The Tri-Lite

Issue date: 11/26/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Julie Ivers Dr. Ira Rutkow and his book "James A. Garfield"

Media Credit: Julie Ivers Dr. Rutkow signs his book for his fans

"Did you hear what happened on Grey's Anatomy last week?" "ER looks awesome this week!" "I missed the last episode of Nip/Tuck, what happened?" Sound familiar? Today, medical based television shows are a huge hit and seem to be the focus of many conversations. In many of these shows, there is a focus on plastic surgery, surgical interns, rare diseases and their cures, and the fast-paced revolving emergency room door. Yet, have you ever taken a step back and thought about how the practice of performing surgery came about? Did you ever think about the use of medicine 100 years ago?

On Saturday, November 3, Holy Family University welcomed surgical historian Ira Rutkow, MD, MPH, DrPH, to the ETC Auditorium. Rutkow, who came in conjunction with Glenn Foerd on the Delaware and the Philadelphia Humanities Council, discussed some of these early practices in his lecture, "Gilded Age Medicine and the Death of President Garfield."

Dr. Rutkow, a clinical professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, began his lecture with an account of President Garfield and his assassination at a Washington D.C. railroad station in 1881. He was shot in the arm and in the back, although neither bullets hit or damaged any vital organs. As aseptic technique didn't exist and medicine was very, very basic, Garfield's doctors helped him live a short and painful two months before the President died on September 19, 1881. From the time that the first doctor appeared on the scene and shoved his dirty, unwashed, horse-back riding hands into Garfield's wound, until the last of many experimental surgeries performed on the President, doctors really had no real idea what they were doing without anesthesia. Garfield spent his last days with two bullets in his body, starving, in agonizing pain, and mostly in a state of confusion.

Rutkow also explained the work and new ideas of younger doctors like Joseph Lister, who invented Listerine. Lister, like many of his peers, had begun the preliminary research on the importance of sterilization and more clean surgical practices. Yet, as Rutkow explained, only senior physicians were permitted to take care of a President and none of those men were willing to listen to new ideas.

There was also a discussion on the evolution of the operating room and what goes on when a patient is on the table. For example, there was a great slideshow on the earliest operating room with a limited (if any) knowledge of anatomy to the uniformed, sterile operating rooms of the modern age. Also, Dr. Rutkow showed the importance of another substance, anesthesia, to the transformation of the surgical field. With the ability to put patients asleep, doctors can now perform more surgeries than amputations. Rutkow closed his discussion with an interesting thought: If Garfield was shot in the same two spots today, he'd be taken to a hospital and probably released the next day. His injuries would be in no way life-threatening and he'd be able to return to work in less than a week.

A more detailed version on Rutkow's lecture can be found in his book, "James A. Garfield." Rutkow has also wrote several other books on the history of surgery and its impact on history, such as "Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine," and "Surgery: An Illustrated History," which was a New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year.' Dr. Rutkow delivered a very interesting lecture and really made me appreciate the times in which we live.

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