Archaeology

My father was a surgeon. He did his residency at the College of Medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio, around the time that I was coming into the world. He studied under one W. A. Altemeier, about whom all the brief wisps of information I get say that he was a brilliant, demanding, medically famous, and personally ferocious man. (He doesn't show up in Wikipedia, so I haven't heard of him.)

As I brushed through the first layer on my great dig through Dad's stuff, I found this photo in a frame:

Here Dr. William Steward Halsted performs the first surgery in an amphitheatre (perhaps at Johns Hopkins?) in 1904. Halsted was the great American guru of surgical medicine at the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that my Dad had this photo framed, with a cheat-sheet marking the names of all those present in the picture taped to the back, testifies not only to his love of history but also to his passion for ground-breaking surgery.

In the same envelope, taped to the back of the frame, is a letter from the late great W. A. Altemeier. The letter thanks my Dad for photos he took of a case involving hemolytic streptococcal gangrene, and declares that Altemeier intends to use them in his next surgical textbook. The survival of this letter--a commonplace thank-you typed on university letterhead--suggests to me that perhaps my Dad wanted to be a part of that kind of ground-breaking medicine.

With the Halsted photo is an article snipped from the 1986 American College of Surgeons Bulletin. It describes Dr. Halsted's surgical accomplishments (including perfection of the radical mastectomy and the innovation of latex gloves), but also illuminates some of his personal struggles (like addiction to cocaine then morphine, and his gradual withdrawal from non-professional relationships). I think my Dad saved this article because it contained a copy of the 1904 photograph. Yet perhaps inadvertently he saved a snapshot of the ambiguous legacy of passion-driven geniuses: they sacrifice health and love in one lifetime for an art and a name that will last many lifetimes.

I am struck now, in a new minor chord, by the stories from my dad's life that suggest he may have made some of the same sacrifice. He was divorced twice, suffered a nervous breakdown early in his career, left ambiguous relationships with his children, and died too young. But he taught several generations of physicians, was adored by his co-workers, and has a memorial in a wing of Muhlenberg hospital. I do not know whether my father was a genius like Altemeier or Halsted. But I suspect he was no stranger to the great tension between professional passion and the everyday relationships of love and family.

~emrys