The Long Reach of Liver Transplantation

Abstract

After graduating from high school in my birthplace hometown of LeMars, Iowa, I had a stint in the Navy (1944-1945), earned a B.A. degree in 1947 from Westminster College (Missouri), and completed 2 years of medical school at Northwestern University (1947-1949). I then dropped out to do research in neurophysiology under the inspiring tutelage of Horace W. Magoun, first at Northwestern and subsequently at the new UCLA Medical School. With Northwestern MD, and PhD degrees, I served a 1-year internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital before doing a full time 18-month study of complete heart block, a frequent complication with the first human open heart operations. The experiments involved creation of a canine model of heart block and treatment of its adverse consequences with repetitive low voltage ventricular stimulation (the first epicardial pace-making).