Who Am I? May 1, 2021
I was born in Wilmington, DE to Mary and Phillip but my folks moved soon after my birth to New Rochelle, N.Y. My dad’s parents were Hungarian Jews and my mom’s parents were Russian Jews. Dad worked as a prison social worker. I graduated from New Rochelle High School and went on from there to Cornell where I also graduated from med school.
When WWII broke out I decided to enlist in the navy. I loved sailing and my sister was already serving as an aerial navigator in the “W.A.V.E.S.” (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). As many military men can tell you, postings don’t always work out as intended. Leaving aside the time I spent on troop ships, I was given a land assignment in an area in northwest China, the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia! Our main job was to befriend our Chinese allies and create goodwill and trust. We had weathermen assigned to us that updated our Pacific commanders about the weather conditions so they could plan operations accordingly. We also trained Chinese medical corpsmen. While in country, I developed an innovative treatment for trachoma, an infectious disease that causes a roughening of the eyelids, a breakdown of the cornea and eventual blindness. My idea was to mix sulfadiazine into a base of ordinary shaving cream. My initiative actually worked and saved many persons their eyesight. My career path soon became clear to me – I was to find simple solutions for tough medical problems for the rest of my life.
I was to have a 70 year medical career mostly as a thoracic surgeon. I wrote over 100 scientific papers and gave 250 medical lectures over the course of my lifetime. I was aware that there were many needless deaths caused every year by choking. For you non-medical readers I want to inform you that if the brain is starved for O2 for just a few minutes, one will suffer irreversible brain damage and possible death. I sought a solution for this deadly problem by first experimenting on anesthetized beagles. I proved that a person could remove obstructions from the windpipe by doing a ‘sub diaphragmatic procedure’ which created a flow of air from the lungs that pushed objects out of the airways. That awkward name for this procedure soon morphed into an eponymous tag. Over time the procedure was initially endorsed by the Red Cross and later by the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association.
I am also well-known for a chest drain valve which keeps the lungs from collapsing after chest trauma caused by injury or surgery. The U.S. armed forces embraced this valve and it saved many lives of soldiers who suffered chest wounds in Viet Nam.
My connection to New Jersey is actually through my wife. She was born in Jersey City, the daughter of famous ballroom dancers/teachers who operated dance studios.
I was the recipient of many awards in my lifetime but I was especially proud of getting the Albert Lasker Public Service Award which was a prestigious medical science prize. I admit that I was not camera shy and was a born showman. My first TV appearance was on Merv Griffin but I also appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and the Today show. In ’83 I was quoted as saying, “I can do more saving lives in 3 minutes on TV than I could do all my life in the O.R.” I think you know me my now. That’s me in my sailing outfit in the picture below.
(1a)Who Am I? (1b)What were the names of my inlaws? (2a)Where did I intern? (2b)Where was I a professor of clinical sciences? (3)On which beautiful actress did I try out my eponymous antichoking procedure when I appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson? (4)For what enterprise did I earn a daytime Emmy Award?
