unique opportunity was offered to him. Dr. Richard Shope, a close friend on the Institute staff, asked Rous to work with a virus which Shope had discovered and found to be responsible for the giant warts often present on the skin of wild rabbits in the southwestern U. S. A. Were they perhaps real tumours? Rous could not resist this generous challenge and he has worked ever since not only with the «warts» themselves - which proved to be benign tumours from which cancers frequently take off - but with other problems of neoplasms.

Investigation on cancer means more to the public than that on any other disease. It may be partly for that reason that Rous has received more than a few honours and awards. Many universities have given him honorary degrees. He is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of England, as also of its Royal Society of Medicine, and that of Denmark, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The Weizmann Institute of Science has appointed Rous an Honorary Fellow and the Academy of Medicine in Paris a Foreign Correspondent. The Kovalenko Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Distinguished Service Award of the American Cancer Society were given to him. Rous also received a Lasker Award of the American Public Health Association, as also a United Nations Prize for Cancer Research; and during 1966 a National Medal of Science has come to him from the U S.A., and the Paul Ehrlich-Ludwig Darmstädter Award from the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 1920 Peyton Rous became a Member of the Rockefeller Institute, and in 1945, when 65 years old, he became a Member Emeritus but continued to be busy in the laboratory as was the case until his death. Recently the Rockefeller Institute has become the Rockefeller University. It supported the work of Rous as amply as was his good fortune in the past.

Peyton Rous married Marion Eckford deKay; she was the daughter of a scholarly commentator on the arts. They brought to each other different likings that have delightfully widened the enjoyment of their lives together. They have three daughters: Marion, Ellen and Phoebe. Marion's husband, Alan Hodgkin is a Professor of Biophysics at Cambridge University and received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1963. Phoebe married Thomas J. Wilson who died in 1969; he was formerly Director of the Harvard University Press.

Dr Peyton Rous* died on the 16th of February, 1970.
 

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* In this biography, which is based on Rous's own autobiographical note, nothing has been said about the work on blood and liver which occupied him between 1915 and 1934. In particular Rous has not mentioned the pioneer research on blood transfusion with J. R. Turner and O. H. Robertson which led to the establishment in 1917 of the world's first blood bank near the front line in Belgium.

From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1963-1970, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam

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