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Saint Francis Hospital of Evanston
355 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60202 - 492-4000
November 1, 1967
Karel B. Absolon, M.D., M.S., Phd.
Department of Surgery and Surgical
Research
St. Anthony's Hospital
Amarillo, Texas
Dear Doctor Absolom:
It is with great interest that I read your article in the October 1967 number
of SURGERY. Dr. Wangensteen has always intrigued me as a person. Being an
outsider to his teaching, his clinics and conferences, I know about him only
through his writings. I have read practically page to page his book on
"Intestinal Obstruction", and I have quite a few reprints of his articles
published in different journals.
I am actually greatly disheartened to state that Dr. Wangensteen has been a
man of hurried conclusions. To cite a few, his "Gastric Freezing", "Ultra
Radical Mastectomy", "Second Look in Operations of the Colon", "Vagotomy in
Ulcerative Colitis", etcetera, etcetera, have all produced temporary ripples
in the intellectual world of surgical science. His contribution on post-
Operative nasal gastric suctions is something that has stood the test of time.
You certainly appraise him as a great teacher in the science of surgery.
Certainly, I am not in a position to discuss that, but having worked with two
of his trained. surgeons for more. than a. year, I think that I wouldn't be very
proud of him as a "teacher of surgery." Your classification of him with
Hunter and Billroth looks to me like the overstatement of the century.
Fortunately, almost every teaching hospital in this country has its Wangensteens,
but, fortunately, we don't put them in the same class as Hunter and Billroth.
Your article would have been very fit in the "Minnesota Daily", or the 'monthly
publications of the Department of Surgery of the University of Minnesota, but
certainly it looks quite out of place in a journal like SURGERY. Politics in
surgery and medicine has created havoc rather than improvement. To me, your
article seems to be highly, emotionally strung, and coated with "politics".
Certainly, there are other nice ways of saying how great Wangensteen was without
comparing him with Hunter and Billroth.
Good luck for the next time.
Sincerely
A. P. Hovnanian, M.D.
Director of Surgical Research
and Surgical Education