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Strokes of a Painter’s Brush

MARIANO M. ALIMURUNC

Manila, Philippines

T o PORTRAY in words a man who has made an indelible imprint in the hearts

and minds of so many is an extremely diffi- cult task. This was my predicament on being asked to contribute my own brush strokes to appreciation. For that portrait

belongs to a man who has been the con- tinuing source of inspiration to me and to many others throughout the world, not only in the strictly cardiologic sphere but also in the wide span of international rela- tions.

It was some time in 1939, while I was a medical intern in the service of the late Prof. Ricardo Molina of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, when my academic acquaintance with Dr. Paul Dudley White began. That

was occasioned by an assignment given me by Prof. Molina to look into the pages of Dr. White’s classic treatise on heart disease. Actually that casual acquaintance initiated me into the study of cardiology. This interest became intensified the following year when I became medical resident on Prof. Molina’s service, for Dr. Molina him- self, one of the pioneers in cardiology in the Philippines, was a profound admirer of Dr. White. Today the Philippine Heart Association presents regularly the Molina Lecture, the fourth of which Dr. White delivered in 1956.

Thus, it was most logical that, when chosen in 1747 as one of the first postwar scholars of the University of Santo Tomas for graduate studies in the United States, I readily elected to go to Dr. White. On

September 17, 1747, I found my way to the Cardiac Laboratory of the Massa-

VOLUME 15, APRIL 1965

chusetts General Hospital (Fig. 2), face to face with my chosen teacher. That first interview readily revealed the fulfillment of the image that I had of Dr. White: a man with a great and understanding heart, so willing and so generous to extend help, so dynamic yet so attentive to all the solicitations of others.

Two days later at the Cardiac Grand Rounds, when I was presented to the rest of the staff and particularly to the graduate fellows, I realized how vastly international was Dr. White’s sphere of influence as a teacher and as a fatherly leader. Here were young men and women from all cor- ners of the world. Indeed, in the ensuing year, I saw in this group graduate fellows from Mexico, Buenos Aires, Paris, Bologna, London, Beirut, Baghdad, Geneva, China, Patna (India), and Karachi, apart from those of the United States. This fruitful term with Dr. White gave me not only cardiologic knowledge and experience but also the valuable opportunity for friendship with colleagues from many countries. Dr. White’s groups of graduate fellows have always been veritable assemblies of inter- national delegates. No wonder, in later years as it is today, he feels at home wherever he goes on his many travels throughout the world, loved and respected, with close friends and former pupils in many lands.

No effort will be adequate to portray the many facets of his personality that have caused so deep and so profound admiration and affection on my part. In all confer- ences wherever he was, be it at the Friday Cardiac Grand Rounds, at the OPD Cardiac Clinics, or at the various teaching

FIG. 3. Manila, April 1956. Left to right: Dr. C. Lazatin, cardiac surgeon; The Rev. Fr. J. Diaz, Regent of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Santo Tomas; Dean Virgilio Ramos; Dr. P.D.W.; Dr. K. Maddox; Mrs. White; Dr. E. Wollheim; Dr. (Mrs.) N. N. Alimurung; Dr. R. Kham- batta; Mrs. S. Lazatin; Mrs. P. Cruz; Dr. M. M. Alimurung; Dr. F. Valenzueia; and Dr. Pedro M. Cruz. Note Dr. White’s native Filipino attire, barong tagalog.

exercises in the Cardiac Conference Room below the Cardiac Laboratory on the base- ment floor of the Bulfinch Building, Dr. White was constantly the inspiring teacher to everyone. Masterful in his own expert clinical analyses of case data, he was ex- tremely generous to the limitations of those learning from him. To one’s failure to detect all the auscultatory signs in a rheu- matic patient, for example, he would in- spire the erring young mind by counseling that perhaps the fault was partly due to a wider range of hearing capacity that Dr. White knew he had. Such a counseling attitude and teaching technic was most impressive, particularly to the graduate

fellows from other countries, a virtue that must have secured for Dr. White his sub- sequent successes in the field of international relations.

Worthy of special mention was his solicitousness for the deserving fellows of other lands. Dr. White, time and again, exerted extra efforts in obtaining additional grants that would make possible to the grantee longer terms of stay and more in- tensive cardiologic work with him in his department, or even in some other Boston medical center. All these, viewed in retro- spect, speak clearly of Dr. White’s intense desire for cardiologic internationalism.

In the Philippines alone, four cardiolo-

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gists to date have had the good fortune of learning cardiology and internationalism under his tutelage. In addition to the writer, the following are today in the active practice of cardiology in Manila: Dr. Rodolfo Carriedo, Consultant in Car- diology at the North General Hospital ;

Dr. Manuel Guzman, also currently Secre- tary of the Manila Medical Society ; and Dr. Ang Giok San, who is active with the large Chinese community. At one time in July 1959, the four met with another P.D. White fellow, Dr. Lyle Baker, then serving a one year term as visiting internist and cardiologist at the Veterans Memorial Hospital. It was a veritable reunion of a P.D. White Club in Manila.

No wonder, in his subsequent years of expanding influence from the Massachu- setts General Hospital and the Harvard Graduate Medical School to the Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and then to his extensive overseas activities in the advancement of international cardiology and brotherhood, Dr. White easily became the symbol and rallying point of under- standing and cooperation among all na- tional groups, both behind and outside whatever curtains seem to be dividing the world. He found this difficult task a com- paratively easy one because he has come to be regarded as the personification of cardiology, the leader of all. Fomenting both cardiologic research and organiza- tion, Dr. White easily succeeded in both,

obtaining full cooperation wherever he sponsored or supported such projects.

His brief visit to Manila in 1956 (Fig. 3) was a red-letter day for the Philippine Heart Association. It also marked an historic date, namely, the organization of the Asian- Pacific Society of Cardiology. In the aca- demic field, he delivered two impo_rtant memorial lectures: (1) the Luis Guerrero Memorial Lecture at the University of Santo Tomas, and (2) the Ricardo Molina Memorial Lecture of the Philippine Heart Association. From both sponsoring groups he was accorded singular honors-Hon- orary Membership in the Philippine Heart Association and Honorary Professorship of Medicine of the University of Santo Tomas. Dr. White gave not only enlighten- ment but, above all, inspiration to the hun- dreds of physicians and medical students who attended both lectures that were delivered in close succession on the same evening in two different lecture halls.

This brief appreciation of this ex- traordinary man can be, at best, modest and inadequate. Nonetheless, it is presented as a personal effort to make others appre- ciate even more, some of the golden traits of character that enhance Dr. Paul Dudley White’s personality, as a teacher and as a world leader of cardiology. No other man has done so much for international cardi- ology and for cardiologic internationalism. For both, the entire world stands as the fortunate beneficiary and heir.

VOLUME 15, APRIL 1965