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With the air of an artist
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I MEDICINE,SCIENCE,ANDSOCIETY
W i t h the A i r of an A r t i s t MARK MOSLEY
f one would have entered that small dim room and Iwall--one seen us seated in a semicircle looking at the spotlit lady poised with a slender finger pressed against her lips, a round-faced man adjusting his goldrimmed glasses, another thoughtful-looking fellow intently gazing at the wall, all of us nodding or gesturing as the older, suited instructor stands beside the wall pointing out a smooth bordered silhouette or a curious arching shadow--one would think we were art collect o r s - a t the Louvre perhaps discussing a Rembrandt, or at the Tate Gallery studying a Monet, a Renoir, a van Gogh. "I get the impression of a mass," the instructor says. But these are not the impressions of French painters, not the masses of Notre Dame, or the Cathedral of Chartres. We are looking at the impressions of Campbell, Williams, Mathews, Jones; the masses are congregations of white cells, dying tissues ba~hed in fluid. We speak, not knowing we are the avant-garde, the agent provocateurs of medicine. And there they are, the marvelous rows of breath being held, shadows of lungs hung upon the wall. People have spent their entire lives creating these careful works of art; each cigarette puff, each cough, another brush stroke on the open airy field. The title of this canvas is "Early Emphysema." And that one over there with a thick painty spatula of pus smeared on the right field of the canvas is titled "Empyema after Late-Night Aspiration." There are hundreds, thousands of titles in this gallery: "Lingula Consolidation in a Young Lawyer," "Water-Bottle Heart," "Newborn Pneumonia," "White-Out at Midnight," and so on. Each person is an artist of his own air, taking it in, holding it, and delivering it back to the world. When we stare, gesturing toward their chests, looking among their lungs, we are lurking around the creations of unknown artists--examining their bare bones, the hearts of their lives. These shadows are but captured breaths of their lives, day in, day out, day in, day out--artists creating radiographic portraits of their chests.
Some of these simple people have grown famous. The wise among us speak about them with awe within these hospital halls. Their chest pictures are retired into special files, the way that uniforms of legendary baseball players are retired--and the admiration they are given when they walk from the field that final time. "Yes, I remember, y e s . . . Peter Galloway, the most impressive chest X-ray that ever hung in these halls: the domes of his diaphragm, the shape of his heart, the markings of his lungs, his high arching aorta; there was no one better, Ole Pete." "I don't know," another physician begins, smiling with a nostalgic look. "I don't know if you were around then, but do you remember Barbara Jo Sanger?" And suddenly, like old straw-hatted men with thumbs under their suspenders, playing checkers in the pipe-filled barber shop, the nostalgic stories would simmer on, the same marvelous stories, stunning to listen to: The situs inversus of 1968, Hampton's hump of 6 East, the summer of spontaneous pneumos, onslaughts of Assmann's focus, rib notching, butterfly patterns--all were most impressive, most impressive and on the talk would go. These dead people now were kind of like old patron saints. And along the Catholic Hospital halls, beside paintings of "The Last Supper," and "Judas' Betrayal," we hung chest pictures of the "Saint of the Displaced Esophageous," or the "Saint Betrayed by Coin Lesions." And in old bound folders tucked neatly under our white-sleeved arms, the ancient pictures, black and white shrouds of lungs, carried up from the catacombs like sacred relics--we watch our elders touch their bones and cross their hearts. Today, we celebrate and study these pulmonary paintings. But like any good art, we must not say that "art is only in the eye of the beholder." We cannot proclaim that their "creations are for the sake of our art." We should not separate the living (or even the dead) from their lungs and hearts, any more than we can separate an athlete from his field, or a painter from his canvas, or any creator from his breathing creation.
From Oklahoma College of Medicine, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Mr. Mark Mosley, 5621 East 71st Place, Apt. 1102, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74136. Manuscript submitted September 9, 1988, and accepted September 29, 1988.
December 1988 The American Journal of Medicine Volume 85
845
I MEDICINE,SCIENCE,ANDSOCIETY
W i t h the A i r of an A r t i s t MARK MOSLEY
f one would have entered that small dim room and Iwall--one seen us seated in a semicircle looking at the spotlit lady poised with a slender finger pressed against her lips, a round-faced man adjusting his goldrimmed glasses, another thoughtful-looking fellow intently gazing at the wall, all of us nodding or gesturing as the older, suited instructor stands beside the wall pointing out a smooth bordered silhouette or a curious arching shadow--one would think we were art collect o r s - a t the Louvre perhaps discussing a Rembrandt, or at the Tate Gallery studying a Monet, a Renoir, a van Gogh. "I get the impression of a mass," the instructor says. But these are not the impressions of French painters, not the masses of Notre Dame, or the Cathedral of Chartres. We are looking at the impressions of Campbell, Williams, Mathews, Jones; the masses are congregations of white cells, dying tissues ba~hed in fluid. We speak, not knowing we are the avant-garde, the agent provocateurs of medicine. And there they are, the marvelous rows of breath being held, shadows of lungs hung upon the wall. People have spent their entire lives creating these careful works of art; each cigarette puff, each cough, another brush stroke on the open airy field. The title of this canvas is "Early Emphysema." And that one over there with a thick painty spatula of pus smeared on the right field of the canvas is titled "Empyema after Late-Night Aspiration." There are hundreds, thousands of titles in this gallery: "Lingula Consolidation in a Young Lawyer," "Water-Bottle Heart," "Newborn Pneumonia," "White-Out at Midnight," and so on. Each person is an artist of his own air, taking it in, holding it, and delivering it back to the world. When we stare, gesturing toward their chests, looking among their lungs, we are lurking around the creations of unknown artists--examining their bare bones, the hearts of their lives. These shadows are but captured breaths of their lives, day in, day out, day in, day out--artists creating radiographic portraits of their chests.
Some of these simple people have grown famous. The wise among us speak about them with awe within these hospital halls. Their chest pictures are retired into special files, the way that uniforms of legendary baseball players are retired--and the admiration they are given when they walk from the field that final time. "Yes, I remember, y e s . . . Peter Galloway, the most impressive chest X-ray that ever hung in these halls: the domes of his diaphragm, the shape of his heart, the markings of his lungs, his high arching aorta; there was no one better, Ole Pete." "I don't know," another physician begins, smiling with a nostalgic look. "I don't know if you were around then, but do you remember Barbara Jo Sanger?" And suddenly, like old straw-hatted men with thumbs under their suspenders, playing checkers in the pipe-filled barber shop, the nostalgic stories would simmer on, the same marvelous stories, stunning to listen to: The situs inversus of 1968, Hampton's hump of 6 East, the summer of spontaneous pneumos, onslaughts of Assmann's focus, rib notching, butterfly patterns--all were most impressive, most impressive and on the talk would go. These dead people now were kind of like old patron saints. And along the Catholic Hospital halls, beside paintings of "The Last Supper," and "Judas' Betrayal," we hung chest pictures of the "Saint of the Displaced Esophageous," or the "Saint Betrayed by Coin Lesions." And in old bound folders tucked neatly under our white-sleeved arms, the ancient pictures, black and white shrouds of lungs, carried up from the catacombs like sacred relics--we watch our elders touch their bones and cross their hearts. Today, we celebrate and study these pulmonary paintings. But like any good art, we must not say that "art is only in the eye of the beholder." We cannot proclaim that their "creations are for the sake of our art." We should not separate the living (or even the dead) from their lungs and hearts, any more than we can separate an athlete from his field, or a painter from his canvas, or any creator from his breathing creation.
From Oklahoma College of Medicine, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Mr. Mark Mosley, 5621 East 71st Place, Apt. 1102, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74136. Manuscript submitted September 9, 1988, and accepted September 29, 1988.
December 1988 The American Journal of Medicine Volume 85
845