MURPHY, JAMES BUMGARDNER

(b. Morganton, North Carolina, 4 August 1884; d. Bar Harbor, Maine, 24 August 1950)

biology.

Murphy was the son of Patrick Livingston Murphy, a pioneer in modern psychiatric therapy and director of the state mental hospital at Morganton. He received the B.S. from the University of North Carolina in 1905 and the M.D. in 1909 from the Johns Hopkins University, where his surgical finesse was appreciated by Harvey Cushing, who became his good friend. From 1910 to 1950, the year of his retirement and of his death, he pursued research on cancer and related physiological problems as a scientist and later as administrator at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City.

Brought to the Institute in 1910 by the noted cancer researcher and his first collaborator, Peyton Rous, Murphy soon demonstrated a skill in developing methods to answer the ill-defined and unlimited questions concerning the origin and growth of malignant tissues. In showing that the frozen and dried tissue extract of the spindle-cell chicken sarcoma (Chicken Tumor I) could be used to transmit this form of cancer, he produced one of the earliest successful applications of the process known as Kophilization, now commonly used in biological research. Later he perfected the technique of growing a chicken tumor virus in fertilized eggs, a method of fundamental importance to virus research.

In 1923 Murphy was placed in charge of the department of cancer research, succeeding Rous, who had turned to other research interests. Thus Murphy began to play a significant role in determining the direction of cancer research for over a quarter of a century at the Rockefeller Institute.

Two lectures presented by Murphy as Thayer lecturer at Johns Hopkins in 1935 summarized the four main lines of cancer research, for which he had helped to lay the foundation, in the first half of the twentieth century. These areas, which were explored independently, included the discovery that certain tumors in mice could be transplanted, that specific chemical substances produced malignancies after an animal was repeatedly exposed to them, that certain cancers occurred more frequently in individ- uals whose ancestors had expressed the same disease, and that chicken tumors were transplantable and were equivalent to cancer in mammals. He emphasized that the data gathered to test the inheritance factor were useful in examining the possibility that cancer was an infectious disease transmitted by a parasite; he later became more skeptical of this mode of transmission as an explanation of the origin of cancer. By 1942 Murphy had reduced the main lines of research to the first three of these areas and pointed out how study of chemical carcinogens was on the rise.

A skilled administrator, Murphy wisely marshaled public support for cancer research and stressed the need for increasing public awareness of the early signs of treatable cancers, especially breast and uterine tumors. He encouraged the formation of the Woman’s Field Army, which campaigned for women to seek medical aid when suspicious symptoms in these areas first developed. As a member of the board of the American Society for Control of Cancer, which became the American Cancer Society in 1929, he sought to change public opinion from one of shame toward cancer victims to sympathy for them and interest in their care.

Murphy contributed his knowledge and talents to a broad range of activities in the field of cancer research. He lectured extensively and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, American Society for Cancer Research, of which he was president from 1921 to 1922, American Society of Experimental Pathology, and a number of foreign scientific societies. He was on the editorial board of the journal Cancer Research, and served as a delegate to several international congresses devoted to cancer studies. He received numerous medals and awards, and honorary doctorates from the University of Louvain, the University of North Carolina, and Oglethorpe University.

At his death, Murphy was survived by his wife, Ray Slater Murphy, and his two sons.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Murphy published over 130 papers between 1907 and 1950. Over three-quarters of these were collaborative papers published in association with visitors and staff at the Rockefeller Institute, including F. Duran-Reynals, Arthur W. M. Ellis, Fred Gates, R. G. Hussey, Karl Landsteiner, Douglas A. MacFayden, J. Maisin, John J. Morton, Waro Nakahara, Peyton Rous, H. D. Taylor, W. H. Tytler, and especially Ernest Sturm, his last assistant and colleague for 31 years.

His more significant papers include a series published between 1911 and 1914 describing transplanted chicken tumors. Most appear in the Journal of Experimental Medicine; “The Lymphocyte in Resistance to Tissue Grafting, Malignant Disease, and Tuberculosis Infection. An Experimental Study,”in Rockefeller Institute Mono- graphs, no. 21 (1926); “Experimental Approach to the Cancer Problem. I. Four Important Phases of Cancer Research. II. Avian Tumors in Relation to the General Problem of Malignancy,”in Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 56 (1935), 1–31, two lectures of the Thayer lectureship; “An Analysis of the Trends in Cancer Research,”in Journal of the American Medical Association,

120 (1942), 107–111, Barnard Hospital lecture; and “The Cancer Control Movement,”in North Carolina Medical Journal, 5 (Apr. 1944), 121–125.

A series of papers produced in the last decade of his life on the development of experimental leukemia and its relationship to basic physiological processes, written with Ernest Sturm, include “The Transmission of an Induced Lymphatic Leukemia and Lymphosarcoma in the Rat,”in Cancer Research, 1 (1941), 379–383; “The Effect of Sodium Pentobarbital, Paradichlorbenzene, Amyl Acetate, and Sovasol on Induced Resistance to a Transplanted Leukemia of the Rat,”ibid., 3 (1943), 173–175; “The Adrenals and Susceptibility to Transplanted Leukemia of Rats,”in Science, 98 (1943), 568–569; “The Effect of Adrenalectomy on the Susceptibility of Rats to a Trans- plantable Leukemia,”in Cancer Research, 4 (1944), 384–388; “Effect of Adrenal Cortical and Pituitary Adrenotropic Hormones on Transplanted Leukemia in Rats,”in Science, 99 (1944), 303; “The Inhibiting Effect of Ethyl Urethane on the Development of Lymphatic Leukemia in Rats,”in Cancer Research, 7 (1947), 417–420; “The Effect of Diethylstilbestrol on the Incidence of Leukemia in Male Mice of the Rockefeller Institute Leukemia Strain (R.I.L.),”ibid., 9 (1949), 88–89; and “The Effect of Adrenal Grafting on Transplanted Lymphatic Leukemia in Rats,”ibid., 10 (1950), 191–193.

For brief biographies of Murphy see National Cyclopedia of American Biography, XXXVIII, 69; an obituary in Journal of the American Medical Association, 144 (14 Oct. 1950), 562, and a longer biography by C. C. Little in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 34 (1960), 183–203, which contains a bibliography arranged chronologically.

For a discussion of his work at the Rockefeller Institute see George W. Corner, A History of the Rockefeller Institute 1901–1953. Origins and Growth (New York, 1964), passim. Personal business papers and correspondence are held by the Rockefeller University and Murphy’s family.

Audrey B. Davis