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PORTRAITS ON MY STUDY WALL* MORRIS FlSHBEim In sixty years of professional life as a physician, teacher, medical editor, author, and lecturer, I have met people in most fields of human activity. Some played such important parts in my own life that I asked for their portraits, which hang on my study wall. A few go back to my earliest days in the study of medicine and in public life. They were known in medical, literary, or political circles. Perhaps 100 other portraits are stored in special books and in drawers of bookcases. I have chosen just a few for this manuscript. Dr. William J. Mayo and his wife Hattie, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Herbert Mayes, Frank Billings , Joseph B. DeLee, and Charles Huggins are on one wall. The portrait of Ernest Chain hangs just above that of Alexander Fleming —these two along with Howard Florey got a Nobel Prize for the discovery of penicillin. The portrait of Harvey Cushing, father of brain surgery, was taken in the operating room as he signed the case record after having performed an operation on the brain. He told me it was his favorite picture. Next is Paul Dudley White. I look frequently at the portraits of Carl Sandburg and Tom Rivers. Opposite me hangs a large portrait in color of Basil O'Connor. In another study are portraits of Ben Hecht, Eddie Cantor, Will and Charles Mayo, Leonard Scheele, and Frank Lloyd Wright along with the president of Southern Florida University and me. Another picture shows a dinner at which I presided. The honored guests were three great Chicago physicians, at that time all over 80 years old—Isaac Abt, Ludvig Hektoen, and James B. Herrick. A rare portrait is that of Father Alphonse Schwitalla of Saint Louis University. Dr. George H. Simmons was my chief at the Journal of the American Medical Association for 1 1 years when I succeeded him. Howard Cohn, at present executive editor of Medical World News, of which I am editor, is among the portraits. And then there is Richard Milhous Nixon specially inscribed for me on my eightieth birthday. Mixed with the portraits is one ofJoseph Lister with a letter that he wrote to another ?Address delivered before the Chicago Literary Club, February 1973, and printed here with their permission. t5454 South Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60615. 184 J Morris Fishbein · Portraits on My Study Wall physician, and a personal letter signed by Samuel Pepys when he was Lord of the Admiralty. I am proud of this collection. Joseph Bolivar DeLee The portrait of Dr. Joseph Bolivar DeLee that hangs on my wall is an original etching by Sir William Orpen, noted British portrait painter and etcher. It is signed by the artist and was marked particularly for Mrs. Fishbein and me by Dr. DeLee in May 1930. Few great names in Chicago have achieved the eminence of this crusading obstetrician. His life was a continuous effort in behalf of the pregnant woman. His opponents called him opinionated, obstinate, and even vindictive. His students and his friends—and particularly the women who came to him for the delivery of babies—really worshipped him. His monument is the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, now called the Joseph B. DeLee Building , which lies in the domain of the University of Chicago. Another monument is the famous textbook Principles and Practice of Obstetrics, until recently bearing his name, and his Obstetricsfor Nurses. The catalogs of medical instruments show pictures of gadgets and devices which he developed, altogether some 40 instruments, including an incubator that he designed for premature infants which embodies all the principles of modern air conditioning. He even aided in the development of an ambulance especially constructed for bringing prematurely born children from the Centennial Exposition grounds in 1933 to the hospital. Many modifications of the obstetric forceps have been invented, and two of these bear the name of DeLee. His hobby was making motion pictures of obstetrics. He brought to the creation of such films the techniques ofHollywood, spending more than $50,000 ofhis own money to create obstetrical films which still form a part of the library for the teaching of medicine. His distinction...

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