Pedro L. Mangabeira Albernaz

According to Greek mythology there was in Crete a Labyrinth designed and built by a legendary architect, Daedalus, for King Minos. Its structure was so complex that not even Daedalus succeeded in escaping from it. When the old anatomists began to study the temporal bones, they found it so complex that they called it “a labyrinth.” They knew that part of it was auditory, the other part, the vestibular system, remained a mystery for many centuries. The reason is simple. The vestibular sensors record accelerations, and accelerations were not known until Newton discovered gravity in 1687. It was only in 1830 that the function of the vestibular receptors was thoroughly studied by a French neurophysiologist, Jean Pierre Flourens. And only in 1861 Prosper Menière postulated that the sensation of vertigo was caused by a labyrinthine disease. Today everyone that has an episode of vertigo tell us that he has a labyrinthitis. In fact, what they have is one of the many kinds of disorders o...

One of my teachers, Dr. Hallowell Davis, was an extraordinary scientist. And also an extraordinary human being. He was Director of Research at the CID (Central Institute for the Deaf), in Saint Louis. During his Harvard days, in the 30's, he helped to develop electroencephalography. At CID he studied cochlear physiology and, among many other things, discovered the summating potentials. He was the father of electric response audiometry, on which he was already working when I left Saint Louis. I remember saying in a meeting, in the late 60's, that soon we would be able to measure auditory thresholds in children using computers. Everyone thought that it was my imagination, that I was too involved in science fiction... One of my theses, The Evolution of a Sensory Organ , was almost totally based on Dr.Davis’ teachings. Besides being a great neurophysiologist, he also had an extraordinary sense of humor. On the wall of his office at the Central Institute for the Deaf was a s...

In 1971 I began to work at the Albert Einstein Hospital. I still remember the day that the Hospital’s President, Prof. Manoel Hidal, showed me everything, from the 13th to the ground floor. Hospital rooms, operating suites, laboratories, auditorium, laundry, emergency electrical generator... everything. There was only one building at that time. I have watched it grow continuously, to become the best hospital in Latin America (and one of the best of the world) and an important research center. In 1976 I organized a the first Brazilian Meeting totally dedicated to the problems of sensorineural hearing loss. The Guest of Honor was Dr. William House, and for the first time in our country he told us of his experience in cochlear implants. Opening ceremony of the Symposium on Sensorineural Hearing Loss. From left to right: Pedro L. Mangabeira Albernaz, William F House, Max Feffer, Manoel Hidal, Marco Elisabetsky In 1977 I performed the first cochlear implant in Brazil – the second perf...

I went to Saint Louis in 1958 and stayed there for three years, as a fellow of the Department of Otolaryngology of  the Washington University School of Medicine. My activities were divided: twice a week I worked with Dr. Theo E. Walsh in the operating rooms and in his office; in the other three days I worked in my own histopathology lab, from which my first published papers originated, as well as my Master’s degree thesis. For my last year I was appointed Research Assistant in the Department. The Central Institute for the Deaf, the first oral school for deaf children in the United States, was just a few blocks away, and every Thursday afternoon there was a seminar in the research Building. There I met many prominent scientists. I will tell you some stories of my times in Saint Louis.

The concept that a Medical School must have a Hospital seems to be obvious. And yet, these Hospitals are fairly recent. The first one belongs to Johns Hopkins University and was completed in 1889. The Johns Hopkins Medical School had four famous professors: William Osler (Internal Medicine), William S. Halsted (Surgery), Howard Kelly (Gynecology) and William H. Welch (Bacteriology). William Osler established the first medical residence and was the first medical professor to take his students to the patients’ beds. For these pioneering acts he is considered the Father of Modern Medicine. One of his sayings is, to me, an extraordinary example: The mistakes that I committed were faults of my mind, not of my heart. The first Medical School Hospital in Brazil was built by a small private Medical School that was at that time fighting to survive: the Escola Paulista de Medicina. Its Hospital was inaugurated in 1938.

I was recently invited by the Rio de Janeiro Otolaryngological Society to give a conference entitled: Otology – Past, Present and Future. I will start my blog with the beginning of the conference. In the old days everything was simple... Medicine was born in Greece. Asclepius, who was god, learned it from a centaur. And the “treatment” of the diseases consisted in spending a night in on of the Asclepius temples. During the night the God would enter into the patient’s dreams and cured him. But the Greeks had a precise notion that Medicine should not cure all patients. Hades, the god of Hell, complained to Zeus that no more dead spirits were coming to the underworld, for Asklepius did not allow them to die. Zeus, then, fulminated Asclepius with a thunderbolt. This is what Governments and Insurance Companies are attempting to do with present day Medicine.