Book review
Eugene Braunwald and the
Rise of Modern Medicine
Thomas H. Lee,
Harvard University Press, 2013
Reviewed by
M. Saleem Seyal, MD, FACC, FACP
D
r. Eugene Braunwald is a very well known and highly
respected personality in the Internal Medicine and
Cardiology communities throughout the world. He is an
extremely prolific author, a renowned researcher, a seasoned clinical trialist and an astute administrator. He is a living legend and a
national treasure, now 84 years old and currently in his “still” years
as he puts it --- still working, still drawing a salary, still conducting
research, still attending meetings and still enjoying it. When I started
my cardiology fellowship at the University of Illinois in Chicago in
1981, I purchased his seminal tome, the very newly published (in
1980) “Heart Disease- A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine,” half
of which was written by him and rest of it by his well-chosen cadre
of contributors. This over 30 years old textbook, with underlined
and highlighted chapters and dog-eared pages remains very dear
to me and has a tremendous nostalgic value. Braunwald was, by
then, a well-known editor and later editor-in-chief of the popular
“Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine” which is now in its 18th
edition (2011). Over the course of his uncommonly eminent and
illustrious career, he has mentored literally thousands of physicians
who became well-known authors, researchers, editors, medical
innovators, professors and departments chairmen. These famous
people should be called “Braunwald Rabbits” in honor of the number
of pathologists/bacteriologists trained by the inimitable Dr. William
Welch (the Dean of American Medicine) at the then fledgling
Johns Hopkins University at the end of the 19th and beginning of
the 20th century. His acolytes spread across the country as teachers and researchers and were lovingly called “Welch Rabbits”. Dr.
Lee Goldman, one of Braunwald’s protégés, for example, became
a well-known editor and subsequently won the ultimate accolade
by getting the eponymous designation of another highly respected
reference, the Cecil-Loeb Textbook of Medicine which now is in its
14
LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
24th edition and is called Goldman’s Cecil Medicine.
Many accounts have been written about Dr. Braunwald’s life and
career over the years. Dr. John Ross, Jr., wrote an early profile of
Braunwald almost two decades ago detailing his departure from
his native Vienna as a young 9-year-old boy with his family, all
refugees in 1938, with their eventual sojourn to Brooklyn, New
York, after a year in England.1 He chronicles Braunwald’s early
scholastic achievements, his prodigious contributions in cardiology research, his prolific authorship and his enviable capacity as an
able and effective administrator. A Viennese immigrant physician,
Dr. MG Schlossmacher, who trained at Harvard as a neurologist
and is now at the Ottawa Hospital Research institute, chronicled
Braunwald’s journey from Vienna, Austria, to the United States and
expounded on the long-lasting implications of Austrian Nazism in
his well-written essay.2 William C. Roberts, the editor-in-chief of
the American Journal of Cardiology, has known Braunwald since
1959 during his own training at the National Institute of Health
(NIH) and interviewed him subsequently in 1998.3 Ruth Williams
interviewed Dr. Braunwald for the series “Profiles in Cardiovascular
Science” and wrote her essay about his life and career in two parts.4,5
In his heartfelt and reverential preamble to Ruth William’s article,
Dr. Roberto Bolli of the University of Louisville and the editor-inchief of Circulation Research gave his own personal perspective on
this living icon stating that,” Dr. Braunwald has been the epitome of
academic cardiovascular medicine for the past 50 years.”6 Dr. Allen
B. Weisse talked to Braunwald for his book Heart to Heart—The
Twentieth Century Battle against Cardiac Disease and had this to
say: “Not since the time of Paul Dudley White has one individual
so dominated the field of cardiology over so long a period of time
as has Eugene Braunwald.”7
The book Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine by