Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery

Viking O. Bjork, MD

74 Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery Viking O. Björk, MD (b. 1918) In 1942 I found there was a scholarship available in Italy, at a hospital in Rome with twenty-three hundred beds, where I worked on the tuberculosis wards. I learned that you should wash your hands before you eat, and never kiss a girl with tuberculosis on the mouth. — On his medical school days Interviewed June 26, 2001 I was born in Dalecarlia, Sweden, in 1918, where my father ran a sawmill. After my first three years my father realized that I had not made much progress in writing and mathematics. He took me out of school and engaged a well-trained lady to teach me, along with three other students. I was dyslexic and was having a very difficult time. She taught me to read aloud and write at the same time. This solved my problem, and after three years I skipped a grade and returned to school. After I took the first examination I was sent to Uppsala to continue my education . My oldest brother had opened a dental practice in Linköping, and he and his wife had a spare room, so I moved to Linköping for two years and finished my secondary schooling there. I had very good teachers in mathematics and biology, and I developed a special interest in biology and the circulation of blood. I finished school in the summer of 1937 and applied to the engineering school in Stockholm and to the medical schools in Uppsala, Stockholm, and Lund. I had good grades. My family worried that our economy would be all right for four years of engineering but perhaps not for six years of medical school. My brothers thought I should go to engineering school. After a long discussion my mother said, “Don’t worry about the expense. Do what you would be happy doing the rest of your life.” I said I wanted to be a doctor, and my mother replied, “Then you will be a doctor.” I was accepted to the medical school at Uppsala and finished preclinical studies in 1939. In February 1940 I was one of four students accepted for clinical studies at the University of Lund in Skåne. Also at Lund they had a very good professor of general surgery. He was young and very interested in teaching. By that time the war in Europe had begun. In 1942 I found that there was a scholarship available in Italy. It was for a hospital in Rome with twenty-three hundred beds. They had developed the technique of treating tuberculosis with pneumothorax. Because of the war, not many students applied for the scholarship, and I was accepted. I went by air as far as Berlin, but my seat on the next flight to Rome was taken by a German officer. I wandered around the airport for a time and opened a door into a hanger, and there was a Messerschmitt 109. I had my camera, so I took two or three pictures until a soldier came in, pointed his rifle at me, and said his orders would allow him to shoot me, but I looked too silly to be dangerous . He asked me to give him the camera and he took out the film. He then told me to leave, and if I came back he would follow his orders and shoot me. It took several days and nights to reach Rome by train. I worked on the tuberculosis wards with a Dr. Vincenzo Monaldi. Since I The Early Years 75 did not know Italian, it was difficult at first. I learned a lot: that you should not be afraid of tuberculosis, that you should wash your hands before you eat, and that you should never kiss a girl on the mouth that had tuberculosis. While in Rome I thought in Swedish, wrote in German, and talked to the patients in Italian. I was there for three and a half months, and when I returned to Sweden I wrote a monograph, The Treatment of Tuberculous Lung Cavities According to Monaldi. I worked with the professor of surgery, Dr. J. P. Strombeck, on why venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism were more common after abdominal operations. The idea was his, but I carried out the investigations . We injected fluorescein into a vein in the foot and used an ultraviolet light to measure the time it took to reach the mouth. We found that after abdominal operations...