Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted (50 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
HE STORY OF
William Stewart Halsted is the story of modern surgery, replete with larger-than-life personalities and dangerous bumps in the road. Researching this book meant frequently coming across names that rang with personal memories or recognition, and brought to life the transition of my teachers to their teacher, George Heuer, and through him to Heuer’s teacher, William Stewart Halsted. After leaving the Air Force, I spent two years as a surgical resident under Roscoe S. Wilcox, at the Kaiser Foundation, in Southern California. As skilled a raconteur as he was a surgeon, Dr. Wilcox’s stories stayed with me, and Heuer and Halsted became more than just names. Later, at the New York Hospital, other Heuer’s residents kept the flame alive. Within a few degrees of separation most surgeons can establish their own link to Halsted, and his story is part of theirs.

I was lucky enough to finally bite the bullet and write the tale. Many others have done similar work in journal form. Their work has made mine easier.

James L. Gehrlich, head of archives at the New York Hospital, made his peaceful, twenty-fifth floor aerie a place for research, and was generous with his help. Andrew Harrison, Material Cultural Archivist at Johns Hopkins Medical Archive, was guardian of a treasure trove of Halsted Material.

Michael Bliss wrote two wonderful books on the period, on which I leaned shamelessly. Entitled
Harvey Cushing, a Life in Surgery
and
William Osler, a Life in Medicine
, they stand as the definitive works on
the period, and I recommend them to any who my work has not already soured on the subject. William MacCallum’s, 1930, biography,
William S. Halsted, Surgeon
, tells the story as one who lived those historic times alongside his subject. The same can be said for the autobiographies of J. M. T. Finney and Hugh Young, both great sources of Halsted material. Harvey Cushing’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of William Osler also provided insights and a personal point of view. Here too, it has been interesting, knowing so many of Cushing’s descendants, and so little about the man until reading Bliss’s work. There are too many papers and addresses to mention. Many of these and related books are cited in the references, and I tried to give credit where credit was due. All errors in citation, facts, and otherwise are solely mine.

Much of the early research for this book fell upon my son Jason Imber, himself a writer, who enthusiastically found time when I could not. Many thanks, Jason. My agent, the exceptional Amanda Urban, was the most insightful of readers — unstinting of praise and criticism, usually right on the mark, and always a dream to work with. Political columnist-turned dramatist Michael Kramer is more than just my friend; he willingly read through an early draft and was generous with his editing skills and unpleasant comments. My wife, Cathryn Collins, deep in her own world of business and film-making, offered help and support throughout, and survived the process. Elizabeth Stein helped greatly with the editing process. At Kaplan, executive editor Don Fehr saw merit in the book and took on the project. Unfailingly intelligent, he and Kate Lopaze have been encouraging, thoughtful, and have made this a most pleasant experience.

REFERENCES

T
HIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN
to tell the important and interesting story of a singularly influential man. Although it was never intended to be the ultimately scholarly biography of Dr. William Stewart Halsted, no liberties were taken with the facts, as they are known. Over the years, Halsted biographers have been hampered by the reticence of the subject, and particularly his unwillingness to share the details of his epic struggle. In the face of his exaulted position in the medical world, early biographers did not actively confront the issue. Later biographers no longer had access to his contemporaries, and were forced to rely on a collage of vignettes to flesh out the man and his story. The books and articles listed below provided insight into Halsted and his times, and were a great source of information for this book. Specific references to statements or disputed issues are found in notes on the chapters to follow.

Bibliography

Andrew, Rob Jr.
Wade Hampton, Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Barren Island
. 1939 WPA Guide to New York City.

Bliss, Michael.
Harvey Cushing, A Life in Surgery
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Bliss, Michael.
Willam Osler, A Life in Medicine
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Burns, Ric, and Sanders, James.
New York: An Illustrated History
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, pp. 88–102.

Burrows, Edwin G., and Wallace, Mike.
Gotham, A History of New York City to 1898
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Crowe, Samuel James, M.D.
Halsted of Johns Hopkins, The Man and His Men
. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1957.

Cushing, Harvey.
The Life of Sir William Osler, Vol. I
. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1926.

Cushing, Harvey.
The Life of Sir William Osler, Vol. II
. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1926.

Dunbar, David S., and Jackson, Kenneth T.
Empire City: New York Through the Centuries
. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. “Murray Hill Reservoir,” Nov. 25, 1849, pp. 206–208. “The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus, 1883, pp. 314–315.

Finney, J. M. T.
A Surgeon’s Life: The Autobiography of J. M. T. Finney
. New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1940.

Fleming, Donald.
William H. Welch and the Rise of Modern Medicine
. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954.

Flexner, Simon, and Thomas, James.
William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine
. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941.

Franz, Caroline Jones. “Johns Hopkins: How a Farsighted Quaker Merchant and Four Great Doctors Brought Forth, with Maddening Slowness, One of the Finest Medical Centers in the World.”
American Heritage Magazine
, February 1976, Vol. 27, Issue 2.

Freeburg, Victor O.
William Henry Welch at Eighty: A Memorial Record of Celebrations Around the World in His Honor
. New York: The Milbank Memorial Fund, 1930.

Freud, Sigmund.
Cocaine Papers
. New York: Stonehill Publishing Company and Robert Byck, 1974.

Garrison, Fielding H.
John Shaw Billing: A Memoir
. New York and London: G.P. Putnam and Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1915, pp. 181–212.

Gonzalez-Crussi, F.
A Short History of Medicine
. New York: Random House Publishing, 2007.

Green, Ann Norton.
Horses at Work
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Halsted, William Stewart.
Surgical Papers, Vol. 2
. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924.

Halsted, William Stewart.
Surgical Papers, Vol. 1
. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924.

Harris, Leslie M.
In the Shadow of Slavery
. The University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Heuer, George J.
Dr. Halsted
. Unpublished.

Homberger, Eric.
The Historical Atlas of New York City
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994.

Jacob, Kathryn A. “Mr. Johns Hopkins.”
The Johns Hopkins Magazine
, January 1974, Johns Hopkins University.

Larabee, Eric.
The Benevolent & Necessary Institution
. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1971.

Lathrop, James R.
History and Description of The Roosevelt Hospital, New York City
. 1893.

MacCallum, W. G., and Welch, W. H.
William Stewart Halsted, Surgeon
. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930.

National Library of Medicine. John Shaw Billings Centennial, U.S. Public Health Service, June 17, 1965.

Obituary for Johns Hopkins,
The Baltimore Sun
, December 25, 1873.

Rutkow, Ira M.
Bleeding Blue and Gray, Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine
. New York: Random House, 2005.

Rutkow, Ira M., M.D.
Surgery, An Illustrated History
. St. Louis, MO: Mosby-Year Book and Norman Publishing, 1993.

Rutkow, Ira M.
The Surgical Clinics of North America, 75th Anniversary Issue
. Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders Company, December 1987.

Vexler, Robert L.
Baltimore, A Chronological and Documentary History 1632–1970
. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publishing, 1975.

Young, Hugh.
A Surgeon’s Autobiography
. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1940.

Notes

CHAPTER 1

Page

1   
All that is loathsome…
Charles Dickens,
American Notes
(Whitefish, MI: Kessing Publishing, 2004).

6   
Phillips Academy…
F. S. Allis, Jr.,
Youth from Every Quarter: A Bicentennial History of Phillips Academy, Andover
(Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1978).

8   
If you get an election…
Edwards A. Park, MD, “Pediatrician’s recollections of Dr. Halsted,”
Surgery
32, no. 3 (September 1952): 474.

8   
did not go in for social activities…
Ibid.

CHAPTER 2

11   
In 1845…
“Surgery Before Anesthesia,”
American Society of Anesthesiologists Newsletter
60, no. 9 (September 1996): 8–10.

11   
Gilbert Abbott…
James W. May, Jr., MD, “Gain Without Pain: The Dawn of Elective Surgery,”
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
122, no. 2 (August 2008): 631–38.

12   
The state of lack…
Oliver Wendell Holmes, letter to William Morton, November 26, 1846.

12   
In 1896, the 50th anniversary…
Hugh Young,
A Surgeon’s Autobiography
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1940), 69–70.

CHAPTER 3

24   
I had little expectation…
Letter from William S. Halsted to William H. Welch, August 3, 1922, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University.

25   
Lister’s antiseptic technique…
William H. Welch, memorial meeting for Dr. William Stewart Halsted, Homewood, Sunday, December 16, 1923.

CHAPTER 4

Eric Larrabee,
The Benevolent and Necessary Institution
(New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971).

29   
Halsted always claimed to have taken a competitive…
James L. Gehrlich, Contextual Narrative for Halsted’s Tenure as House Physician at New York Hospital, The New York Hospital Archives.

30   
Clinical progress notes…
New York-Presbyterian Hospital archives.

32   
Professor Emil Zuckerkandl…
Letter from William Stewart Halsted to William H. Welch, August 3, 1922, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University.

CHAPTER
5

42   
Wait a minute…
W. G. MacCallum and W. H. Welch,
William Stewart Halsted, Surgeon
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930).

42   
He was in Albany…
Letter from William Stewart Halsted to William Henry Welch, High Hampton, North Carolina, August 3, 1922.

42   
the first emergency blood transfasion…
MacCallum and Welch,
William Stewart Halsted, Surgeon
.

44   
Roosevelt Hospital…
James R. Lathrop,
History and Description of the Roosevelt Hospital, New York City
, 1893.

CHAPTER 6