Specialized needs for childrens healthcare escaped recognition by the vast majority of physicians in 1952, both within and outside of universities as well as the majority of medical centers. At most, fewer than 10 childrens hospitals in the United States provided a reasonably full spectrum of specialty care for children. Pediatricians often struggled with general surgeons, general urologists and other adult specialists to understand and combat the specific problems they and parents faced, frustrated not only by a lack of knowledge, but also by compromised facilities. Even the little country of the Netherlands provided more sophisticated childrens hospitals per population than was true in the United States. Not even New York City, the nations largest metropolitan area, could boast a fully integrated, freestanding hospital for children!
While this book portrays Jacksonville as one major urban area in its quest to recognize and fulfill the need for sophisticated childrens specialty healthcare, the unfolding story reflects an analogous situation throughout America. In the span of a half century, childrens healthcare switched from the general pediatrician who provided a whole spectrum of care, to the pediatrician who refers to the pediatric subspecialist whose care then demands the technological sophistication in which childrens hospitals excel today. Pediatricians, pediatric surgeons and pediatric cardiologists, along with parents, heralded these changes. With no language but a cry, children pleaded for better, more thoughtful care.
By my mid-adolescent years there was no doubt that I wanted to become a doctor. One wonders at times how career decisions are made. In my case, the person who strongly influenced me was my physician father, who served many years as a general practitioner in Jacksonville, Florida. It was he whom I greatly admired and with whom, as a young boy, I often rode to make house calls as well as visits to the hospital. And I was influenced as well by my paternal grandfather, a retired country, horse-and-buggy doctor from rural Pennsylvania who came to live with us. Dr. Edward L. Wilkinson after graduation in 1885 from the Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons (now the University of Maryland School of Medicine), returned to his native Pennsylvania where he established practice in Lehman, a very small rural community about ten miles from Wilkes Barre. For many years he served that area as its only physician, with some of his efforts recorded in his ledger book that I have. And for many of those years his house calls were done on horseback, while in later times he was first in the area to own an automobile, which enhanced his ability to serve his patients. How pleased he would be to know that two of our children are physicians establishing a fourth continuous generation of medical doctors!
My academic pursuits toward becoming a physician began when I was 15 and entered Emory University Academy at Oxford, Georgia in June 1943. Emory at Oxford, as it was then called (now Oxford College of Emory University), offered a program in which a student could complete two years of high school in one year by remaining in school a full year without a break. This fit well with my desire to join the United States Navy, since I could complete high school by age 16 and the first year of college by age 17. My parents then agreed to sign the appropriate papers in order for me to enlist. Once in the Navy, upon completion of basic training, I entered the Hospital Corps School in San Diego at Balboa Park Naval Hospital with the goal of joining the Fleet Marines. By that time, however, the war with Japan had ended so I returned to college, this time at Emory University in Atlanta, 10 days after my discharge from the Naval Reserve.
Before completing my third, or junior year of college, I was accepted at Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia at Thanksgiving time in 1947. The opportunity to attend that distinguished institution, renowned for its leadership in medicine, was a fearsome challenge.
Stories abounded of the demands placed on those in their first year of medical school. It was with great reverence, humility and determination that I arrived at the opening lecture delivered by Dr. George Allen Bennett, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anatomy. While he was a fearsome person for us as new students, I felt a certain comfort with the man, for while he bellowed questions in clear tones, his pronounced southern accent identified his Mississippi origins. An inspiring teacher who later was to become Dean of the Medical College, he set out for us the high standards of study and behavior that we should follow as physicians.
Inspired by Jeffersons leaders in surgery during my four student years, I developed a distinct interest and leaning toward surgery. Passionately, I consumed the Trials and Triumphs of the Surgeon, written by Dr. J. Chalmers DaCosta, Professor of Surgery at Jefferson in the early 20th century. Another work of his, Modern Surgery, was the leading textbook on surgery during that period.
Influenced as I was in my senior year by Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr., in his pursuit to develop the first heart-lung machine, my interest peaked toward a surgical career. Word had quietly spread among the surgical and medical residents at Jefferson that Dr. Gibbon soon would perform an initial trial of the heart-lung machine. Dr. Joseph Brown, chief resident in medicine and brother of my roommate and great friend, Richard S. Brown, advised Dick and me of the time and location of the historic event.
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