William Bennett Bean

William Bennett Bean was born in 1909 in the Philippines, to Robert Bennett Bean, a physician who had once been resident under Sir William Osler.^[4] He graduated M.D. from the University of Virginia in 1935.^[4]

The family had previously moved to New Orleans and a few years later to Charlottesville, Virginia, where his father became chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Virginia. He received his B.A. and M.D. from the University of Virginia, in 1932 and 1935, respectively. Following graduation from medical school, with top of the class designation and as president of Alpha Omega Alpha, he interned on the Osler Service at Johns Hopkins University. The following year he moved to Boston and joined the elite group at the Thorndike Laboratory and the Harvard Service at Boston City Hospital. Bean began his clinical career at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (1936–1946) and at Cincinnati General Hospital (1941–1948). He was both a teacher and clinician, specializing in nutrition. He left Ohio in 1948 to become professor of medicine and head of internal medicine at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. He was named Sir William Osler Professor of Medicine there in 1970. In 1974, Dr. Bean was appointed Director, Institute for Medical Humanities and Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. In 1980, he retired from the Institute and returned to Iowa City as Sir William Osler Professor Emeritus.^{[citation needed]}

Bean began researching heat acclimatisation during World War II, when he collected data on the amount of heat troops could withstand in tanks. He also conducted nutrition research, including studies on inducing vitamin deficits in people,^[5] and helping develop more palatable C-rations to replace the K-rations that soldiers refused to eat (and which caused nutritional deficiencies). Bean notes, "The most spectacular results we saw were in the 38th Infantry Division in Luzon, who had been fighting the Japanese for four and a half months, subsisting on the improved C-ration. The soldiers, though low on praise, were still eating the food."

In 1941, Bean began a medical self-experiment when he was unable to find information about the speed of growth of human nails or the factors that influenced it, such as being ill; he would regularly mark his thumbnail with a sharp glass, and record the time & distance the scratches traveled before disappearing. He published updates at 5–10 year intervals for 40 years until 1980.^[6]