FROM OUR PAGES
In this section, we highlight visual and textual tidbits from past issues of the magazine. These messages from yesteryear remind us about how fast some things in medicine (and in life) change, as well as about some timeless truths.
From the Spring 1978 issue
Almost exactly 25 years ago, DMS alumnus Irving Kramer '33 went "Out on a Limb"—in an article of that title—and made some predictions about the future of medicine.
"Those of us who studied anatomy under Dr. Frederic Lord," he wrote, "can imagine what our reactions would have been if he had predicted that one day a pump oxygenator would be connected to the circulatory system, that a surgeon would then incise the heart muscle, work on the valves, sew it up, and then shock the heart to start it again—we would have considered him demented!
"The year 2000 is no longer a distant date of concern only to science fiction buffs," went on Kramer, an internist. "Over half of the physicians in the United States today will still be practicing in 2000. So it is none too soon to ask: 'What will be the state of the healing art at the turn of the century?'
"A breakthrough can be expected in the 1990s with the introduction of antiviral therapy for certain types of cancer," he predicted. "In the 1980s, besides a wide variety of more effective vaccines, there will be a universal virus vaccine. . . . Arti- ficial hearts will largely have replaced human or animal transplants by the 1990s. . . . The widespread availability of videophones, interactive television, and computer terminals within homes may allow patients to receive a large proportion of their medical care without having to travel to a hospital, clinic, or of- fice. . . . By 1990, the costs of comprehensive health care will be covered by tax-supported national health insurance or obligatory health insurance." Kramer, who died in 1993, was clearly prescient in some regards—and game in his willingness to peer into a brave new world he didn't quite live to see.
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Legions of DMS students learned anatomy from Professor Fred Lord. |
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