Around the World in Nine Years: A Medical Education Revisited

To the Editor:

Messrs. Greenberg and Cooper take issue with the recent article in which I demonstrate that Irving Selikoff received a "relatively brief, patchy, and in some respects substandard" medical education in the 1930s and 1940s. They object to my observations that he dissembled about his qualifications and claim either that "Selikoff's educational attainments were far from modest" (Greenberg) or that he "received a solid, serviceable medical education that was recognized as such by the medical communities in Great Britain and the United States" (Cooper). Thus far my critics are in broad agreement with each other. In other respects they differ. Greenberg entirely overlooks Selikoff's connection with Middlesex University School of Medicine (MUSM) and the qualification, whatever it may have been, that he obtained there. Cooper, on the other hand, pays considerable attention to Selikoff's Middlesex sojourn. Wisely, he does not contest the deficiencies of that institution. Instead, he dismisses the evidence of a signed and certificated letter, issued by the Brandeis University Registrar on 22 October 2001, and attested as "true and accurate as of this date," which indicates that Selikoff gained a Ph.D. in medicine with no extant thesis after an extremely short period of study. Cooper dismisses this document on the sole ground that it was "written almost 60 years after the fact." He prefers to believe that a photographic negative in his possession depicts Selikoff's "Doctor of Medicine" diploma from MUSM. Of course, a Ph.D. in medicine would actually be a doctorate in medicine. Beyond this, it appears there could be discrepancies within Brandeis University's records as well as between some of those records and a snapshot negative in a family album.¹

In support of their arguments my critics adduce little documentation that merits characterization as sound historical evidence. Two of Greenberg's five references cite to letters in the author's possession dating from 1996; a third comprises what Greenberg terms a "retyped facsimile of a document." As for Cooper, he does not claim to have met Selikoff, Israel Bernstein or indeed his father-in-law, Bernard Chromow; neither does he appear to have conducted much research beyond consulting a photographic negative and the lore of the family into which he married. Of his twenty references, eighteen are either to sources in his possession or my original article. The provenance of the other two is obscure. So the historical scholarship displayed in these replies is, to say the least, thin.

Before addressing the specific criticisms of Greenberg and Cooper it should be emphasized that many of their objections to my paper are chimeras. For example, Greenberg dismisses the idea that Selikoff ever claimed he received a British doctorate. Yet nowhere in my paper do I suggest that he ever purported to possess such a degree. Greenberg then argues, with some merit, that M.B., B.S. degrees from Melbourne equated to an American M.D. However, the point is entirely irrelevant since Selikoff never completed the courses that would have allowed him to take these degrees and indeed never acquired any qualification from Melbourne. As I point out, the Melbourne authorities insisted that Selikoff would have needed a protracted course of study before he could have taken the University's final examinations. This he declined to do. Instead, he pitched up at the lamentable Middlesex University School of Medicine and within months waltzed off with a doctorate.

Greenberg states that Selikoff was an "assiduous student" during his time at Anderson's College. In my article I observe that he "appears to have done well" there. I then list his achievements and note that he served as president of the society of American medical students in Scotland (p.13). So there is little disagreement here either. Greenberg stresses that Selikoff gained the Triple Qualification from Anderson's College...