Physician, Heal Thyself

Or
Author of, but not Possessor of, The Living Heart
(Inspired by Kirsti)
Michael DeBakey, surgical innovator, has died while trying to determine how old and feeble a heart could be and still sustain life. The answer in this case – 99 years. DeBakey continued working almost to the end of his life, and who wouldn’t want the shaky hands of a near centenarian poking around inside their chest cavity? DeBakey developed the coronary artery bypass, designed the heart-lung machine pump, which opened the era of open-heart surgery, discovered that Dacron grafts could be used to repair previously inoperable aneurysms, conceived the Army MASH unit, and performed more than 60,000 operations, leading many to regard him as 'the greatest surgeon ever.' In 1966, he implanted the precursor of the first artificial heart, but his protégé Denton Cooley went around his back to be the first to get the artificial heart DeBakey had been testing in animals into a human. DeBakey’s efforts were shown to be self-serving last year, when he underwent surgery to repair a torn aorta, a procedure he had devised a half century earlier. In 1939, DeBakey was co-author on a study linking cigarettes and lung cancer, 25 years before contributions from tobacco companies were no longer able to buy the silence of the Surgeon General. DeBakey was also the Ryan Seacrest of surgeons, and the name-dropping surgeon was a walking HIPAA violation, stocking his office with photographs of his celebrated patients and discussing their ailments, including the deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi; the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII of England; Marlene Dietrich; Joe Louis; Leo Durocher; Jerry Lewis; and Boris Yeltsin.