Mark Johnson | The Atavist Magazine | September 2026 | 2,048 words (7 minutes)
This is an excerpt from issue no. 180, “The Family Plan.”
At first she told no one. Not her twin sister. Not her mother. Not even her father the scientist.
Six-year-old Jenna Smith knew better than to pee when she was in the bath. But on that night in 1992, in her family’s home in Iowa City, the water felt so comfortable against her skin that she didn’t want to get out of the tub. It seemed like such a small thing. Who would know?
Seconds later the water around her waist turned reddish pink. Blood? It had to be. Jenna wondered if she’d hurt herself. “I was six years old sitting in a bathtub, watching a few seconds of my world stop making sense,” she would recall years later.
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She kept the blood a secret because she didn’t want to admit that she’d peed in the bath. But when it was still in her urine the next time she used the toilet, she went to her mother. Concerned, her mom called her dad, Richard Smith, and he took Jenna to the emergency room.
Richard was an ear, nose, and throat doctor in the University of Iowa’s school of medicine, a researcher who would become one of the world’s authorities on the genetics of hearing loss. His wife, Lynne Lanning, had worked as both a lawyer and a nurse. They had four young children: twins Jenna and Jessica, who were identical, and two boys, Luke and Rion.
At the ER, doctors ran tests on Jenna, but they couldn’t identify the cause of the blood. In the days that followed the bleeding intensified. At her parents’ urging, Jenna collected samples of her urine in Dixie cups for further testing. The doctors remained stumped, however, and after a while Jenna found the whole thing more annoying than worrisome.
The uncertainty was much harder on her parents. It wasn’t that doctors were misdiagnosing their daughter; they were unable to diagnose her at all. “It was horrible,” Richard said. “Imagine seeing your child and you know something is wrong, and you know the doctors treating her have no clue what to do.” Richard called a pediatric nephrologist he knew in Houston, where the family had lived previously. The nephrologist listed several conditions that could be causing the bleeding and said that, to determine which was to blame, Jenna’s parents should take her to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
In July 1992, Richard, Lynne, and Jenna drove nearly 500 miles to get answers. Doctors in Cincinnati diagnosed Jenna with dense deposit disease, a condition in which proteins clog and damage the kidneys, leading to renal failure in many patients. There was no cure.
The hospital couldn’t tell the family much else—no one could. The disease was exceedingly rare, afflicting between one and three people in a million. Back home, Richard and Lynne spent hours inside the University of Iowa’s quiet medical library, poring over papers in search of information about their daughter’s illness. They could find no evidence that anyone was actively studying the condition.
Although many Americans—roughly one in ten—suffer from a rare disease, the experience can be lonely. Friends and relatives don’t understand the unique miseries such illnesses impose on daily life. Few doctors are likely to have encountered them before. And because there aren’t many patients, drug companies usually don’t invest in research for treatments.
Richard and Lynne feared that their daughter’s life might be tragically brief. Sometimes the mention of weddings would sink Lynne into melancholy; she couldn’t bring herself to watch the movie Father of the Bride. Richard agonized over what to do. His training compelled him to seek answers, but he wanted to be Jenna’s father, not the scientist charged with curing her. He kept his research focused on hearing loss. At first, anyway.
Stories of scientific discovery almost always celebrate individual researchers, consigning the contributions of loved ones, communities, and colleagues to footnotes. There are exceptions―the teams that built the first atomic bomb and deciphered the human genome, for instance. Science also has its share of famous families. Marie and Pierre Curie, along with their daughter Irène and her husband, Frédéric, won five Nobel Prizes between them for discoveries related to radioactivity. For the most part, however, the history of scientific progress has been mythologized as a succession of brilliant, driven individuals—often men—who chose the lab over the dinner table and competition over collaboration.
Some scientists have embraced the role of maverick. “You have to worry about your own work and ignore what everyone else is doing,” the physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman is said to have told a colleague. The decades-long pursuit of a treatment for Jenna’s disease followed a very different path. There was no single hero, no lone scientist seeking glory. The biomedical quest required the efforts of a family and their neighbors in Iowa City, and the work of scientists around the globe. Together they changed an obscure area of medicine.
Richard and Lynne met in 1977, when both were working at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston—she as a nurse, he as a medical intern. He noticed a run in her nylons and was smitten by her smile. She liked his down-to-earth manner and intelligence, his humor and kindness. They were working in the hospital’s burn unit when he asked her out.
The couple married in 1981, and except for two years in England, they remained in Houston until 1990. That December they moved to Iowa City, where Richard had a job waiting for him leading the pediatric otolaryngology division and running a research lab at the University of Iowa’s medical school. They had been there only a year when Jenna got sick.
Richard and Lynne learned that their daughter’s disease was caused by a malfunction in her complement system. Believed to have evolved long before other parts of our immune infrastructure, the complement system sends proteins to battle foreign invaders. Unlike antibodies, these proteins are not tailored to fight a specific virus or bacteria, but they kick into gear faster when a threat is detected. In people with Jenna’s condition, the complement system is like a runaway train: Proteins become overstimulated and then accumulate in the glomeruli, tiny filters the kidneys use to clear waste from blood.
Blood in the urine is one symptom of the disease. Others include swelling, high blood pressure, inflammation, and fatigue. When Jenna was in the first grade, her body struggled to make growth hormones. Her production of red blood cells slowed, and she grew increasingly tired. During rehearsals for The Nutcracker ballet around Christmas 1993, she’d finish her part and then lie down backstage, completely spent.
Doctors put her on a heavy dose of the steroid prednisone and on blood-pressure medication. The prednisone caused her body to retain water. She woke up each morning with her eyes swollen shut, then waited in bed until the swelling receded. She couldn’t fit into her clothes or shoes. She wore flip-flops and roomy jumpers Lynne sewed for her.
As twins, Jenna and Jessica had always been close. They played together, made up songs and dance moves, explored the woods near their home, and enjoyed pranking friends and family members. “She made a lot of things feel not so heavy,” Jenna said of her sister. Still, she sometimes thought that Jessica “got off scot-free” by not having dense deposit disease. Neither girl liked feeling different from the other. (Years later, Jessica would be diagnosed with type-1 diabetes; Jenna would not.)
The changes to Jenna’s appearance meant the girls were no longer identical. Once, according to Lynne, when a boy at school said that Jenna couldn’t be a twin anymore because of how she looked, Jessica slugged him. Lynne recalled sitting in the principal’s office, politely listening to a lecture—this is not the way we resolve things!—but understanding why Jessica had lashed out. Nothing was so frightening to her daughters as the idea that they’d stop being twins.
About half of those afflicted with Jenna’s disease progressed to kidney failure within a decade of diagnosis; it took her less than a year. She made it through the last day of first grade. Then, as other children departed for summer camp, she went to a clinic. While her classmates practiced archery and did arts and crafts, she learned about the catheter doctors would surgically insert in her body. Through that tube, a machine would pump fluid into her abdomen, where her peritoneum—her abdominal lining—would take over the filtering function kidneys usually perform.
She would take the peritoneal dialysis machine home with her and use it every day for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of her life. When a nurse tried to take Lynne aside to show her how to operate it, Jenna stopped her. “I’m the patient,” the seven-year-old insisted. “I’m learning how to run the machine.”
In such moments, Lynne was surprised at the strength she drew from her daughter. She needed it. Her grief could leave her feeling drained. One day she found herself crying into the soil as she gardened.
But Lynne and Richard were determined that sadness would not define their lives. For a long time, they didn’t have a TV in their house—they wanted the family to talk when they were together, and for the children to build forts, learn to sew, be creative. They had painting nights, creating portraits of one another. There were cooking contests, too. Richard and Lynne made sure to spend one-on-one time with each kid. Richard traveled with Luke to Japan, with Rion to the Grand Canyon, with Jessica to Italy, and with Jenna to England. Lynne took trips with the children to Brazil, England, and Guatemala. There were themed birthday celebrations: a James Bond party for Richard, where everyone was armed with Nerf guns, and one for Lynne where Richard dressed as the artist Bob Ross and the guests painted “happy little clouds.” Richard coached the kids’ hockey and soccer teams. He built harps and lyres from scratch, and Lynne played them.
Every day, Richard left for work at 5 a.m., while the children were still in bed. He returned around six at night. The family joked that they could hear him coming from half a mile away in his rust-bucket Isuzu Trooper with the bad muffler and a hole in the passenger footwell. When he wasn’t seeing patients or in surgery, Richard was in the lab. On Saturdays, Luke would go there with him. Sometimes the other kids joined. They liked to refill the communal candy jars and visit the mice used in experiments.
It seemed a wonder to the lab’s staff that Richard squeezed so much into a day. When they began using email to communicate, they received messages from him time-stamped three or four in the morning. “Why don’t you sleep sometime?” a colleague replied once. Indeed, Richard slept little. At night his mind kept running through the mysteries of his daughter’s disease.
Richard had read that it took 10,000 hours—the equivalent of working full-time for about five years—to achieve expertise in a subject. He believed it. In 1995, he began flying to conferences about kidney disease, where he talked to the few doctors who cared for patients like Jenna. Medicine was getting no closer to finding a treatment.
That year the owner of a ranch where Richard and Lynne’s children took riding lessons offered to host a fundraiser for kidney disease research. The family organized Dressage in the Heartland, which featured riding events, fiddle music, and bowls of chili. After raising upwards of $10,000 for the National Kidney Foundation, they held the event again the following year. There are hundreds of kidney ailments, however, and the foundation didn’t allow the money the family raised to be earmarked for the research of dense deposit disease. (The foundation said it now allows monetary gifts to be dedicated to specific conditions.)
Richard and Lynne ran into more disappointment during a visit to the University of Minnesota in early 1997. A specialist they consulted was blunt. “Nobody is looking at this disease,” he told them. “And barring something unforeseen, nothing will be done in the next twenty years.”
It was a four-and-a-half-hour drive back to Iowa City. In the car, Lynne brought up what the doctor had said. Maybe they would have to be that unforeseen something.
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Left Image: Saint Luke the Evangelist 1450 – Source. Top Right: De materia medica in Arabic 12th–13th century – Source. Bottom Right: Cumin and dill from an Arabic book of simples 1334 – Source.
by Brian Shilhavy
The word “physician” mostly has a negative meaning in the Bible.
In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians. (2 Chronicles 16:12)
A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but instead had become worse— after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak.
For she had been saying to herself,
“If I just touch His garments, I will get well.”
And immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. (Mark 5:25-29)
However, the word “physician” is used positively in the New Testament portion of the Bible when it refers to Jesus Christ:
When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples,
“Why is He eating with tax collectors and sinners?”
And hearing this, Jesus said to them,
“It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
(Mark 2:16-17)
As I have previously written over the years, the Jewish people had their own system of healing as prescribed by the Law of Moses, and it involved the Levitical Priests. They were not supposed to rely on the “pagan doctors”, and hence the criticism of King Asa who apparently did not follow the Law of Moses, but went to pagan doctors instead during the Old Testament days.
In the New Testament, Jesus Christ established himself as the Messiah who had the authority to heal people from their diseases.
There is one exception in the New Testament, however, of one of the disciples of Jesus being referred to as “the beloved physician”, which is how the apostle Paul referred to Luke, who is believed to be the only non-Jewish author in the New Testament portion of the Bible. He wrote the Gospel of Luke, as well as the Acts of the Apostles.
He was a frequent traveling companion with Paul, who referred to him as “the beloved physician”.
Luke, the beloved physician, sends you his greetings, and Demas does also. (Colossians 4:14)
Historical evidence outside of the Bible has led some people to believe that Luke was originally from Antioch, and attended a famous medical school in Philippi, part of the Roman empire at that time.
Since Luke is not referred to as a “former physician”, it is reasonable to believe that he may have retained some of his “medical” knowledge and perhaps even continued to use it as a disciple of Jesus.
However, to understand how the English word “physician” (ἰατρός – iatros in the Greek) was used over 2000 years ago in the Greek/Roman world, we need to look at some history of Greek-Roman medicine as it was practiced back then, which is very different from how the terms “doctor” and “medicine” are used today in the 21st Century.
During the First Century when the authors of the New Testament portion of the Bible lived, the practice of medicine was highly influenced by ancient Greek medicine, and the Greek physician Hippocrates. Much of Hippocrates’ work was compiled into The Hippocratic Corpus.
During the time the New Testament was being written, the city of Tarsus, where the apostle Paul lived, had a major medical school practicing Greek medicine.
Dioscorides receives a mandrake root, an illumination from the 6th century (c. 512) Greek Juliana Anicia Codex. Source.
One of the most famous students to study at this school was Pedanius Dioscorides, a pharmacologist, physician, botanist, and author of De materia medica (“On Medical Material”). He was a military physician in Nero’s Army
Dioscorides was known as “the father of pharmacognosy“, but all of his “medicines” were plants, not the patented chemical medicines that we think of today when we hear the term “medicines.”
Plant “medicines” were also the foundation of other non-Western sources of ancient medical systems, such as Chinese Traditional Medicine, and the Indian Ayurveda system of medicine, both of which have been around for 4000-5000 years. (Source.)
Cover of an early printed version of De materia medica, Lyon, 1554. Source.
Dioscorides wrote a five-volume book De materia medica (“On Medical Material”), which became the precursor to all modern pharmacopeias, (Source: Rooney, Anne 2012. The History of Medicine. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 121), and was widely read for more than 1,500 years.
It was translated into Arabic in the 13th Century by Ibn al-Bayṭār, an Andalusian Arab physician, botanist, pharmacist and scientist.
He systematically recorded additions made by Islamic physicians in the Middle Ages, which added between 300 and 400 types of medicine to the one thousand previously known since antiquity. He was a student of Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati. (Source.)
Here are the bios of a couple of other famous Roman physicians who were alive during the time the New Testament was being written, from Wikipedia’s entry on Medicine in ancient Rome.
Asclepiades studied to be a physician in Alexandria and practiced medicine in Asia Minor as well as Greece before he moved to Rome in the 1st century BC. His knowledge of medicine allowed him to flourish as a physician. Asclepiades was a leading physician in Rome and was a close friend of Cicero.
He developed his own version of the molecular structure of the human body. Asclepiades’ atomic model contained multi-shaped atoms that passed through bodily pores.
These atoms were either round, square, or triangular. Asclepiades noted that as long as the atoms were flowing freely and continuously, then the health of the human was maintained. He believed that if the atoms were too large or the pores were too constricted, then illness would present in multiple symptoms such as fever, spasms, or in more severe cases paralysis.
Asclepiades strongly believed in hot and cold baths as a remedy for illness; his techniques purposely did not inflict severe pain upon the patient. Asclepiades used techniques with the intent to cause the least amount of discomfort while continuing to cure the patient.
His other remedies included music therapy to induce sedation, and consuming wine to cure headaches and a fever. Asclepiades is the first documented physician in Rome to use massage therapy.
Celsus (25 BC–AD 50) was a Roman encyclopaedist who wrote a general encyclopaedia about many subjects. His exact place of birth as well as when he lived are unknown; however, it is known he lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.
The only surviving work from his larger encyclopaedia is De Medicina. This work contains eight volumes, two of which are on surgery.
De Medicina provides some of the best accounts of Roman medicine during his time.
Its contents proved to be valuable even into the 15th century after Pope Nicolas V rediscovered it, becoming the first medical book to be published in 1478. It is still debated if he practiced medicine himself or just compiled the works of the time, much of it from Greek sources. This is important because at the time Greeks were looked down upon by the Romans and thus so was the work of doctors.
In his book he discussed the two different schools of thought at the time relating to medicine he calls “Empirics” and “Dogmatics”.
Empirics followed empirical observation while Dogmatics needed to understand the theory behind how a treatment works.
Celsus is also credited with writing on four of the five characteristics of inflammation, redness (rubor), swelling (tumour), heat (calor), and pain (dolor). Galen would write about the fifth, loss of function (functio laesa).
De agri cultura, also known as On Farming or On Agriculture, is a treatise on Roman agriculture by Cato the Elder. It is the oldest surviving work of Latin prose. Source.
Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, senator, and historian who lived about 200 years before the New Testament was written, but his influence on Roman culture and medicine would have certainly been felt by those living in the First Century when the authors of the New Testament were living.
Cato the Elder despised every aspect of Greek society the Romans decided to mimic including sculptures, literature and medicine. He regarded the welcome given in Rome to Greek medicine and physicians as a major threat.
In Rome, before there were doctors, the pater familias (head of the family) was responsible for treating the sick. Cato the Elder himself examined those who lived near him, often prescribing cabbage as a treatment for many ailments ranging from constipation to deafness.
He would issue precise instructions on how to prepare the cabbage for patients with specific ailments. He also used cabbage in liquid form.
For example, a mixture of cabbage, water, and wine would be embedded in a deaf man’s ear to allow his hearing to be restored. Cato would treat fractured or broken appendages with two ends of a cut reed that were bandaged around the injury. (Source: “Household Medicine in Ancient Rome“. The British Medical Journal. 1 2140: 39–40. 1902.)
This context may help us understand the “medical advice” given by James, the half-brother of Jesus, in the 5th chapter of his letter recorded in the New Testament:
Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the congregation to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (James 5:14-16)
The next time you read about “Luke the beloved physician” in the Bible, hopefully you will have a better understanding now about “physicians” and “medicine” in the Roman Empire during the time the Bible was being written, which bears no resemblance to doctors and medicines today.
The Western form of “medicine” today is dependent on repeat customers, and is a disease management system, NOT a “health care” system. To actually cure patients would cause them to go out of business! See:
Natural remedies, which used to be called “medicine” in ancient times, cannot be patented, and are therefore a threat to the pharmaceutical industry here in the 21st Century.
I learned this firsthand myself, back in 2005 when we were selling Virgin Coconut Oil and publishing customer testimonials about the health benefits of consuming coconut oil, as well as publishing peer-reviewed literature showing how the medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil can fight diseases.
The FDA came after us and threatened to shut down our business, seize our inventory, and put me in jail for selling “unapproved drugs.”
Why in the world do Americans continue to give money to campaigns to “help find a cure for cancer” as they have done for decades, when MANY cures for cancer already exist, but are banned from being used here in the U.S. forcing people to go to Mexico or Europe to find those cures?
Money given to charities to “find a cure for cancer” usually just goes into the pockets of drug companies to develop more drugs.
See:
We need more “beloved physicians” like Luke, who know the power of Jesus to bring about REAL healing, and we need “Elders” who can also tap into the power of Jesus to heal without the need of modern doctors and medicines. See:
Comment on this article at Created4Health.org.
This article was written by Human Superior Intelligence (HSI)
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The post Luke – The Beloved Physician and Ancient Healing Practices first appeared on Health Impact News.
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