Alan Blum
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States
George Dunea
Chicago, Illinois, United States

In this brief editorial we have collaborated to pay homage to a distinguished man of the last century whom we have both known personally. Samuel Vaisrub, MD, was a prolific editorial writer and the author of a delightful and erudite book, Medicine’s Metaphors: Messages & Menaces.¹ Born in Russia in 1906, he immigrated to Canada at age seventeen, having only a rudimentary knowledge of English and speaking mainly Russian and Yiddish. After graduating from the University of Manitoba College of Medicine in 1932, he established a general practice in rural Saskatchewan until 1941 when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. He served with distinction in the allied forces in Italy, and his actions in the battle of the Melfa River in 1944 earned him a rare mention in the official regimental history:

Throughout the operation our irrepressible Medical Officer, Captain ‘Sammy’ Vaisrub, had worked like a Trojan, had rendered service far beyond the call of duty; with his stout-hearted assistant, Sergeant ‘Scotty’ Adams, he endeared himself to all who saw the calm efficiency of his Regimental Aid Post. Following up the Centre Line, he had handled casualties from several units in addition to our own. When the heavy fighting took place near the river, he settled in a farm-house about 600 yards short of ‘BENEDICTINE’ and there he cared for upwards of 100 wounded within a 24-hour period.

His bravery and life-saving efforts—while he himself was wounded—resulted in his nomination for an MBE, the third highest honor of the British Empire. After the war, he trained in cardiology in England before returning to Canada to serve as a cardiologist in Winnipeg. In 1955 he was named editor of the Manitoba Medical Review and as the result of his witty and learned writing, he was lured to Chicago by JAMA editor John Talbott in 1965 to become a senior editor at JAMA and an associate editor of Archives of Internal Medicine.

From 1955 to 1980 he wrote more than 300 editorials as well as Medicine’s Metaphors. In its engrossing chapters he displayed an encyclopedic knowledge, covering the non-medical sources of words our language has borrowed from, including war (eg. “fighting a war on” cancer or germs; the phalanx, the long bone of the finger that resembles the straight Roman military formation), Greek and Roman mythology (Achilles tendon, Mount of Venus, priapism, Caput Medusae, the god Morpheus), and literary works (syndromes named after characters in The Pickwick Papers, Alice in Wonderland, and Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia). Then there are etymological origin stories for diseases, signs, and body parts that are derived from religions, the Bible, machinery, crime, music, the four seasons, earth, water, plants, birds, insects, and everyday objects. As Vaisrub wrote, “We rarely visualize caves when we talk about intracranial cavernous sinuses, nor do we see a wolf when we diagnose lupus or a crab when we detect cancer.”

It is the fate of the greater part of us, as Sir Thomas Browne put it in Religio Medici, to have to remain as though they had never been, to be found in the register of God but not in the record of man. We honor the memory of this extraordinary individual whom we both knew many decades ago. One of us (AB) has written essays about his unduplicable editorial style^2-4 and has adapted his book into an entertaining audience participation quiz, “Play the Medical Metaphor Game,” that he has presented at health humanities conferences. The other (GD) had recruited him to make rounds and teach medical students at Cook County Hospital. When Sam Vaisrub became ill from carcinoma of the lung and underwent radiation therapy, GD visited him several times and observed that until the very last he continued to write editorials for JAMA or Archives of Internal Medicine. He deserves to be remembered in the book of man.

References

1. Vaisrub S. Medicine’s Metaphors; Messages & Menaces. Oradell, New Jersey: Medical Economics, 1977.
2. Blum A. Remembering Sam Vaisrub. Chest 1982;81:134-5.
3. Blum A. Samuel Vaisrub, MD: Clinician, editor, “amateur.” Arch Intern Med 1982;142:449-50.
4. Blum A. Vaisrub: Good language with a light touch. CMAJ 1982;127:307-8.