I had hardly put my feet on the ground when my host asked, “When will you do a heart operation?” I was in
Karachi in the early 1960s; my university had been delegated to establish a health
center with the primary objective of training present and potentially future members
of the medical faculty in teaching the basic sciences. Heaven knows, this was a much-needed
project. Pathology, for example, was being taught by having students sit on hard benches
hour after hour, listening to lectures and wandering through the pathologic museum
in which untouchable, preserved, glass-covered specimens were displayed on shelves.
Our mission was intended to involve no clinical subjects whatsoever, but they were
determined; no heart operation had been performed in Pakistan, and they were going
to have one, come hell or high water. It was the last thing that was needed; food
and soap and water would have been far more appropriate!
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to SurgeryAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
February 6,
2004
Delray Beach, FlaFootnotes
☆Many of our readers are the guardians of lore, amusing or illuminating, about our surgical heritage. This oral history will be lost unless it is captured now. The Editors invite you to submit anecdotes, vignettes, stories of your mentors (great and small), or simply the tall tales you tell your residents about the way it once was.
Identification
Copyright
© 2005 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
