Revisiting Gods

[hamiclar01]

from the start, i must announce, i am a hard core atheist.i have few, if any heros among mankind, maybe because i'm dry, misanthropic sort of chap.

however, when i was in fourth year at medical school, i did discover an idol. it was helen taussig, the grand dame of paediatric cardiology who, with alfred blalock and vivien thomas hit upon the solution to the bogglingly complex cardiac condition called fallot's tetrology, the commonest cause of blue baby syndrome.

to put it simply, the babies are blue because they do not get enough oxygen. they do not get enough oxygen because the defects in their hearts limit blood flow to the lungs. the solution she devised was a masterpiece in simplicity and clear thinking. if the lungs don't get blood from the heart, why not get it from a big blood vessel instead....the famous blalock taussig shunt, that saved millions of children worldwide.

years later, i pulled up details on her again on the web, in response to my wife asking me to name my favourite heroine. thanks to the www, there is a wealth of data available that us poor book folk were deprived of.

what i read, moved me beyond description.

helen taussing started off dyslexic. was deaf by the time she started practising, and had to lip read , besides using her hearing aid. if that wasn't bad, she was among the first few women medics in america, and had to suffer enormous sex discrimination.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/tau ... len-brooke
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceo ... y_316.html

vivien thomas, was black. the fact that his skills were indispensable to blalock made no difference to the racism he suffered at john hopkins. he was never allowed to enter through the main gate and had to use the service entrance, and his contribution was totally ignored till much later.
http://greathistory.com/the-janitor-who ... part-i.htm
http://www.helium.com/items/190785-biog ... mas?page=2

alfred blalock, however, had a good deal. though there is no doubting the genius of the man who was among the first pioneers of blood transfusions to treat haemorrhagic shock, and who dared to operate on the heart when everybody else deemed it impossible.
http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/blbio.htm

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/dome/0301/close_up.cfm

i am not going to insult your intelligence by giving you the wikipedia links. i'm sure can do that yourself

thank you for your patience!

[BJL]

Hadn't heard of her before. But good stuff.

[Vikram]

Anand,

You gave me a new hero yesterday.The more I read about Vivien Thomas the more I am appreciating the entire personal and social dimension to a surgical procedure and what it stands for. The immediate reflex was to make a movie on it .Looks some one made already one.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386792/

Going to watch it soon.Better be good.

Thank you.

Best-
Vikram

[timmy]

Thanks for that tip -- I will check into it!

Regarding your wife and heroines of science, one of mine is Rosalind Franklin, whose X-Ray crystallography was the breakthrough that enabled the unraveling of DNA structure. Here's a nice little write up about Rosalind's often unrecognized contribution to Scientific knowledge, the barriers she faced, and the ultimate price she paid for her scientific work:

http://www.bio.miami.edu/~cmallery/150/ ... covery.htm

One of my non-scientific heroines of modern times is Marian Anderson, the great American operatic star. It was with great delight that I told her story to my Tamil sister, while we were discussing the inauguration of Barack Obama. She had noted that the great soul singer Aretha Franklin, who sang the American song My Country Tis of Thee (sung to the tune of the British anthem, God Save the Queen), was not nearly the singer she had been in her more famous days.

I responded to my sister that Aretha's singing skill was not important -- she could have croaked like a frog, and her song would have been just as important and poignant. Back in 1939, Marian Anderson was an acclaimed operatic artist, having taken Europe by storm. However, because she was an African American, she was refused permission to sing in the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall. (The irony of this sentence is incredible!)

President Franklin Roosevelt's wife, the redoubtable Eleanor, immediately resigned her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution organization and arranged with Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, to provide Marian Anderson with the opportunity to give a free, open-air concert from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A large crowd attended and millions listened to Anderson's voice by radio. Anderson's comment about the Daughters of the American Revolution is quite noteworthy and instructive: "You lose a lot of time hating people."

Later, President Eisenhower appointed Anderson to be a goodwill ambassador. You can go on Youtube and see part of her historic performance at the Lincoln Memorial as well as an old clip of her visit to India as a goodwill ambassador. I feel that her life signifies all that my country should be, both to its citizens and to the citizens of the world.

It was Anderson's historic concert that directly led to Martin Luther King's famous "I Had a Dream" speech, also delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the historic Civil Rights gathering in Washington DC in 1963. Many people see that gathering as the focal point of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, but I feel that it was Marian Anderson's concert in 1939 that was the harbinger of the Civil Rights movement.

When she understood the history behind Aretha Franklin's singing at Barack Obama's inaugural ceremony, my sister then saw that the significance of that song in that setting far exceeded the technical ability Aretha demonstrated.

[hamiclar01]

timmy,

the list of people who struggled against odds is endless (hugh dowding, premchand, van gogh....), i just happened to share my favourites. funny you mention rosalind franklin though, who is actually high on my wife's list of gods. i knew about her from school, but it was hubby who actually opened my eyes to what she really struggled against.

us living in cambridge, the home of the double helix, adds a charm to the story. every time we have friends touring the city we try and show them the famous gates, to mixed results.

vikram, i did get to see the movie some time ago. very well made, though they pushed helen taussig in the background. alan rickman is impressive, as ever, even with his fake southern accent!

[timmy]

hamiclar:

I'm sorry, I didn't want my post to sound as if I was upbraiding you for not including other names. As you say, there are many folks of note who have moved humanity forward and even more who labored and who remain unknown. It seems that all too often, the biggest part of getting things done in life is associated not with right ideas, but with small minds.

Thanks for sharing that about Cambridge!

[hamiclar01]

timmy,

i typed hastily to declare there were other people who struggled against adversity, and that i did not mean to bypass what they did. but i was not hurt by your post, so please, there is no need to apologise. in fact, thanks for broadening the topic further and bringing the two names in. we are all here to learn from each other.maybe if you chance to visit cambridge we could go out to the labs together. it would be much nicer to have someone who, actually understands the significance of the area, rather the the usual rabble, who yawn and demand the loo instead!

vikram, in the same vein, did you get a chance to finish robert payne's book on the crusades? i remember when i put it down, the only person who really seemed to stand out taller than the fulks and richards and saladins was baldwin the leper king. it is the usual story though, few, even our documentary channels, have even heard of him or what he did despite his handicaps

[Sakobav]

Its an amazing story and its not surprising that some of the best heart surgeons were from John Hopkins in that era and even now they have a great medical institute. I came across these fellas while watching the movie on HBO. Its a really well made and portrays the struggle Vivien Thomas had to endure. Helen probably had it as worst. Dr Blalock him self had to endure metal lungs due to a childhood illness.

[Vikram]

I finished watching ''Something the Lord Made'' and it's a very well made movie without excessive theatrics or over dramatisation.All subtleties well brought out.

Anand, I have not yet finished the book but well on the way.Of course King Baldwin comes across as the only man who knew where history was heading.

Now, all of you, check this out.A friend of mine sent me this in response to the link about Vivien Thomas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Naki

An almost word for word replication of Vivien Thomas' life! How very amazing.

Best-
Vikram

[Mark]

Also, Aretha Franklin sang at Martin Luther Kings funeral.

To sing at the funeral of an assassinated leader who preached peace and was killed because of his skin color, and in the same lifetime to sing at the inauguration of the first black US president, is really quite an astounding chronicle of US history.

[timmy]

Another noteworthy person is one Hedy Kiesler Markey, who invented the idea of spread spectrum technology that is used in all CDMA mobile telephones today. She developed this as an unjammable guidance system for remotely controlled naval torpedoes during WW2. Here's a page from her patent application:



This name may not be familiar to many, but her stage name as "The Most Beautiful Woman in Hollywood" is much better known, especially to movie buffs" Hedy Lamarr.



It is amazing how many people, even today, doubt that a beautiful Hollywood actress could devise such an elegant technical scheme, but it is true.

[hamiclar01]

hmmmm...Hedy Lamarr.

How Ecstatic