He married Ruth White, a teacher and homemaker, in 1956. She died in 2009. In addition to his daughter Alison, Dr. Scott’s wife, Jacquelyn Lehmer, behind; three other daughters, Jennifer, Heidi and Ann Scott; a son, Nathaniel; four stepdaughters, Suzanne, Mary, Sally and Phillis Lehmer; 20 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
dr. Scott was not the first scientist to explore the therapeutic potential of Clostridium botulinum. “Sausage poison” Justinus Kerner, a German poet and physician, named the pathogen in the 1820s; he had observed the crippling effects of food poisoning in his town after a single giant sausage sickened 13 people, six of whom died. After injecting it into snails, grasshoppers, and rabbits, Dr. Kerner eventually in himself, noted its inhibitory effect on the autonomic and motor nervous systems and hypothesized its use as a medical treatment for certain neural disorders. (Decades later, a microbiologist named it Bacillus botulinum, after botulus, the Latin word for sausage.)
In 2013, Dr. Scott joined the Strabismus Research Foundation in Mill Valley, California, where he developed the use of bipuvicaine, a local anesthetic. At his death, he was also working on a treatment procedure in which the eye muscles are electrically stimulated through a small implanted pacemaker-like device.
Meanwhile, sales of Botox for medical and cosmetic treatments continue to rise. In the first nine months of 2021, it generated global sales of more than $3.3 billion, with cosmetic sales accounting for just under half that figure, according to the earnings report for the period from AbbVie, the company that launched Allergan in 2020. took over.
But dr. Scott has never regretted selling the drug.
“I had paid for my house, my kids got an education,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle. “And I had the satisfaction of seeing absolutely amazing medical results. So I was satisfied.” He added: “I’m not very good at giving away and spending money anyway.”
