Henry Kaplan, The Gentle Giant.
He was the first giant I'd ever seen. My chance meeting occurred on an otherwise uneventful afternoon in radiation oncology at Stanford....
....I was a visiting summer extern waiting for rounds to begin when I noticed a physician—one whom I didn't recognize—standing nearby. Something intrigued me about the six-foot-plus physician poring over a patient's chart.
I remember studying how his head bent forward, as if pulled by a string attached to the chart's binding, and my trying not to stare after spotting his macrodactyly—his gigantic thumb, index, and middle fingers aside the remaining normal fingers of his right hand.
I whispered to a Stanford med student, "Who is he?"
The name—Henry Kaplan—didn't ring any bells until years later, when I realized the eminence of this pioneer in the history of modern oncology and regretted not knowing more about him. So I jumped at the chance to read Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease, written by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs....
...Throughout the book, we see Kaplan—an uber-busy clinician/researcher/administrator—become a gentle giant whenever he's with patients. His brief visits make a world of difference for those under his care. As archetypes do, Kaplan's example inspires us to believe that no matter how medicine changes and no matter how busy we get, we can and must preserve compassion....
I've excerpted the above text from my review of a fascinating biography about Henry Kaplan, M.D. For the complete review, go to Oncology Times Vol.32 Issue 23 p.38
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