The Strange Case of Tom Little
Page Five
Still, even a half-century ago, the research was not without controversy. Wolf subjected Tom’s stomach to a variety of different “insults”—in addition to behavior designed to evoke different emotional reactions, he also experimented with different foods and even mild physical trauma—to gauge his body’s reaction. When Wolf presented his findings on the effects of stress on gastric acid production to the Gastroenterological Society, some members balked because the research represented but a single case. Yet the groundbreaking basic observations Wolf made proved invaluable.
“He was so successful that people don’t even think about it anymore,” says Prescott. “Psychosomatic medicine holds so many implications for common disorders, and we all accept that emotions have a bearing on physical conditions now. But it wasn’t that way back then.”
Dr. Kent Braden had heard Wolf’s stories about Tom, but the tales took on a human face during his gastroenterology rotation in OMRF’s research hospital. “When I was a resident, Dr. Wolf brought Tom into the research hospital, and I took care of him while he was there,” Braden says. Little was suffering from inflammation around the site of his incision, but the discomfort did not dampen his gregariousness.
“He was Irish (like me) and very talkative, so we visited a great deal,” Braden remembers. He told the young physician many tales, including how he came to have a hole in his stomach. “What I remember most was his story-telling. He was a lot of fun.”
Braden and the OMRF staff were able to reduce the inflammation, and Tom was discharged after a few days. While Tom seemed grateful for his care at OMRF, says Braden, it was something else that cemented the bond between doctor and patient. “I earned his confidence when I was able to find the black pipe tobacco he smoked, and I kept him supplied with it while he was here.”
While Tom created a human legacy with the OMRF staff, his larger contribution lives on in the research seeds he sowed.
Dr. Ranwell Caputto used data from Wolf’s experiments with Little to discover an enzyme that turns creatine into creatinine, a major step forward in the study of muscular dystrophy. With gastric juices from Little’s stomach, Dr. Jordan Tang isolated the protein-digesting enzyme gastricsin—only the second gastric enzyme ever discovered. That breakthrough proved an important building block in the understanding of human digestive processes. The enzyme also became the basis of a diagnostic test for stomach cancer.
Using biological samples contributed by Little, Tang and OMRF’s Dr. Raul Trucco were also the first to crystallize human gastric juices using a resin column technique developed by Dr. Wolf’s group at OMRF. That crystallization allowed separation of the fluids and, thus, enables researchers for the first time to study the elements and their roles in digestion individually.
“You’d be hard-pressed in this day and age to find a single research subject whose contributions made as much of an impact as Tom Little’s,” says Prescott. “It’s a remarkable legacy.”
At the age of 73, his 5-ft. 4-in. frame wasted to 90 pounds, Tom died from cancer and kidney complications.
He’d spent most of his life trying to be unremarkable. Trying to blend in. Throughout his years working with Wolf, he’d insisted on anonymity. In Wolf’s many publications, at his patient’s behest, the physician referred to his subject only as “Tom.”
Grudgingly, Tom finally agreed to pull back the veil. But it would have to be on his terms.
Tom agreed that upon his death, Wolf could share the details of Tom’s 73 years with Time magazine. He would tell the story of the accident and the unique life that followed. Of the unlikely friendship that formed between patient and physician, researcher and subject. Of the bounty of knowledge this relationship yielded.
The story ran on Jan. 12, 1959. Only in the final sentence of the article did Time reveal Little’s surname. And at last, millions of readers understood what Dr. Stewart Wolf had known for so long—that Tom Little’s life was anything but unremarkable.
