Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

A Country Doctor: In Memoriam

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,   
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; 
 Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.  

Clayton W. Nesbit, M.D. (1938)

Born: 10/15/10, Pittsfield, MA
Graduated Pittsfield High School, first in class, 1928
Graduated Williams College, Phi Beta Kappa, 1932
M.D. Harvard Medical School, 1936;
Internship Albany Hospital 1936-37;Residency St. Luke’s Hospital, Pittsfield, MA, 1937-38
Marriage to Marion Bastow, July 2, 1938
City Physician, Pittsfield, MA 1938-1942
U.S. Navy, Active Duty, 1942-1946
General Practitioner in Pittsfield, MA 1946-1965
Incapacitating Stroke: August, 1965
Death: April 6, 1982

"My father was the kind of doctor about whom people today often reminisce wistfully, an old fashioned family doctor in all the best senses of this phrase."  Read Jennifer Shapp's moving tribute to her father:  Download My father Clayton Nesbit

You may contact Mrs. Shapp at: J. Shapp

Howard's End

Howard Spiro passed away recently.  He was a force in the medical humanities.  A generous, humorous, somewhat Falstaffian, character.  Loved to tell a good story, the companonship of friends and colleagues.  Mory's was his stage.  He tacked against the academic wind at Yale, but was respected nonetheless.

Brian Maurer's personal Tribute to Howard is worth reading.

More formal Yale Announcement.

For those within drivng distance, a memorial service has been planned for Saturday, March 24, at 11 a.m. at The Unitarian Society of New Haven, 700 Hartford Tpke, Hamden, Conn.

From too much love of living,

         From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

         Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

         Winds somewhere safe to sea.

My Uncle "Doc"

In Pittsburgh, instead of going to a doctor, my family usually consulted Doc, my mother’s oldest brother who was an internist. After he entered medical school, he was always called “Doc” instead of Abe. Doc Starr was a quiet, serious, modest man, not tall, and with a gray moustache. Late in life he married Helen, who had worked for him as an office assistant and then became his companion. 

Renee Marks Cohen has graciously submitted her moving piece about "Doc."  You will enjoy it:  Download My Uncle Doc – Abraham Starr. You may contact Ms. Cohen at: RMC_Email.

Eve Arnold - Photographer Extraordinare

Eve Arnold who fell in love with photography after a boyfriend gave her a camera and came to be regarded as a grande dame of postwar photojournalism for her bold, revealing images of subjects as diverse as Marilyn Monroe and migratory potato pickers, died on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 in London. She was 99.

Born, Eve Cohen in Philadelphia on April 21, 1912, she was one of nine children of immigrants from Ukraine. Her father was a rabbi. At 28, she abandoned ambitions of becoming a doctor to move to New York because “That’s where the boys are,” she said.

NY Times Obit    NY Times Multi-Media

At a brothel in Havana, circa 1954

Snaphots

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,     
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;   
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile     
The short and simple annals of the poor.   
                                                                   Thomas Gray

In a year's end section, The NY Times has collected  over 260 pictures with short blurbs honoring common people who died in 2011.  It is hauntingly touching.  We can each think of someone to add.  If any of you are moved to do so, send a photo and a vignette to C2S.  Better yet, why not also honor living common people who do uncommon things?  We encounter them every day.

See: The Lives They Lived

Dorothy Loney
My mother passed away on August 21st. She had only a short few years to her enjoy her only grandchild, Madeleine. The picture captures the one walk they ever took together.
Submitted by Matthew Loney

Basil D’Oliveira, a Symbol for Cricket and for Equality, Dies at 80

By Douglas Martin

NY Times, November 27, 2011

"Just as Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson pursued their athletic dreams and developed superlative skills before altering history, Basil D’Oliveira, who was classified as colored under South African apartheid, wanted only to play at the highest levels of his sport, cricket. His struggle to do that in a country of government-enforced racial segregation became a powerful symbol in the ultimately successful fight against apartheid."  Read this moving obituary.

Marginal Notes: Hemingway's Boat

 
In 2002, while working on a previous tome, Sons of Mississippi, author Paul Hendrickson hit upon the idea of using Hemingway’s boat Pilar as a metaphorical backdrop for the last 27 years of Hemingway’s life. He opened his notebook and jotted the following entry: “Hemingway’s boat. June 18, ’02. If you study what happened just on that boat you’ll get Hemingway’s whole life.”  more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for 32 years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Michael Hart - Project Gutenberg

Mr. Hart, Thank you!

Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, died on September 6, 2011 at age 64. Obit.

Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of June 2011[update], Project Gutenberg claimed over 36,000 items in its collection. Access PG.

Sensei Keiko Fukuda

Banzai!! Banzai!! Banzai!!! to Sensei Keiko Fukuda of San Francisco. She recently became the first woman to earn a 10th degree black belt in judo, at the age of 98. Only three others have this martial arts highest ranking - all men living in Japan. Fukuda started learning judo more than 75 years ago in Japan and still teaches three times a week. Earning this black belt was her lifelong dream.  You can see an inspiring YouTube segment on Sensei Fukuda.

Baruj Benacerraf

I still remember some pathology lectures I heard, as a green freshman at NYU School of Medicine,  in the fall of 1965 by a Venezuelan-born immunologist. They were brilliant and lucid. Baruj Benacerraf died in Boston on August 2.

A refugee in New York, he graduated Columbia in 1942.  "Instead of joining the family business as his parents had hoped, he made plans to study medicine. But every medical school he applied to rejected him — because, he suspected, he was both foreign-born and a Jew."

To read more about this memorable individual see the NY Times Obit.