Science and Medicine

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Entry Category: Science and Medicine - Starting with M

Main Street Bridge (Little Rock–North Little Rock)

The Main Street Bridge was originally constructed in 1924 as a vehicular structure, replaced in 1973, and altered in 1998; it is one of six bridges linking the downtown areas of Little Rock (Pulaski County) and North Little Rock (Pulaski County). As the downtown areas of Little Rock and Argenta (now North Little Rock) developed in the 1880s, it became apparent that a toll-free bridge independent of the railroad bridges across the Arkansas River was needed. Some people supported the idea of a bridge at the foot of Little Rock’s Main Street, while others thought it should start at Broadway. After years of debate and a series of bridge commissions, the Main Street site was adopted, and the Groton Bridge …

Malaria

Malaria is a serious infectious disease caused by a single-celled parasite known as a plasmodium, which is generally spread through mosquito bites. This disease caused incalculable suffering for thousands of Arkansans and other Southerners through the early twentieth century. Symptoms of malaria include high fever, chills, profuse sweating, malaise, headaches, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. These symptoms can appear within a week of initial infection but can vary with the different types of parasites. Complications can include anemia, liver failure, kidney failure, and breathing problems. Patients can suffer relapses years after the initial infection. If untreated, malaria can cause death. Along with pellagra and hookworm, malaria was one of three diseases whose symptoms contributed to the false stereotype of Southerners as …

Malaria Control Projects in Southeast Arkansas

Two malaria control demonstration projects in southeast Arkansas during the Progressive Era showed not only that the disease could be controlled, but also that control was economically feasible. The project in Crossett (Ashley County) targeted mosquito breeding sites, while the one in the Lake Village (Chicot County) area studied protection by mechanical means. Both were noteworthy successes, though local governments often failed to follow up on those successes. Malaria control was a logical extension of hookworm eradication projects sponsored by the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease. In 1915, Dr. Wickliffe Rose, who headed the commission, said that “malaria was responsible for more sickness and death than all other diseases combined.” The disease sapped the vitality of …

Malnutrition

Social, environmental, and political forces have influenced—and often hindered—Arkansans’ access to nutritious food. From outright hunger to nutrient-specific deficiencies like pellagra, malnutrition contributed to stereotypes about “lazy southerners” Through much of the state’s history. The American Mercury’s 1954 description of Arkansas as a land of “malnutrition, mental disability, hookworm, [and] hogs” did little to refute this stereotype. Although nutrition interventions focused heavily on the Delta area by the conclusion of the twentieth century, Arkansas as a whole received the dubious distinction as having the fifth-highest rate of food hardship in the nation of all states in 2012, according to the Food Research and Action Center. Historical Background Some of the earliest evidence of malnutrition in what is now Arkansas can be …

Mammals

Arkansas’s assemblage of mammals contains both domesticated and wild species, as well as humans. The agriculture and pet industries within Arkansas are enhanced by domesticated mammals. Wild mammals can be grouped into two categories: game (species with hunting seasons) and non-game (species without hunting seasons). All mammals are classified into the class Mammalia. Mammals—along with birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles—belong to a large group known as the vertebrates (animals possessing a backbone). Mammals share common features with each other, including being homeothermic (constant internal body temperature), having hair, having mammary glands (milk-producing structures in females), and being able to give live birth. Some mammals found outside of Arkansas, such as dolphins and whales (order Cetacea), have very small amounts of …

Mantodea

aka: Mantids
aka: Mantises
Mantises belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta, and Order Mantodea. The order contains over 2,400 species within about 430 genera in fifteen families. The largest family is the cosmopolitan Mantidae. Mantises are distributed worldwide in mostly tropical but also temperate habitats. Little has been published on the mantises of Arkansas, although the Carolina mantid, Stagmomantis carolina, has been investigated in the central part of the state. In the fossil history of mantises, fossils of the group are rare. For example, by 2007, only about twenty-five fossil species were known. The earliest, from Siberia, are about 135 million years old. Fossil mantises, from Cretaceous amber, include a specimen from Japan with spines on the front legs, as in modern mantises. …

Maple-Leaf Oak

aka: Quercus acerifolia
Maple-leaf oak (Quercus acerifolia) is a rare tree species commonly agreed to occur at just four sites in the world, all of which are in Arkansas. All of these sites are open, rocky woodlands on sandstone or novaculite substrate and are located at the tops of high-elevation ridges in the Arkansas Valley and Ouachita Mountains: Magazine Mountain in Logan County, Porter Mountain in Polk County, Pryor Mountain in Montgomery County, and Sugarloaf Mountain in Sebastian County. The growth form of maple-leaf oak ranges from short, stunted multi-trunked shrubs to single-trunked trees up to fifty feet tall. It is most easily distinguished by its upper leaves, which are commonly as wide or wider than they are long, with three to five …

Marked Tree Siphons

Constructed in 1939 by the Memphis District Corps of Engineers for Drainage District Number Seven of Poinsett County, the Marked Tree Siphons were an integral part of the St. Francis River Basin Flood Control Project. The siphons were also a unique application of an engineering structure of their type, designed to lift the flow of the St. Francis River over an earthen levee and deposit it in the river channel on the other side of the levee. In 1917, Drainage District Number Seven of Poinsett County was authorized by the Arkansas General Assembly. The St. Francis River meandered from north to south through the district, which encompassed most of the county east of Crowley’s Ridge, and carried a considerable traffic …

Massie, Samuel Proctor, Jr.

Samuel Proctor Massie Jr. overcame racial barriers to become one of America’s greatest chemists in research and teaching. As a doctoral candidate during World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project with Henry Gilman at Iowa State University in the development of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb. In 1966, the U.S. Naval Academy appointed him as its first black faculty member. Massie’s research over fifty years led to the development of drugs to treat mental illness, malaria, meningitis, gonorrhea, herpes, and cancer. Chemical and Engineering News in 1998 named him one of the top seventy-five chemists of all time, along with Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, George Washington Carver, and DNA pioneers James Watson and Francis Crick. Samuel Massie …

Mayfield, Mary Victor (M. V.)

Mary Victor (M. V.) Mayfield came to Mena (Polk County) in 1918 and practiced medicine with the identity of a man for seven or eight years. A small, kind, and peaceful citizen, Mayfield soon became “the cancer doctor.” Mayfield put Mena in the national news for the events of January 23, 1926, when it was revealed by the news media that Mayfield had the biological characteristics of a female. Little is known about M. V. Mayfield’s early life. Mayfield later claimed that the male identity had begun in England—Mayfield’s parents needed a son, not a daughter, to “protect property rights,” so they dressed Mayfield as a boy. Mayfield carried this on into adulthood, also doing things society expected of men, …

Mayflies

aka: Ephemeropterans
Mayflies belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta, and Order Ephemeroptera. They are a small, wide-ranging, primitive order of insects that is well known to entomologists, biologists, naturalists, and fly fishermen. There are approximately 3,000 species of mayflies described worldwide; these are grouped into over 400 genera within forty-two families. As of 2019, approximately 676 species within twenty-one families were recognized from North America. The southeastern United States has nearly 400 mayfly species, which is more than half of those known from the United States and almost half of those known from North America alone. No single study summarizing mayflies exists specifically for Arkansas, but an investigation from 2010 noted about 117 species of mayflies reported from the state. The …

McAlmont, John Josephus

John Josephus McAlmont was one of the eight founders of the Arkansas Industrial University Medical Department, now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). John McAlmont was born on December 22, 1821, in Hornellsville, New York, the son of Daniel and Samantha Donham McAlmont and the youngest of seven siblings. McAlmont left home at age seventeen, earning money by teaching school. At twenty-one, he entered Geneva Medical College in New York for its one-semester course in medicine; there, he completed a course of lectures in medicine in April 1843. (A course of lectures was all that was required to practice medicine at the time.) McAlmont established his practice in April 1844 in Kendall Creek, Pennsylvania. The community was a …

McDonald, Harry Pelot

Harry Pelot McDonald was a doctor, medical missionary, civil rights activist, and humanitarian in the second half of the twentieth century. A leader of the Fort Smith (Sebastian County) branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), McDonald advocated for the African-American community by fighting for desegregation and increased employment opportunities. Harry Pelot McDonald was born on September 1, 1923, in Sumter, South Carolina. He was the youngest son of Adelaide Palmer McDonald and Samuel James McDonald. Samuel McDonald worked for the railway postal service and taught at Claflin University, in addition to serving as president of the Sumter NAACP. Adelaide McDonald was a homemaker and music teacher. Harry grew up in Sumter and was educated …

McQuany, Joseph Daniel

Joseph Daniel McQuany was an Arkansas addiction counselor who became world renowned for his significant role in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the creation of Recovery Dynamics, a substance abuse treatment model that grew to be utilized at hundreds of counseling sites throughout the United States and around the world and taught to thousands of recipients. Joseph McQuany was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 16, 1928, one of three children of Kelly McQuany, who worked in the automotive industry, and Ada Beaty McQuany, a homemaker. McQuany described his family as poor but stated that he had a good childhood. McQuany had a troubled early adulthood; he used alcohol excessively and lost numerous jobs. He and his first wife, who had …

Medical Arts Building

The sixteen-story Medical Arts Building at 236 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs (Garland County) was the tallest building in Arkansas from its completion in 1930 until 1960, when the Tower Building was completed in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County). (The tallest building in Arkansas currently is the forty-story Metropolitan Tower in Little Rock, which was built in 1986.) The upper floors of the Medical Arts Building are now vacant. The Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas (HPAA) listed it in 2012 as one of the state’s most endangered places. The Medical Arts Building was constructed by general contractor G. C. Gordon Walker with work beginning on December 1, 1929. Investors from Little Rock and New Orleans, Louisiana, purchased the site, …

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice is professional misconduct by physicians and surgeons toward a patient. Historically, malpractice falls into two categories: criminal malpractice covers actions contrary to or expressively forbidden by law; civil malpractice, the dominant form in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, refers to injurious treatment of the patient that includes unnecessary suffering or death that is due to professional ignorance, carelessness, a want of proper medical skills, and a disregard for established rules and practices. More rarely, malpractice can cover lawyers and other professionals. Medical malpractice suits emerged in the nineteenth century and came about only after the practice of medicine became informed by a scientific revolution that involved such discoveries as sepsis, immunization, and the germ theory. Suits were rare …

Megaloptera

aka: Alderflies
aka: Dobsonflies
aka: Fishflies
Megaloptera is an order that is included within the Phylum Arthropoda and Class Insecta. There are about 300 extant species of megalopterans, and these include the alderflies, dobsonflies, and fishflies. There are six families: Corydalidae, Corydasialidae (extinct), Euchauliodidae (extinct), Nanosialidae (extinct), Parasialidae (extinct), and Sialidae. Megalopterans can be found in several Arkansas counties. The Megaloptera were once regarded as a part of a group of insects called Neuroptera, together with the lacewings and snakeflies; however, they are now generally considered to be separate orders, with Neuroptera only referring to the lacewings and their relatives (formerly Planipennia). The former Neuroptera, particularly the lacewing group, are very closely related to each other, and the new name for this group is Neuropterida. This …

Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge

The Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge on Interstate Highway 55 connects Arkansas with Tennessee at Memphis. Since its opening on the morning of December 17, 1949, the span has served as a vital link for automotive traffic to cross the Mississippi River. When the Frisco Bridge was built for railroads in 1892, automobile traffic was not a factor. The Harahan Bridge, the second bridge linking Arkansas and Tennessee, opened in the summer of 1916. Due to increasing numbers of automobiles on both sides of the river, carriageways were hung off both sides of the Harahan in 1917. These provided a single lane for traffic on either side of the bridge. Although Arkansas cars could cross the Mississippi River at Memphis beginning in …

Mental Health

Prior to the opening of the Arkansas Lunatic Asylum (now the Arkansas State Hospital) in 1883, mentally ill Arkansans were cared for by their families or housed in jails, prisons, or poor farms. Since 1883, the Arkansas State Hospital (ASH) has been responsible for the treatment of thousands of Arkansans with a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses such as depression and schizophrenia. In the 1950s, the hospital’s census peaked at 5,086 patients. Since that time, the deinstitutionalization movement and advances in psychotropic medications have resulted in dramatically lower inpatient numbers. The current (as of 2010) ASH capacity of 234 beds represents a deinstitutionalization rate of 97.5% for the state. Most patients are admitted through a screening process conducted by the …

Mental Health Council of Arkansas

The Mental Health Council of Arkansas (MHCA) is a nonprofit organization that has been working to improve the overall health and well-being of citizens in Arkansas since 1972. It was originally founded under the Federal Community Mental Health Construction Grant. The MHCA is composed of fifty psychiatrists and approximately 2,000 healthcare professionals and is governed by a board of directors. Its members provide comprehensive mental health services to Arkansans through the fourteen community mental health centers in Arkansas. The centers provide a variety of mental health services, such as individual and group psychotherapy and medication management; psychological, personality, forensic, and intellectual evaluations; emergency/crisis treatment; consultation/education programs; and partial hospitalization programs. The MHCA is a member of the National Council for …