http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd.dir/lesser.dir/lesser_4.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
In the freshman anatomy course at UCLA, in 1967, I etched a plate of a sagittal series of the head, sections of the human head embedded in plastic blocks, like book ends. The center cut was in the middle of the plate and at the bottom of the plate is the face of a man, joined with its side view meeting at the eye, the inside of the eye and the outside. I wrote for the book, "The Art of Learning Medicine," "The beauty of the original structures caused me to have a sense of intimacy: what could be more personal than to see the inside of a human head and hold it in one's hands and turn it over and see it this close to me?" I feel the same sense of wonder when I incise the copper plate to make this engraving of a MRI film in 3-D today. The means to learn by seeing clearly the many levels inside an alive human being, quickly and without pain or danger to him, is a pivotal contribution from radiology. Its beauty is awesome.
The pulmonary pediatrician proudly asserts, "During my lifetime we have learned to detect the gene that carries the cystic fibrosis disease. It can be seen in the newly fertilized egg and in the fetus in utero -- whether the baby will have C.F. or be a carrier like his parents. And then, in the newborn, with the disease, we are experimenting with gene therapy, inserting the normal gene via a virus to line the airways, attaching where the chromosome should be. But we still have patients with the disease."
He reviews the heavy chart of one who has been his patient for 21 years, now with an oxygen box by his feet. The sickly thin young man reports that he does not sleep well at night. "From pain?" his doctor asks. And so he writes a prescription for medication. After the consultation, I ask the doctor, about to retire at 70, what it did to him to go to his patients' funerals all of his medical career. He answers, "Being at the death bedside is harder, when you have known the patient for decades."