The Richest City in the World.. New Bedford, Massachusetts

Yes.. for some time in the 19th Century, the great whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts was the richest city in the world because of that occupation.  To show off their wealth, whaling captains built marvelous mansions along the crest of a long hill that was called County Street.  This also gave them a nice view of the harbor from the "Widows' walks" that adorned their roofs.  Growing up in that city, I was well aware of these mansions; I even lived for a while in one of the less elaborate ones that had been split up into tenements. (In 1944, I believe that we paid $10 a week rent to live there.)

Therefore, I was surprised and happy to discover an Amazon "e-book" with the title: "A Walking Tour of New Bedford, Mass." by Doug Gelbert.  I downloaded it to my Kindle E-Reader for the enormous price of 99 cents and spent an enjoyable couple of hours doing a "virtual tour" of my old "stomping ground" and remembering how it was to grow up in such an amazing place.

After showing a map of the area and a bit of local history, the walking tour starts.  Part of the downtown of New Bedford is a National Park, and the tour begins at the visitors' center, a former bank and district court building.  The tour passes Freestone's City Grill .. a place that serves absolutely the best quahog chowder in the world.. years ago I knew the place as Haskel's bar, a tough joint where I would often pick up drunken fishermen to ferry home to safe harbors in my taxi cab.

The tour visits several historic sites such as the U.S. Custom House, the Andrew Robeson House, the Benjamin Rodman Mansion, the Bourne Warehouse, and the Rodman Candle Works.  Most of these places have been restored to their 19th century glory and are well worth a close look.

The tour then visits New Bedford's famous waterfront and focuses on the Bourne Counting House at One Merrill's Wharf.  A few years ago, my late wife and I spent a few days at a bed and breakfast within this building.  I am sad to learn that it did not last.

Oh.. I forgot to mention.. this tour also has nice black and white photos of most of the stops along the tour!

The tour leaves the waterfront and heads west uphill to visit the Sundial Building, the Double Bank Building, Corson's Block, and of course, The New Bedford Whaling Museum.. a "must see" for anyone visiting the area.  The museum, on cobble-stoned Johnny Cake Hill is right across the street from the Mariners' Home and the Seamen's Bethel, immortalized by Herman Melville in the classic book Moby Dick.

We then pass the neoclassical New Bedford Institute of Savings and turn left to visit the Zeiterion Theater.  If my memory is correct, the theater is named after Harry Zeitz, who owned it when it was called the State Theater.  As a young kid, I spent many an afternoon watching double features over and over while I sucked on green gummy spearmint candy, and ruined my teeth.

During the 1938 unannounced hurricane, my grandmother was watching a movie at the State Theater and she said that she could look up and see the roof bounce up and down.  I can also remember that hurricane as my mother and I walked up from the South End just ahead of the tide washing in and the telephone poles sailing through the air.   But, we all made it safely home.

Next on the tour is the old "new" Star Store, now being used by the University of Massachusetts.  If I recall correctly, this store was the first in the country to have pneumatic tubes and we kids would love to stand around watching the containers being whisked all over the place.  They sucked up the bills and spit back the change and receipts.. I guess they didn't trust the clerks to make change. 

I also remember that the Star Store had the first escalator in the country.  I could be wrong on that.

Now we go up the road to the fortress-like First Unitarian Church, which I recall had a very large Sunday attendance, as did Grace Episcopal Church, a block away, south on County Street.

After Grace Church, the most famous whaling mansions begin: the Bartlett Houses, the Samuel Rodman House, the Beauvais House, the Gerrish House, the famous Rotch-Jones-Duff House, the William Rotch Rodman Mansion, and the Captain Cornelius Howland House.

This brings us to the intersecting Russell Street, where my school-mate Albert Nickerson grew up.  We visit the William Tallman Russell House and the Eliza Penniman York House. (Albert may have lived in one of those.. I'm not  sure.)  At the southeast corner of Russell Street and County Street, we have reached the Joshua Richmond House and are ready to cross the street and begin to visit the mansions on the west side of County Street.

By the way.. further east on Russell Street we would be near the old Allen F. Wood School, where Albert Nickerson and I were students.  That was the tough school I have written about elsewhere.  It was run by a lady we labeled a Nazi General. She was named Miss Savage.  She was the lady who made us wear neckties to school and had biceps that she wasn't afraid to flex.  She is also the lady who changed my Stanford-Binet scores so that I would have an expected IQ of 100.  

However... it should be noted that she had a tough school to run.. most of the kids were the progeny of families that were very poor, including mine.  She taught us to have pride in our appearance and to be good hard-working citizens, and some of our school mates did manage to move up quite a bit from poverty.

Back to the tour:  when the tour jumps across the street from 376 County, it misses my house at 372.  But take a look back at the house as you cross the street, my ghost will wave at you.

The west side of County has some gems.. The Grinnell Mansion with fantastic columns, the Mary Howland House, the Barton Ricketson House, the Gilbert Russell House, the Benjamin Cummings House, and the Marcia Parker House.  The Roosevelt Apartments building is next in line, followed by the James Arnold House, that became the Wamsutta Club.  Mr. Arnold was known for his landscaping skills and Herman Melville made a point of visiting the famous gardens in 1857. The text mentions that Mr. Arnold had a bit to do with the even more famous Arnold Arboretum in Boston.  

Next is the Jireh Perry House that became a Masonic Temple.  And now, the Bristol County Superior Court, where Lizzie Borden's famous trial was held.  (An examination of this trial and that of O.J. Simpson reveals a lot of similarities.)

Aha.. here we are.. the old New Bedford High School Building, where  I went to school and graduated from many long years ago.  The text mentions that  this building was built on the property of Charles W. Morgan, famous Quaker whaling merchant, who lent his name to the last existing whaling ship now berthed in Mystic, Connecticut.  (In my humble opinion, Mystic stole that ship from New Bedford, and we should mount an effort to enter Mystic harbor on a dark night and steal it back!)

Next.. the Lorum Snow House, Trinity Church, and the Captain Steven N. Potter Mansion.  The County Street part of the tour ends here; however, there are a lot more mansions, some quite famous further north.  Meanwhile, the tour jumps to the First Baptist Church on William Street.  This is the church where my cousin, Charlie Kraihanzel convinced me that I should give up my young life of crime, such as it was. The church had a wonderful library of every Hardy Boys mystery ever written and every OZ book by L. Frank Baum.  I read them all...good bye to comic books.

Captain Roberts wrote his famous Rules of Order book during the Civil War, as a means to keep control of the riotous meetings then taking place at the First Baptist Church.  Captain Roberts was billeted at Fort Rodman.

Next door to the First Baptist Church is the unseen ghost of the New Bedford YMCA, where I worked and taught and tried to become the strongest guy in the world; and where one of my artistic female cousins sneaked into the locker room to sketch naked guys.

Across the street on North Sixth Street is the Bristol County Registry of Deeds.  As a kid, I used to peek into a box kept on its lawn that kept track of the ambient temperature. High tech stuff then. 

The tour now comes to what it says is the New Bedford City Hall.  Unfortunately, I think they put the wrong picture in.  It looks suspiciously like the Wamsutta Mills.

Across the street is the New Bedford Free Public Library (don't tell them that I still have an outstanding book!).  This was the second free public library to be set up in the U.S., and has a marvelous collection of incunabula (at one time open to the public and the dirty fingers of urchins.)

In front of the library is the famous Whaleman's Statue.. "A dead whale or a stove boat."  The statue memorializes those tough whalers who hunted many-tonned creatures from small boats in high seas. (The model for this statue was a giant of a man.  My grandfather was an undertaker when the man died and had the duty of fitting him to a casket.  None were big enough so he had to bury him in an upright piano case.)

The tour next passes the New Bedford Art Museum and the Merchant's National Bank.  (I can still smell the roasting peanuts given out by Mr. Peanut who stood across from the bank and passed out handfuls of delicious salty peanuts every day, rain or shine.)

The tour ends at the old Cherry's Department Store, "A splash of Art Deco in New Bedford."

Following the tour, there is a very informative section entitled: "Identifying American Architecture." If you have followed this tour, you will have seen examples of almost all of the architecture that is mentioned.

I highly recommend this "ebook".. or the printed copies thereof.  I will be taking my Kindle to New Bedford for my NBHS reunion later this year and anticipate with pleasure walking the tour.

Now.. I do have one criticism: I don't know how this book became an "ebook", but I assume it was scanned into a computer.  If so, then the typos must be in the printed copy.  Typos such as:

thraough
Federa-style
uutside
bluetsne

All of these and a few others could have been caught with simple "spell check" software.

However.. in spite of these few mis-spellings and a missing picture, this is a great resource for persons who want to get to know New Bedford.. "the city that lit the world."

Incidentally, this was the "old days",we now love all whales and do not like it when anyone hunts them!
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Women Haters

This is Women's History Month, an annual celebration of the contributions that women have made throughout history to make the world a better place to live.  As a man who has always loved and worshipped women, I have been upset with recent activity this month in the United States Congress to try to make bodily decisions for women.  And let's not even mention a certain Radio Mouth and his sputum. Haven't these clowns read history...  One of the current political candidates even feigned amazement that women had somehow been allowed to vote.  I would recommend that these guys take the time to read the play  Lysistrata by Aristophanes, and learn that it is not wise to treat women as though they don't exist.

While thinking about this, I remembered that I had not yet read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.   The Swedish title was Maen som hatar kvinnor  or  Men Who Hate Women.  I had bought a paperback copy of the book sometime ago and had read the first couple of pages and it didn't hold my interest, so I put it aside for a rainy day.  Well, it was a rainy day so I decided to give it another try.  I stuck with it for 5 or 6 pages.. and then, 400 pages later, I finally put it down!

I suggest that you not go to Wikipedia to learn about the book until you have actually finished reading it.. otherwise, you will not feel that full effect of the twists and turns of the many plots.  While you read, you may get the urge to BOO HISS the villains and cheer YOU GO GIRL! for the main female character. As the Swedish title suggests, the author shows us several men who hate women. 

He states at one point: "Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man."

He also states: "Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man."

Larsson is very explicit in depicting such violence; he is also very explicit in depicting the "comeuppance."

The book starts out with a family tree for the Vanger family.  I found myself checking it over and over as the characters were introduced or discussed.. a lot like reading a Dostoyevski novel, but not as cumbersome.  Most of the Swedish place names were completely unfamiliar to me.  Elaine has visited Sweden and knew about some of the locations.  This was helpful to know, but not really needed to enjoy the story.

My record for guessing who the main villain might be remains at 100%, although I guessed it from a minute clue that I now believe was tossed into the mix and I think I missed the real clues.  As I said, I literally could not put this book down until the main villain got that "comeuppance" that I mentioned.  The rest of the story reminds me of that scene in Amadeus where Mozart comments on a piece of Salieri's that, in effect, the main tune is nice, but the rest is "predictable".. I think that Larsson should have not gone on for 100 more pages, but wrapped it up more quickly.. I think readers would have predicted the outcomes on their own.  I could be wrong.

Bottom line: 

Women need to read this book to HISS and CHEER.

Men need to read this book to look inward.

Everybody should read this book to enjoy a marvelous mystery story.


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A Fiend Unleashed.. Addendum

My previous blog entry under the title shown: "A Fiend Unleashed".. talked about Hitler and his attempt to build "the master race" by killing those he thought were "inferior"..

It dawned on me that some younger readers might not have taken my observations seriously.. "surely you exagerate!"  Perhaps additional information is needed to drive the point in.. that Hitler and also his right-hand men were indeed "fiends", and not worthy to be called civilized human beings.

The following is extracted from a book published by a good friend of mine from the Social Security Administration.  He served as a Military Policeman in Europe during World War II, while he was just a teen-ager.  His first-hand war observations during 1944 and 1945 are published in a book titled: My Private Military Odyssey by Harry J. Wade, and I would recommend it to you highly.

"We arrived at Dachau in August 1945.   The camp had already been liberated and was being used as a PW (Prisoner of War) camp...The building containing the crematorium still contained the  bones of some of the recently cremated people...In the basement there were piles of bones and a bone-grinding machine.  There were also clay pots into which the powdered bones were placed, and sometimes a bar of soup made from the human fat was placed on top of the clay pots...

There were so-called "showers" to which many were led to take showers.  Instead, they were gassed to death... We were told that, at times, so many people were crowded into the "showers" that the bodies were still standing after the people had died from inhaling the gas...

Others told of experiments on internees at the Dachau camp hospital.  One such experiment involved immersing a person in very hot water and then quickly dunking them in ice cold water to monitor body temperature changes.  Still others told of lampshades made from human skin..."

The German neighbors of the Dachau camp, as did the neighbors of the Auschwitz Camp.. denied that they knew what was going on there.  They claimed that they thought the disgusting smells that issued from the smokestacks was caused by the burning of garbage.

What can be worse than man's inhumanity to man?!
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A Fiend Unleashed.. Could it happen in the United States?

The following is an imaginary conversation .. that I think might have taken place in 2012.

A father and his 15 year-old son are looking at photographs.. some old; some new.

(A picture of American soldiers in camouflage clothing, holding weapons.. with some sort of "SS" symbol with the U.S. flag, in the background.)

Son: "Dad, why are some people upset about this picture?"

Dad: "The "SS" symbol was used by fierce Germans who committed horrible atrocities some 70 years ago.  They were called Nazi Storm Troopers."

Son: "What kind of atrocities did the Nazis commit?"

Dad: "They attempted to destroy whole races of non-German people.  What they did is called genocide."

Son: "Who  were those races they tried to destroy?"

Dad: "Mainly, it was Jews.  But they also tried to destroy Gypsies, Poles, Russians and other people they thought were inferior beings."

Son: "Why did they think these people were inferior beings?"

Dad: "Their leader had convinced the German people that they were the vanguard of a "Master Race" which he planned to create.  To do so, he convinced them that they  needed to eliminate persons who he felt did not belong in this new idealistic future.  This meant that in addition to eliminating those in "inferior" races, people with chronic diseases, children with deformities, inmates of mental institutions, dwarfs, midgets, and those with "ugly" features also had to be eliminated from the gene pool.  Today, we call this 'racial cleansing.'"

Son:  "Who would then be left in this 'Master Race'?"

Dad:  "Son, picture in your mind, tall, blond, blue-eyed movie stars.  Also, handsome people with "clear eyes", "perfect" noses, and upright stature."

Son:  "Wouldn't that be a boring world to live in?"

Dad:  "Yes."

Son:  "How did they try to accomplish this?  It sounds like a crazy thing to do."

Dad: "They were well along their way to accomplish this insane program by the time that they were stopped and defeated in 1945.  Take a look at this picture."

(Picture of a series of one-story buildings surounded by barbed wire.  A large smokestack can be seen surmounting a brick building.)

Dad: "This is a picture of a 'Death Camp'."

Son: "What does that mean?"

Dad:  "The Death Camp program was supposed to be a "Final Solution" to what the Germans called 'The Jewish Problem'.  An earlier "solution" was to just march Jews to a location where mass graves had been dug, and shoot them.  The Nazis felt that this was "inefficient" and decided on the "Death Camp solution" ..  Let me give you an illustration of how a Death Camp was used:

German SS men would enter a village in Poland or Russia that housed mainly Jewish residents.  They would make it known that the people were going to be relocated to a new place where they could resume normal lives.  The villagers were not able to resist because the German troops were heavily armed.  If anyone did try to resist, they were shot dead on the spot.

The people were herded onto trains.. usually boxcars.. and taken to one of these camps, where they were separated into groups of potential "workers" and "others."  The "others" were women, children, the elderly, and the infirm.  The "workers" would be taken somewhere else to work in the German war effort.  The remainder were told to strip for a refreshing shower.. it was a "shower" of poison gas! Before being carried to the crematory in the building with a big smokestack, gold rings and teeth were removed from the bodies, and some interesting tatoos were cut off to make lampshades for camp officers."

(A picture of a pile of hundreds of baby shoes, left behind as the babies were carried into the building for their "shower.")

Son: "Dad... this is crazy.  I can't believe all this.  I'm studying German in school and we are learning about famous German geniuses like Goethe, Schiller, Bach, and Beethoven.  What you are saying doesn't make sense to me.  How can there have been savage Germans like you are talking about?"

Dad: "Son,  of course, not all Germans were like this.  Adolph Hitler was a crazy man who had taken complete control over Germany in 1933 and assembled groups of mentally deranged criminals, masochists, and serial killers to carry out his irrational wishes.  He demanded absolute obedience from everyone and was feared by all.  Hitler established a 'Third Reich,'  a "Kingdom" that he predicted would rule the entire world for one thousand years."

Son: "What happened to Hitler's 'Third Reich?'"

(A picture of the city of Aachen in 1953.. 8 years after the end of the war.. still with burned-out skeletons of destroyed buildings.. with old men and women pushing wheelbarrows, picking up bricks.)

Dad: "Hitler tried to expand his "Kingdom" by invading nearby countries, starting in 1939.  He started the Second World War, which resulted in the death of 50 million Europeans.. and the "elimination", in Hitler's words.. of 6 million Jews.. and other "undesirables".. again, in his words.  Other countries, including the United States fought and defeated Hitler's forces, and in 1945, his "glorious Third Reich" lay in ruins."

Son: "Dad, I'm scared. Can that happen in the United States?"

Dad: "Yes.. unless we guard the liberties guaranteed to us by the founders of our country."
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This was an imaginary conversation, but one that I feel may have taken place. The people who lived through World War II are dying out.. and there are young people today who have no idea who Hitler was and what he did.  I lived through it as a child, and I served in Germany for almost 4 years during the 1950's.  I was in the Air Force and I got to know some German civilians quite well. 

In spite of that, I still could not figure out how Hitler got to power in a Country like Germany, the home of great composers, philosophers and religious figures.  What happened?

To try to find out, I purchased one of the "Great Courses" audio courses: A History of Hitler's Empire, 2nd Edition, taught by Professor Thomas Childers of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, the Weimar Republic, the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, the Night of the Long Knives, Mein Kampf, Krystal Nacht, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, ... these are all subjects covered in a series of 12 lectures.  Some of these lectures astounded me... some made me cry... none made me laugh. 

There is only one word to describe what happened to Germany, the Jews, the world.. because of this maniac named Adolph Hitler... unglaublich!  unbelievable!... however, it did happen and our children should be taught about it in school, because, if mankind does not remember what happened, it could happen again!

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So you think you know it all!

From time to time, I write about a certain author that I admire.  I like him because he writes about "kind of off-beat" subjects; which are, of course, the subjects that most interest me.  A. J. Jacobs is this author's  name, and "widespread is his fame".. at least for those who enjoy having their minds bent a bit.

Mr. Jacobs is "editor at large" at Esquire magazine and is a frequent writer for the "New York type" of periodicals that us "would-be intellectuals" love to read.  His interviews with famous women for Esquire are very entertaining reading. You may also have heard him on National Public Radio.

This Jacobs' masterpiece is called:  The Know-It-All (One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World).   Copyright @ 2004 by Mr. Jacobs  ISBN-13:978-0-7432-4060-3.

Why did I want to read this book?  It's about "words," and I believe that one becomes smart by knowing "words".. a lot of words.  All my life I have been fascinated by words.. in encyclopedias and dictionaries.. in puzzles of all kinds.. in foreign languages..  So, while I have the floor, let me plug a couple of my publications that have "words" as a subject:

Pock-Mark to Zymurgy: http://heyjoevaughan.blogspot.com/2006/08/pock-mark-to-zymurgy.html

My Concordance of X:  http://heyjoevaughan.blogspot.com/2009/08/tough-friday-crossword.html

COBOL Keyword Cross Reference: a software tool used by software developers at the Social Security Administration.. a gift to SSA by Niemand Associates.  Search for the Keyword "Joe-Vaughan"

Enough about me.. let's get to Mr. Jacobs.

A.J. (if I may be so bold) did something that most of us have thought about doing at some time in our life:  he read an encyclopedia from cover to cover (A to Z).  And he picked a good one:  The Encyclopedia Britannica.. 33,000 pages and 44 million words!  I'll bet most people do not read that many words in their whole life.  And he did all this in the same time frame that he and his wife were experiencing all of the excitement and joy of conception, pregnancy and parturation. 

Did he become the Smartest Person in the World?  Well.. not quite.. during the experience he took one of the Mensa qualification IQ tests and flunked.  But, he did learn that he could use his very high SAT score to qualify.  I'll have to check my list of members to see if he took advantage of that and  did join.  But don't feel that flunking an IQ test is a big deal, because as I have sometimes mentioned, if you think that the super intelligent people sit around all day using big words and discussing deep philosophical concepts, you should visit a Mensa meeting.

I think that A.J. concluded that having read the encyclopedia does not automatically make you smart.

However, reading his book, you will learn a lot.  He gives us examples of information he has learned that has expanded his brain.  I will list a few of his examples and I will paraphrase his straight definitions.  To find his very humorous remarks on each of these, you will have to go to the book)

SPORTS:  bobsledding:  ... from the early - and probably mistaken -  belief that if the sledders bobbed their heads back and forth, it would increase the speed.

BIOLOGY: couvade: ... a custom wherein the father goes to bed during the birth of his child and simulates the symptoms of childbirth...

FAIRY TALES: ... Elves in traditional folklore sat on people's chests while they slept to give them bad dreams...

POLITICS: William Henry Harrison: ... campaigned for the Presidency by passing out free cider to voters...

EDUCATION: Horace Mann: In his final speech, the educational reformer told students: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

SEX:   Oysters can change sex according to the temperature of the water.

TIME:  The hour has not always been sixty minutes.  In ancient civilizations - Greek, Sumerian, Roman, and so forth - daylight was divided into twelve hours.

If you like this book, you will no doubt like others that he has written: 

The Year of Living Biblically (a chronicle of A.J. living like a devout Jew for a whole year.) I should do a review of this book, I really enjoyed it.

My Life as an Experiment (blurb says:  Living as a Woman, Becoming George Washington, Telling No Lies, and Other Radiical Tests.)  I can't wait to read it!

Ain't life great!

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Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief?

My Aunt Marjorie always wanted me to become a medical doctor, but the aspect did not interest me in the least.  (However, I am told that at the age of seven, my Uncle Malcolm interupted an anatomy lesson I was conducting with the help of a neighborhood young lady..  but that is a story for the "sex" topic in my "Joe Reads the News" blog.)

I always had a great deal of respect medical  doctors,  and especially for Doctor Mindus, who cured me of many a bad cold or sore throat.  The good doctor was a refugee from Hitler's Germany and had survived life, such as it was, in one of the concentration camps.  We were an extremely poor family, recovering from the Great Depression.. I hope we had enough money to pay Doctor Mindus for all the "house calls" he made. My family loved his "bedside manner" regardless of his thick Germanic accent.

But, last week, I gained even more respect for the medical profession, thanks to Professor Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., Yale School of Medicine.  Doctor Nuland is the narrator of the course: Doctors:  The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography.

This is one of the "Great Courses" published by The Teaching Company.  It consists of 6 CD's containing 12 lessons of from 30 to 45 minutes each.  I was able to listen to the whole course in my car while I drove to my weekly appointments.  (None of which surprisingly were with Medical Doctors that week.) A few times, I just sat there in my parked car finishing a lesson.

When I finished the course, I had a renewed appreciation for the area I live in:  Baltimore, Maryland.  The reason will become clear as I work my way through an outline of the course.

Dr. Nuland is a fantastic story-teller.  He picked twelve of the pioneers in medicine and told remarkable stories about each of them.  These stories were so interesting to me that I hope to search the library for more details about their lives.  Let me list each person and their accomplishments.

01.  Hippocrates.  Born 460 B.C.E.  (Before the Current Era) on the island of Cos, in Greece. He and his followers were able to separate medicine from religion or superstition, stress observation of the whole body, and not restrict treatment to just one small part of it.  Hippocrates was called the "father of medicine" and all doctors try to follow his rule: "Do no harm!"

02.  Galen.  Born 130 C.E. (Current Era) in Pergamon, Asia Minor. He insisted that doctors should know how the body works.  However, to teach this, he did not operate on human cadavers, but instead on animals.  But animals are not exactly just like humans on the inside, and some misconceptions were taught.  He did make some useful observations, such as: arteries contain blood and the pulse is related to the heartbeat. Galen believed in predestination and felt that what he taught was all that the Demiurge required, or that could ever be discovered.  His views were not often questioned, and lasted for about 15 centuries.

03.  Andreas Vesalius, born 1514 in Belgium.  Vesalius found errors in Galen's work and set about writing a famous book:  De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body).  He was only 28 years old at the time.  The book told how one could do one's own dissections.. not on animals, but on cadavers.. a big breakthrough.  His book was wonderfully illustrated by a young apprentice to Titian,  Stephan van Calcar.  This book clarified the understanding of anatomy in new and unthoughtof ways.

04.  William Harvey was born in 1578 in Kent, England.  He conducted experiments that showed that the heart is a pump and that blood circulates.  In  1628, he published:  De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus: Anatomical Studies on the Motion of the Heart and the Blood in Animals.

05.  Giovanni Battista Morgagni, born 1682 in Italy.  Morgagni as a young man, had the idea of keeping track of lots of patients' illnesses and then dissecting them after they died.  Finally, after doing so, for 55 years (!) he published a book outlining 700 of these dissections and the diseases that the cadavers had succombed to. His book, De sedibus et Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indigatis: On the Seats and Causes of Disease as Indicated by Anatomy, published in 1761, is still read (with pleasure I'm told) by today's doctors.

Morgagni is also credited with rediscovering the appendix (Leonardo had identified it in 1505).  (Doctor Mindus is credited with recognising that I had appencitis and got me to the hospital in time to save my life.  Incidentally, I had one of the smallest incisions in the 1940's, and pictures were taken of it, which appeared in some medical book or other at the time.)

06.  John Hunter, born in 1728 in Scotland.  Hunter was interested in everything.. a veritable Mensa member before such people were identified.  Once, he cut his Achilles tendon and then cut the tendons of every unfortunate animal he could get his hands on. He wanted to study the healing effect on them, as well as on himself.

He had himself infected with syphilis (with the assistance of a helpful sailor) and after daily observations of himself for a long while, he wrote his Treatise on Venereal Disease.

His other studies allowed him to write the first book about inflamation: Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds.

Here are some other things that Hunter accomplished:

He discovered that he could treat aneurysms by tying them off.
He performed the first recorded case of artificial insemination.. on his wife.
He transplanted rooster testicles into the abdominal cavities of other animals.
He transplanted a human tooth into a rooster's comb.
He invented the terms: bicuspid and incisor.
He obtained the corpse of Charles Byrne by bribery.  Charles was an interesting 8 feet 2 inches tall.

In 1788, Hunter was acknowledged as the greatest surgeon in London, a city with a lot of surgeons.

Doctor Hunter was certainly a remarkable person.  I plan to read the book about him by J. Dobson.. its unremarkable title is:  John Hunter.

07.  Rene Laennec, born in 1781 in Brittany.  Embarrassed by placing his ear against the chest of buxom young women and hairy old men, he rolled a notebook up into a paper tube and thus invented the stethescope.  Using this instrument and using percussion (tapping the chest),  a new way to diagnose disease was developed.

08.  William Morton, born in 1819 in the United States, probably Boston.   Morton was a dentist who competed with two other persons for a $100,000 prize to be awarded for the first usage of anaesthesia.  In 1846, Morton publically demonstrated ether as an anesthesia.  Others had used it before, but it was not publicised.  Lots of controversy here.  I don't think that the prize was ever awarded.  (I can still remember going under ether when I had my appendectomy.  I will never forget the smell.  I was scared to death that I would not wake up.)

09.  Rudolf Virchow, born in 1821 in Pomerania.  Virchow gets the credit for teaching that disease begins in a cell.  He wrote Cellular Pathology. He also recognized a dangerous blood clotting, that he named a thrombus.  He tried to get every doctor or student to use a microscope.

Like Hunter, he was a precocious Mensa member and dabbled in everything from archaeology to politics. He got into physical trouble when he jumped off of a moving streetcar.  A shame -  he still had lots of interests to feed.

10.  Joseph Lister, born in 1827 London.  Lister discovered antisepsis.  He insisted on everything in the operating rooms being sprayed with carbolic acid, effectively killing germs.  Late in his life, he observed something new being developed: asepsis.  Now surgeons had to scrub their hands, have their surgical instruments boiled, and wear sterile gowns and caps.  (In 1889, William Halstead .. next in this outline, invented rubber gloves so his girlfriend would not get red hands from disinfectant.)

11.  William Halstead, born in 1852 in New York.  Doctor Halstead is an extremely interesting man, whose career is bound up with Johns Hopkins University and Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Johns Hopkins story is a great one that I won't get into here.  You should just know that the Johns Hopkins University was the first medical college in the United States to require students to have graduated from college, to have studied biology, to have a reading knowledge of French and German, and to have high academic averages.  Women were to be admitted on the same basis as men.

Halstead was hired as the first professor of surgery, and he was a good one.  He operated slowly and carefully, thereby doing a much better job than surgeons before him, who hurried through their work.  Halstead's work was called the surgery of safety.

Halstead is known for many things, including:

Radical hernia repair.
Radical mastectomy.
Safe thyroid surgery.
Invention of rubber gloves.. mentioned above.
Creation of the modern residency program - the Halsteadian technique.

I believe that he became good friends with H.L. Mencken.  They may have even played Bach together in their spare time.

Check out this amazing article about the four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital, unquestionably the greatest hospital in the world.

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/history/history5.html


12.  Helen Taussig, born in 1898 in Boston.  Taussig is a classic case of a woman fighting against the idea that a woman's place is always the home.   She pushed herself to get the experience to find a correction for the hearts of "blue babies."   She advised Johns Hopkins surgeon Alfred Blalog and his  technical assistant, Vivien Thomas on how to set up surgery based on her suggestions.  (Vivien Thomas' life is worthy of a book itself.. he was an African American who could not afford to go to medical school, but became an indispensible assistant and respected advisor for Blalog's surgical career.)

Elaine worked as a Johns Hopkins technician for several years and knew about Doctor Blalog's surgical work.  She also passed Helen Taussig every day in the hall at work.

I'm afraid that I have rambled on too much on this subject, but, as you can tell, I am very excited about the course that I listened too.  Now I kind of wish that my Aunt Marjorie had prevailed and pushed me to become a medical doctor.

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Hightower!

For years I have been a fan of Jim Hightower.  Southern-voiced curmudgeon and straight-talker, who has been trying to get Americans to realize that they are being flam-boozled by Congress and the Presidency.  He especially likes to pick on George W. Bush's record, and has lots of data that he uses to support his view that "W" as well as lots of unscrupulous Congressmen have raped this country.

Once again, on a trip to the local Dollar Store, I came upon a $1 bargain.  A five-disk package exposing the "questionable" events of the first 4 years of the W. Bush presidency, along with a blasting of greedy Congressmen.  Two of Hightower's books were included:  Thieves in High Places (2003) and Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush (2004).

Jim is a "downhome" Texan, born in 1943.  He has "spent three decades battling the Powers That Be, on behalf of The Powers That Ought To Be."  His latest book is titled:  Swim Against the Current; Even a Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow.

In the Dollar Store package, Jim takes a lot of time talking about "sleezy" politicians, as well as a  guy currently hoping to become President in 2013: Newt Gingrich.  He mentions a lot of negative sounding  things about Newt that are just now also being mentioned by his opponents in the race to win the early primaries in 2012. 

But the main persons that Jim attacks are President George W. Bush and his close cronies.  If even part of what he says about W., Cheney, and Rumsfeld is true, one wonders why none of them is currently serving time.

Yes, Jim certainly has a lot to complain about with the politicians in the Republican Party.. but he also attacks many in the Democratic Party, and in the media, which he compares to a "tasteless joke."  He tries to rally us "common folk" to get rid of all of these "bullies" and regain the rights we have been steadily losing in the United States because of them.

Mr. Hightower is both a very serious and a very funny man.  His seriousness is hidden under a sound  curtain of hilarity.  Pull back that curtain and listen to his serious message, and THINK.  Feel the passion hiding under the humor.. the passion of an honorable man who wants to see our country come back to its former status as a nation "of the people, by the people, and for the people." 

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