Volume 18 Number 1 Winter/Spring 2001

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

from DEMOSTHENES PAPPAGIANIS,
class of 1962

RECENTLY, STANFORD MEDICINE COVERED the 40th anniversary of the School of Medicine's move in its entirety to the Palo Alto-Stanford locale [Ed. note: SM, Spring 2000]. One aspect not mentioned was that the MD Class of 1962 was the first to spend all four years of its medical studies at Stanford.

I recall that during a tour in 1959 of the as yet incomplete new Stanford hospital and medical school, a dean told our class that now Stanford's medical school would attain academic greatness and that we students would be exposed to a breadth of medicine so we could be more than simply experts on the cirrhotic alcohol abuser (presumably alluding to the experience of medical students rotating through San Francisco General Hospital). There was almost a sense of condescension toward the Stanford component in "the City" on Clay Street. However, some of our class already knew the names of the distinguished former faculty: Thomas Addis, Arthur Bloomfield, William Dock, Leo Eloesser, Emil Holman; and upperclassmen gave glowing accounts of Frank Gerbode, Victor Richards and others, which made us somewhat wistful about what we might miss by being confined to the Stanford campus.

This concern was dispelled when we were exposed to the 3 R's: Raffel, Rytand and Roy (Cohn); and to others whose styles varied but were grand teachers: Creger (who along with R. Cohn became actors in the "cult classic" films of the Class of '62), Bagshaw, C. Barnett, Beard, Chandler, Cox, Goldstein, D. Gray, Hancock, W. Hoffman, H. Holman, Hultgren, Kaplan, Kretschmer, Lutscher, Rather, S. Rosenberg, Shumway, Stilwell, R. Turner, D. Wilbur, Zatz (with apologies for the omission of the names of other faculty members who imparted so much to us).

The Class of '62 was diverse in personalities, academic pre-medical experience and political leanings, but it has remained cohesive for these 40 years. One member uniquely able to sustain this cohesiveness was our permanent class president, the late Anthony Engelbrecht. I'm sure the rest of the Stanford MD Class of 1962 joins me in saluting Tony and in acknowledging our good fortune to have been medical students in the exciting period of the consolidation of the School of Medicine at Stanford.

-- Demosthenes Pappagianis, MD/Class of 1962 Davis, Calif.

NOV. 3, 2000

from MICHAEL MILLHOLLEN, transplant administrator OHSU

A COLLEAGUE HERE AT THE Oregon Health Sciences University passed along the Spring 2000 edition of your fine publication. I read the article on the beginnings of your kidney transplant program with great interest since it parallels our own experience.

I was a bit surprised, however, with the observation that the first transplant at Stanford in 1960 was also the first on the West Coast. You might be interested to note that OHSU performed its first kidney transplant Oct. 9, 1959. The case was the first on the West Coast and 18th in the world, according to the November 1959 University of Oregon Medical School alumni newsletter.

Like Stanford's, the case involved identical twins. Both donor and recipient are still doing well. Joseph Murray, the Nobel laureate who performed the first successful transplant in 1954 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, headed up the recipient surgical team and Clarence Hodges, chairman of urology, led the donor team.

We didn't do another transplant until July 1963 so the 1960 Stanford case may have been the next on the West Coast. Both programs can be justifiably proud of their contributions to transplantation.

-- Michael Millhollen Transplant Administrator, Oregon Health

Sciences University Portland, Ore.

JAN. 22, 2001

FROM THE EDITOR: Thanks very much for the note and for setting the record straight.