Pedro L. Mangabeira Albernaz

In old times deaf people were considered mentally incompetent and lacked the civil rights of hearing persons. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church often expressed the opinion that they could not be saved! This attitude persisted until the 16th century, when it was realized that deaf persons could be educated. Among the pioneers were Girolamo Cardamo (1501-1576), in Italy,  Father Pedro Ponce de Leon (1520-1584) and Pablo Bonet (1573-1633), in Spain, and George Dalgarno (1626-1787) in England. Many deaf children were educated, but this was done privately, in small groups. Schools for the deaf did not exist.  Abbot Charles Michel de l’Épée (1712-1789) founded, in 1775, the first school for deaf children in Paris. Samuel Heinicke (1727-1790) founded, in 1777, the first German school for deaf children, in Leipzig – this school still exists. L’Épée and Heinicke used different methods, that persist to the present days; l’Épée preferred sign language, Heinicke was in favor o...

I met him in a curious manner. I had just graduated from Medical School and went to an Otolaryngology Meeting held here in São Paulo. This happened in 1956. I had heard about him before that. I had been to a theater to see “The Hands of Eurídice”, one of the many plays that he wrote. It was a one-man show – the first monologue in Brazilian theaters – and made many actors quite famous. Now I know that it was played approximately 80,000 times in 45 different countries. The Brazilian actor Rodolfo Mayer performed it more than 3,000 times. The play was shown on Broadway, at the Booth Theater, in 1952. The Spanish actor Enrique Guitart also performed it 3,000 times in Barcelona and Madrid. In England the play was produced by Sean Connery and in Sweden the director was Ingmar Bergman. But I did not know these things at that time, I only knew that I had found the play absolutely fantastic. I did not know, at that time, that he was a physician, so I was quite surprised to find him at...

The concept of specialization is complex and makes it difficult to know exactly when it started. There is an old joke that says that soon after the world was created Cain became interested in agriculture and Abel in cattle raising. The world had only four inhabitants and two of them were specialists... Regarding Medicine, we may quote Galen, who stated that specialization was common among Roman doctors. The modern medical specialities, however, evolved gradually during the 19th century. I believe that specialization in Otolaryngology begin with Sir William Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s father. Sir William Robert Wills Wilde was born in Ireland, in 1815, a son of a prominent medical practitioner. He called himself an “eye and ear surgeon.” And he was also an archaeologist. He graduated in Medicine in 1837 and became a knight in 1864 for his medical contributions, that included a successful cataract operation performed in the king of Sweden. King Karl XV of Sweden conferred on him a medal ...

Sometimes we make friends in rather unexpected ways. My wife and I met Bobby Short here in São Paulo, when he came to sing at the Maksoud Plaza Hotel. He was the best American cabaret singer of all time, and also a great pianist. And his show was fantastic. He gave Marlene an autographed copy of his latest album, with many beautiful songs. Bobby Short in São Paulo We went several times to hear him at the Café Carlyle, in New York, where he performed from 1968 until his death in 2005. His show was a little different there. Here he would sing very well known songs. In New York he would sing beautiful forgotten songs of famous composers, all worth knowing, intermingling them with original renditions of well known songs, almost always including their verses. He seemed to appreciate the circumstance that he had these Brazilian fans and he was always very cordial to both of us. His repertoire included songs by Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke,...

On December 22 my wife and I, accompanied by my youngest daughter, her husband and her two children − the boy  2 years and a half and the girl 9 months old – flew from São Paulo to Salvador and then took a boat to Mar Grande, a small city in the island of Itaparica. We went to the house of very good friends. Many years passed since we were here for the last time, but we used to come here very often. In fact my youngest daughter and my friends' children grew together. Now that we are again together it is obvious that nothing changed. The girls that I knew when they were children, now married and with children of their own, treat me like a second father, with an indescribable amount of friendliness and warmth. My daughter is just like a sister to them. I am now at the veranda looking at the sea, that is just a few meters away. Across the sea a beautiful view of the city of Salvador, where my parents grew. The view is magnificent, the sea is calm, the sounds that I ...

My friend Bill House passed away on Friday, December 7, 2012, at his home. He was 89 years old. I have already written a page in this blog, where I stated that he was my guru, my otological model, my friend. Bill's autobiography -- one must read it It is not difficult to write about a great physician, about a man who revolutionized ear surgery and is recognized all through the world as the “father of surgical neurotology.” It is much more difficult to write about the loss of a very dear friend. We have been together many times, in many different places. I visited him in Los Angeles on several occasions, watching his operations, learning new techniques and new tricks.  My wife and I would often stay at his house in Whitier, as well as in the one in Newport Beach, after he left Los Angeles. He came to Brazil several times, to São Paulo, to Rio, to Salvador, to Belo Horizonte, to Brasília, almost always with his wife June. In São Paulo they would stay in our house. I remem...

My friend Jack Hough died on November 1, 2012, at the age of 92. I met him during my stay in Saint Louis. He had been a resident of Dr. Theodore Walsh and once in a while he came from Oklahoma to visit his Alma Mater. I remember being at his side during a series of operations performed by Dr. Walsh, both of us with a Lempert-Storz headlight on our heads, something that was mandatory in our Department, so that whenever the Chief found something interesting we were supposed to come near and take a look, and therefore we needed the headlight.  Soon after that came the stapedectomy era and Dr. Walsh’s fenestrations were no longer frequently performed. And Jack was one of the pioneers of stapes surgery, devising his own very special techniques and instruments (his footplate excavator is even now one of my favorite instruments). He would often perform a partial stapedectomy, using the posterior crus of the stapes in place of a prosthesis, and he tried the orthopedists’ tendon enl...

Many years ago my wife and I attended a Collegium* Meeting in Corfu, a Greek island in the Ionic Sea, very close to Albania. The Meeting was quite remarkable, as it usually happens in the Collegium. And, of course, there were many friends present, and it is always nice to see friends from other countries. Apart from that, however, we were in a paradise. A lovely island, with friendly people and a very special atmosphere. Fortunately we had time to wonder through the old and new towns, learn the exciting history of the island. Besides history, there are the legends. Corfu seems to have been the mythical island of the Phaeacians, and it is said that the bay of Palaiokastritsa was the beach where Odysseus was saved from a shipwreck and met Nausicaa for the first time. Nausicaa was the girl who took care of him and later married one of his sons. It is also believed that Corfu is the magical island where Prospero lived, according to Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest. Shakespeare, ho...

Antonio Maria Valsalva was an important Italian physician that was born in Imola in 1666. He was a contemporary of Newton, Bach and Molière and, following the traditions of his time, was educated in humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. After his studies of the liberal arts, he studied Medicine and Philosophy at the University of Bologna, where he was a disciple of Marcello Malpighi, the founder of microscopic anatomy. Malpighi deeply respected Valsalva, who was his favorite student. And Valsalva was a great admirer of Malpighi. Portrait of Valsalva (Wikimedia Commons) Valsalva graduated from the medical school in 1687 and in 1705 was appointed Pprofessor of Anatomy at Bologna. He was later chosen as President of the Academy of the Sciences. His most important disciple was Giovanni Battista Morgagni, who edited Valsalva’s complete writings and published a biography of Valsalva in 1740. He was considered a very skilled anatomist and pathologist, a fine physician and ...

I was in my second year of medical school when they played Porgy and Bess here in São Paulo, at a theater that no longer exists. Of course I loved Rhapsody in Blue . Of course I loved George Gershwin’s popular songs, like Embraceable You, Someone to Watch Over Me , The Man I Love, and so on, and so on. Of course I had to go and see it. I did not have much money, so I bought a ticket on the highest part of the theater. I remember that on the main floor there were many very well dressed colored people. I was happy to see that in my town there was a high class of colored people, I did not know that they existed. I remember that the company had four Porgys and three Besses, because they had to sing for long periods of time and it was difficult for any single singer to do it every night. On my night Bess was Leontyne Price. She was very young then, of course you know how famous she became since then. Wikimedia Commons I was dazzled. I was flabbergasted. I still am when I hear S...

I had a very interesting meeting in Singapore a few weeks ago. It was a long trip. I flew from São Paulo to Doha, in Qatar, a 14 hours direct flight. I waited there for three hours and then took another plane to Singapore, a 7 ½ hours flight. Of course I had a severe jet lag; local time in Singapore is 11 hours ahead of that of São Paulo. Consequently I was very sleepy in the afternoons, but I had a couple of days to get adjusted, so I was not sleepy on the day of the meeting.    This was a Steering Committee meeting, a group of people whose task was to supervise a medical research. There were two people from Holland, one from Switzerland, two from England, one from Russia, two from Singapore. A professor from India could not come but we could hear him and talk to him through a telephone conference. We convened from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, with a brief interval for lunch.  We did not know each other; we met at a dinner on the eve of the meeting. As each of us returned ...

Many years ago I read a mystery book by Edgar Wallace and I remember that he described his detective, a Scotland Yard inspector, as being “very old.” He added that he was “more than fifty.” I think that the concept of old age is gradually changing. Nowadays people stay young much longer. Still I often see relatively young patients who feel old and old patients who, surprisingly, feel and act as though they were very young. After fifty, I think the age that counts is the age that people feel and project, not the age that is counted in years. I am also remembering a book that I read a long time ago, called “The Way of All Flesh,” a wonderful autobiographical novel written by Samuel Butler. One of most beautiful statements that he makes in his book is that “spring, like youth, is an overpraised season.” He felt very happy in the autumn of his life. Also one of the most beautiful of Frank Sinatra’s records is called “The Autumn of My Years.” An interesting and important char...

Some Notes About My Father My father was born in Bagé, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, grew up in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, and lived most of his life in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo. His parents were from Bahia. The reason he was born in Bagé is that his father was an army physician and was sent to many different places; my grandfather and my grandmother moved back to Salvador when my father was two years old. I never met my paternal grandfather. He died of a congenital heart disease when he was 39 years old. My father told me that one day he brought home a pulse plethysmograph, a spring operated device that recorded pulse. My father was in the third year of medical school but had never seen this instrument and was curious about it. So my grandfather took a piece of paper, blackened it with the smoke of a candle and attached it to the plethysmograph. Then he placed his finger on the instrument and set it in motion. The recording needle added a white tracing to t...