Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery

Frank C. Spencer, MD

The Early Years 173 Frank C. Spencer, MD (b. 1925) I saw a nineteen-year-old Marine with a gangrenous leg from a small wound of the superficial femoral artery. I asked why the femoral artery had not been repaired, and the answer was that repair was contrary to orders. I said, “What the hell do you mean, orders?” I suggested an experimental program on arterial repair. We still couldn’t get permission. An advisor said, “Why don’t you go ahead and do it anyhow?” If it worked, I would get a decoration, and if it didn’t, I could well get a court martial. We did one hundred patients with a 90 percent success rate. — On the use of homografts for wartime arterial injuries Interviewed April 19, 1999 I was born seven miles north of Haskell, Texas, which had a population of thirty-five hundred. This was a farming and ranching region, and that has always been a part of my background. The nearest house to our home was about a half-mile away so it was a sparsely populated area. The advantage of that was that we learned self-reliance very early because if we had a problem there was no one to help and no one was coming. We learned about problem solving from the cradle up. This background gave me a sense of self-reliance and a capacity for hard work. Because of the economy, everybody worked, not because we were told to, but because we felt embarrassed if we were not working. In a typical rural area children worked in the cotton fields with the adults. My education began in a two-room country schoolhouse. When the Texas Panhandle was settled in 1880 and 1890, two-room schoolhouses were built every six miles along the main roads. The wisdom was that no child would be more than three miles from a source of education. If the roads were impassable in wintertime, the children could walk three miles to school. They built hundreds of these two-room country schoolhouses, and they built teachers ’ colleges to supply the teachers. My grade-school education was in a two-room country schoolhouse, and it has been surprising to me that during my professional career I have been associated with people who have had the best education that money could buy, and my education was just as good as anybody’s, with the exception of music. It was all reading, writing, spelling, and mathematics. I owe it all to the dedication of the two teachers who taught those grades, and the key to my professional success was access to a good public education. I was the first child in my family, and my mother began to teach me to read and write at a very early age. When I was ready to start school, I could do multiplication tables, write, and spell. My mother timidly suggested that I might be ready for the second grade rather than the first. This was not greeted very warmly by the schoolteacher. They said they would let me try it for a week. After a week, I was put in the third grade rather than the second. That had an effect on my career later on. I rode a school bus to Haskell for my high-school education and graduated when I was fifteen. I then entered North 174 Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery Texas State College. This was a marvelous school with an excellent faculty. Pearl Harbor occurred during my freshman year, so thereafter we went summer and winter. Because of this, I finished college in two and a half years. I liked both chemistry and mathematics and considered a career in mathematics, but finally decided to apply to medical school. Being a very loyal Texan, I applied to both of the Texas medical schools. With the confidence of youth, I thought I would apply to both and then decide which one I would go to. I had no advisors. Early in World War II, if you were accepted in medical school you were inducted into the army or navy and given a commission. The military then paid your tuition and also a salary. It was an enormous financial advantage. It was one of the darkest days of my life when in the spring of 1943 I was rejected by both schools on the same day. Both sent me a note stating that my grades were fine, but they thought seventeen was too...