Pedro L. Mangabeira Albernaz

Recently a tornado destroyed part of Saint Louis Airport. A picture showed a van on top of a building. It shows how much energy is liberated. It reminded me of my experience with another tornado in Saint Louis. I think it was in 1959. I had traveled to New York for a medical meeting. I spent three days there and then flew back to Saint Louis. When I arrived at my apartment the porter told me. “You can’t sleep here.” “Why? I asked him with some indignation. “The tornado ran through your apartment.” I went up and took a look. All of the windows had been broken and there were pieces of glass all over the place. Some big boards were nailed to the windows to keep out the wind and the rain, but they did not have time to clean the apartment. They had been busy all day, but since I was away, they chose to fix other apartments first. There was a nice hotel just across the street. They were very nice and gave me a special rate. “We lost a few rooms, too,” the manager told me. I distinctly ...

On Dr. Howard House’s desk, in his office at the House Ear Clinic, there was a picture of a very different house with a very large display in which we could read the words “Dr. Howard House’s Ear Clinic.” This was a photo of the “other” Dr. Howard House’s office. This man was a chiropractor. When he found out that his namesake was a famous otologist, he reorganized his practice and also became a ear doctor. I heard the following story from Dr. Gunnar Proud, who was the Professor of Otolaryngology of the University of Kansas at the time I was in Saint Louis. As a former resident of Dr. Theo Walsh, once in a while he came to visit his friends in the Department. There was a young woman in Kansas City, MO, who had otosclerosis. It had started early in her life, and she had a mixed loss, with severe involvement of the high frequencies. Gunnar was a friend of the family and he was concerned about performing a stapedectomy on this patient. So he suggested that she should go to Los Angeles to ...

In the old times Brazilian Otolaryngologists had organized a Federation of Otolaryngological Societies. This did not work well, for only a few states had organized local societies. For this reason the Council of the Federation included the Professors of Otolaryngology of the Brazilian Medical schools. The Federation had no money and had difficulties in publishing the Brazilian Journal of Otolaryngology. In the early 1960's a small group of otolaryngologists who had been trained abroad began to get involved in the Federation and proposed to change it into a Society with individual members. I will not mention their names, because I may forget someone, and this would be inexcusable. In a Congress in Brasilia, in 1967, the idea was finally accepted by the majority of the Council and arrangements were made to organize it at the next Congress in Porto Alegre, in 1969. The President of the Porto Alegre Congress was Rudolf Lang, one of the members of the group of young otolaryngologists. H...

(History of Medicine ... 6) Andreas Vesalius was the founder of human Anatomy. He was born in Brussels in 1514;  his father, grandfather and great grandfather had been physicians. His original name was Andreas van Wesel, Vesalius in a Latin translation of his name. He started his medical studies in Louvin, then moved to Paris, where he became interested in Anatomy. Later he moved to Leuven and then to Italy, obtaining his Doctor’s Degree in Padua. On graduation he was immediately became Professor of Surgery and Anatomy at the University of Padua; he also  lectured at Bologna and Pisa. He was the first Anatomy teacher to perform dissections for his students; before him the teachers read Galen’s classical texts while a barber-surgeon dissected an animal. In 1539 a Paduan judge became interested in Vesalius' work, and made bodies of executed criminals available for dissection. It must be noted that Galen's research had been based upon animal anatomy, since dissection was ...