Denton Cooley
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The greatest. Theodor Billroth
Even got a string quartet by Brahms dedicated to him
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But to answer your question, there certainly are stars. Now you can see everything on you tube so u don’t need to crowd in. But sure there are big big names which everyone in my circles know about. But their stardom rarely leaves medical culture into popular culture.
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The greatest. Theodor Billroth
Even got a string quartet by Brahms dedicated to him
@bachophile said in Denton Cooley:
Theodor Billroth
Even got a string quartet by Brahms dedicated to himYes. Billroth had a try at composing as well. Supposedly, he showed a piece of his (quartet?) to his friend, Brahms, who, being the prickly sort of guy he was, was rather disparaging of the effort.
Billroth took Brahms' advice to heart and told him, something to the effect of, "Thank you for your criticism, and I see that you are correct. Therefore, I took my work and threw it into the fireplace, whence it emitted a great stench."
Don't know if it's a true story, but I could see it.
@bachophile said in Denton Cooley:
stardom rarely leaves medical culture into popular culture
Exactly. Though advances are often large, they are incremental, rather than revolutionary. For example, who knows the name of the first surgeon to do a liver transplant? Even if you knew his name (Tom Starzl), he is not held in the same kind of reverence (?) as the likes of Cooley, et al.
"Transplant? Cool. Someone else already did a kidney, so...."
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The medical school at Pittsburgh is named after Starzl.
He was a pioneer in the use of “FK506”, aka tacrolimus over cyclosporine
@jon-nyc said in Denton Cooley:
The medical school at Pittsburgh is named after Starzl.
Yeah, I know that. And he deserves it - a true pioneer.
But, to Bach's point, take a random person on the street who is of a certain (older) age and ask him if they know who Denton Cooley was, the odds are pretty good that they recognize the name, at least.
Starzl? Probably not.
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i guess my level of stardom is having an instrument names after you, like maybe Debakey...(i think all anatomical parts being named were used up by the 19th century)
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Cooley would drop by the blood bank after he was done in surgery. The guys kept a fifth of whiskey and a glass hidden on a shelf for him. He'd prop his feet up, they'd pour him a shot and he would go through his list of surgeries for the next day, making sure his units were ready.
Never stayed but just long enough to sip his whiskey and never had more than one shot.
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@jon-nyc said in Denton Cooley:
Nowadays the celebrity doctors are snake oil pitchmen on morning tv like Oz.
Snake oil pitchman? Yeah, I guess.
Also board-certified heart surgeon, patent holder on various devices for heart surgery (LVAD), professor at Columbia, so there's that.
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i guess my level of stardom is having an instrument names after you, like maybe Debakey...(i think all anatomical parts being named were used up by the 19th century)
@bachophile said in Denton Cooley:
DeBakey
I worked at Ross Perot companies for 30 years. Ross was friends with Doctor DeBakey.
When an employee or an employee's family member got very sick Ross would send them to Dr. DeBakey.
That was a real morale boost for anyone who heard the stories.
Of course corporate health insurance doesn't work like this anymore.
