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Dhaval Mehta
Dr. Allard
CI 651
21 March 2013
Happy Accidents by Morton A. Meyers, MD
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the
Twentieth Century. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007. Print.
400 pp. Includes illustrations and photographs. ISBN-10: 1-6-1145-162-0. Price: $12.08.
In Morton Meyers’s introduction to Happy Accidents, he discusses M. C. Escher’s
Gestalt drawing of a collection of devils and angels. (One does not need to be familiar with this
work except to know that the devils and angels cannot be seen at the same time, a sort of magic
that eludes the eye.) Why? If we focus our eyes to see the angels, we forget the devils lurking
behind our vision. If we concentrate on the devils, the angels disappear. Thus, Meyers’s motive:
we must not only train our minds but also our imaginations to see the devil and the angel
together, which, Meyers proves, is crucial to total perception.
And so it is with medicine, the doctor opines. Meyers, a radiologist, earnestly trusts his
colleagues to never surmise that a close-up, even a valuable one, can truly capture the total
complexity of the long take. “We often misjudge or misperceive,” Meyers says, “what is
logically implied or actually present. In drama this may lead to farce, but in science it leads to
dead ends” (11). As such, he provides several examples of supposed dead ends—what Meyers
calls “serendipity,” a word he likes more than “accident,” perhaps because of the implication of
some sort of guided wisdom as opposed to the abrupt eureka. He escorts readers through the
wild histories of several serendipities, including, though not limited to, antibiotics,
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chemotherapy, x-rays, the Pap smear, erectile dysfunction, and antidepressants as the first light
of modern psychiatry.
Meyers turns rough terrain into smooth pastures. When discussing a new antihistamine’s
(Dramamine) startling ability to eradicate hives and ultimately ebb the tides of motion sickness,
Meyers wastes little time on medical terminology and procedure. Instead, we are awed by
surprise and graceful storytelling. Furthermore, Meyers quotes from those outside of the medical
community (Louis Pasteur, John Barth, Albert Einstein, etc.) and includes interesting statistics to
quantify a serendipitous finding (within the first month, 40,000 Viagra prescriptions were filled
each day. Worldwide sales were $788 million in its first nine months on the market in 1998. In
2004, some 250,000 to 300,000 men were taking Viagra weekly) (223). He also peppers the
book with funny anecdotes, the funniest easily stemming from the original use of Viagra as
medication to treat angina. Meyers tells a story (albeit part folklore) of a rogue urologist
lecturing at a medical conference. Balking at the audience’s dismay of Viagra’s magic powers,
the urologist steps toward the audience, unzips his pants, and shows the alarmed public
irrefutable proof that science has made headlines.
To call the full collection of breakthroughs serendipitous is to stretch the truth. Clearly,
there are mere accidents. Meyers constantly chastises researchers “stuck in an established mode
of inquiry,” but what about those who stumble upon the devil and the angel at the same time
(12)? Albert Hoffman, the chemist who discovered LSD, noticed the drug’s ability to help
contract the uterus but completely overlooked the high arousal of animals on which he
experimented. When the drug was accidentally absorbed through his fingertips, thus inducing a
small acid trip, he, the ever-careful chemist, was stupefied. It was only when he orally ingested
the drug that he finally found what we now know as a psychedelic drug. Indeed, what Meyers
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faithfully believes as serendipitous is debatable. While he sets serendipity in the most persuasive
light, the logic—sometimes clearly flawed, sometimes slightly off-kilter—does fall apart.
Regardless of what comes across as bona fide serendipitous, Meyers crafts a unique
history that illuminates the nexus of creativity, imagination, intelligence, medicine, and surprise.
If Meyers had decided to include fewer examples—the “accidents”—the book might have been,
yes, slimmer, but also more transparent, which is exactly what Meyers opposes. He does not
want such clarity that we see directly through things but rather above, below, around them. In
the preface, Meyers kindles a fire: “We as a society need to take steps to foster the kind of
creative, curiosity-driven research that will certainly result in more lifesaving medical
breakthroughs. Fostering an openness to serendipity has the potential to accelerate medical
discovery as never before” (xiv). In the introduction, one of the most poignant examples that all
members of society—not only doctors—should act on creative urges is a photograph of a sick
Henri Matisse, completely confined to bed after surgery, still feeling the impulse to draw on the
wall.
Look everywhere, Meyers urges. See not only the devil and the angel together but the
entire tangled tapestry.