My good wife taught grade school to support us during the lean years of medical school. She was paid $4,700 a year. Sometimes we shared a carrot for dinner. Time permitting, I did odd jobs, some of them quite odd. After completing the pathology courses, I got a job as a diener in the county morgue and got my first glimpse into the inevitability of death, the causes of death, the investigation of death, and the inhumanity of men against men (and women). I also continued my work in the slaughter house and had a job washing biochemistry glassware for a research department, a very exacting and also thankless job.
How I developed an interest in neurosurgery is of some interest. I had never given a thought to going into neurosurgery, nor did any of my classmates. That was largely due to the fact that there was no neurosurgeon on the university faculty. The previous professor, Dr. Dr. Petter Lindstrom, was a Swedish-born neurosurgeon highly respected for his work in so-called bloodless brain surgery. He had the misfortune of being better known to the rest of the world and to history as the husband famous and sexy actress, Ingrid Bergman, who deserted him for Roberto Rossellini, director of her movie Stromboli. The much talked about marriage ended in highly publicized scandal and a bitterly contested divorce in 1950. Divorce was unacceptable for most faculty members on most campuses in that era, and definitely in Utah. He left under a cloud.
My classmate and friend and I—who were interested in surgical careers—went to the faculty office of a general surgeon who had advertised for an assistant for the summer to do stomach operations on cows. It was exactly what we were looking for; so, we two friends waltzed into the office and announced our purpose. We waited for five minutes, then the surgeon came out and asked, which one of us came first, because he had only one position to offer. My friend leaped up and announced that it was him. He got the job, and I got the disappointment. Not only did I want the experience, but I needed the money. The surgeon was an empathetic and decent person. He told me that the medical school had just hired a new surgeon…he fumbled with a piece of paper…oh, yes, a neurosurgeon, and that the new man was looking for an assistant. I should move right along in order to secure the position before a formal announcement was made. I did, and I got the job.
Dr. Roberts was an interesting and fetching young man fairly fresh out of his training program. He wanted my help doing craniotomies on goats, Macacca malata monkeys, and other animals to investigate a hitherto little-known structure located in the center of the brain, just above the pineal gland, called the “suprapineal arachnoid body” for lack of better understanding of its purpose.
Without cracking a smile, Dr. Roberts assigned the equally green lab assistant and I to do a craniotomy on one of our goats and to remove its specimen. I had never even seen a craniotomy, let alone done one, let alone on a goat. I did not volunteer that information. Remember, I needed the job. To be brief, the procedure was what is referred to in the military as a “Charlie Foxtrot”. I had the right idea about putting the experimental animal to sleep, but no one told me about establishing an airway with a tracheostomy—another procedure I had neither seen or done. The cranium was incredibly thick and hard. I finally had to resort to using a hammer and chisel to get through. Because of having no oxygen, the goat’s brain had swollen dramatically. When I got through the cranium, I also penetrated the dural covering of the brain. The cerebrum extruded with volcanic speed and in toto. The goat died on the spot. I had the presence of mind to do a postmortem dissection of the brain and to extract the specimen we had come for, at least.
Dr. Roberts did not fire me. Instead, he laughed harder than is really healthy for a person. He had me assist him in surgery, and I saw what true neurosurgery was about. I was impressed, and I was hooked. My next assignment led me into the grimness of what I would face as my training progressed. Dr. Roberts wanted to get as many specimens of the suprapineal arachnoid bodies as possible from newborn babies who had died in Salt Lake County over the next year. Arrangements were made with all pathologists in all hospitals for me to come whenever a newborn died. Autopsies were mandatory and usually perfunctory; so, my presence to dissect the mid portion of the brain aroused no questions. My first experience was quite like my efforts with the goat. Baby brains are extremely soft, fragile, and friable. I was successful in removing the attachments of the brain, but as I tried to lift it out, it crumbled into an unrecognizable thick fluid. I studied up on how to do the procedure after that and learned that I needed to use cheese cloth to grasp the fragile brain and to prevent injury through manipulation.
That was fine, but it did require an assistant for success. I did not have one; so, I dragooned my long-suffering and dedicated wife to help since she was not busy teaching school and taking care of our two children and two others she tended regularly to earn a bit. The first twenty-five babies went well, and I was gaining a reputation as the grim reaper of babies. Now, mind, my wife is the quintessential lover of babies. At number twenty-six, she put her foot down and refused ever to do anything like that again. That was the first time anyone told me that I had ice in my veins instead of blood. Somehow, I found a way to harvest enough to reach Dr. Roberts’ goal of a hundred. I also developed my lifelong mottos, “Aut enveniam viam aut faciam.”
With his help, I was thoroughly dedicated: I was going to be a neurosurgeon or die trying. He helped me get a surgical internship/residency at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and sent a letter of recommendation to Dr. Lyle French, head of the Department of Neurosurgery to get me on my way.
You may have opinions, questions, and even criticisms. My question is how do you feel and what do you think about vivisection and me as an author who writes about such things.?