The making of a medical epidemiologist

Abstract

A decade earlier in 1963, I had entered Harvard Medical School firm in the belief that I would be a practicing physician, probably a surgeon. I had not made those choices through any very deliberate process, but mostly because I was deeply impressed by the kindness and clinical acumen of Dr. William Walsh, the family doctor in Boston who took care of me all through my childhood and adolescence, and by the surgical skill and profound humanity of Dr. Frederick Landrigan, my uncle and an ophthalmologist. Basically, I wanted to follow in the footsteps of those two splendid doctors. Surgery seemed like a good idea because I had always enjoyed making things with my hands, and besides it seemed very glamorous.