The Martlet; a newsletter where Surgery, Culture, Innovation, Finance and Informatics cohabitate
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Martin Luther King, Jr had a stab wound to the Superior Mediastinum |
While the Chair of Surgery was busy watching La Parisienne at Plaza Cinema on 57th Street |
Few individuals realize that MLK survived an assassination attempt in 1958 while signing books at a department store in Harlem. He was stabbed in the right parasternal second intercostal space with a 10 inch long letter opener, which remained in place until he was taken to Harlem Hospital. The course of events is fascinating. He was taken to an indigent hospital because of his race, but the Governor put on a big show of faith in the county hospital system, even though the reputation at the time put it behind other Manhattan facilities. The Chairman at the time was Aubre Maynard, the first non-Caucasian Chairman of Surgery in NYC. An avid Francophile, he was from Barbados, and was married to a French woman.
The day of the stabbing Dr. Maynard was watching Bridget Bardot's La Parisienne at Plaza Cinema, now the Paris Cinema, which interestingly is the last single screen theatre in NYC and just hosted the premiere of Bradley Cooper's Maestro.
Thoracic Surgery was still fairly new as an independent specialty. The hospital administrator tracked down Italian Surgeon Emil Naclero, who was in his Tuxedo at a wedding at the Waldorf in Midtown, as well as John Cordice, a young African-American Surgeon who just finished his Thoracic sub-specialization. Of note, Dr. Cordice first gained exposure to Thoracic Surgery while station in France as an Army Physician. Specialty training options, especially in something as novel as Thoracic Surgery, were extremely limited for African-Americans in the US at the time.
They took Rev. King to the OR but did not want to operate until the Chairman could be found because of the high profile nature of the case. There was apparently a great deal of tension between Drs. Maynard and Cordice stemming from the fact that Maynard, only the second African-American member of the New York Surgical Society, had refused to sponsor Cordice's application. Finally Dr. Maynard arrived, and the three surgeons performed a high right lateral Thoracotomy and found the tip of the blade against the Innominate Artery. Dr. Maynard had the honor of pulling the blade out, and the rest is history.
Of note, if you ever run into this injury, you really should do a median sternotomy, divide the innominate vein with a white GIA stapler and then you can get proximal control easier. But, we've learned a lot since 1958.
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Ever heard of the MASH 8055? |
This year marked the 50th anniversary of MASH, so it's a good time to mention the backstory.
Richard Hornberger was a General Surgeon, graduate of Cornell, who wrote the original MASH novel about his thinly veiled experience as a draftee physician in the Korean War. He was stationed in the MASH 8055, one of 7 such tent hospitals close to the front line. He was always rebellious, and this prompted him to attempt arterial repair from war wounds, which was strictly forbidden at the time. Word spread of his success and the fact that he was able to avoid amputations which led to increasingly wide adoption.
He apparently disliked the TV show, and was resentful at Alan Alda's portrayal of him.
He wrote many other follow up books about life after the Korean War, but none of them had the success of the original.
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What if Freud, Billroth, Brahms and Nietzsche were all at the same party? In 1876 they were!
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Der Ring des Nibelungen is the most outrageous Opera of all time. It takes 4 nights to perform and has 15 hours of music. The premiere was in 1876, took place in Bayreuth Germany, roughly 2 hours outside of Munich, at the Opera House designed by the Opera's composer Richard Wagner himself. The great thinkers of the era came out to see this monumental undertaking.
-Theodor Billroth, father of foregut Surgery
-Johannes Brahms, legendry composer who dedicated 2 violin concertos to his friend Billroth (opus 51 1&2, AKA Billroth 1 and 2)
-Sigmund Freud, founder of the field of Psycology
-Friedrich Nietzsche, author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Interesting that so many people that influenced the trajectory of thought in so many divergent fields could all appreciate this bombastic artistic endeavor.
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Suture that doesn't need knots? Why didn't I think of that?
As a Surgery Resident I tied so many surgical knots that I had to put super glue on my fingertips to keep the skin intact. Now it seems that that's a thing of the past. Stratafix is a new (at least new to me) type of suture that allows you to simply run the suture, and its barbed design keeps it from loosening. It's great for closing midline fascia. There's a little trick to locking it at the beginning and the end, so watch this video before you try your first one. #1 Stratafix is equivalent to #1 PDS in terms of strength. |
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