Medicine's Michelangelo by Francine Mary Netter

Author:Francine Mary Netter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Quinnipiac University Press

With the loss of Dr. Frantz as guest editor for the musculoskeletal volume, Frank placed that project on hold and in 1979 began working on the second edition of volume 1, Nervous System. Alister Brass was the editor, and he traveled to Florida a number of times to talk with Frank, plan the volume, and decide what new pictures needed to be added and what could be taken from the first edition.6 Plans called for a complete revision, expanding the volume to two tomes, part I7 covering the anatomy and physiology, and part II,8 neurologic and neuromuscular disorders. It was Dr. Shapter’s outline that they used after all.

There were relatively few contributors to the revised Nervous System Part I,9 although each was responsible for a large number of the plates. As one would expect, British neuroanatomist Professor G.A.G. Mitchell worked extensively with Frank in preparing this volume and contributed to 94 of the 188 plates.10 One of the more striking plates is on the anterior aspect of the skull in section I, “Bony Coverings of the Brain and Spinal Cord,”11 in which Frank used different colors to demarcate the different bones. And 15 plates12 on the embryology of the nervous system were taken from an issue of Clinical Symposia13 that Ed Crelin had done with Frank in 1974. Those plates were all included in the revision, with only the text slightly modified.14

Dr. Barry W. Peterson was a junior faculty member at Rockefeller University in New York. Frank somehow found him and went to Dr. Peterson’s office on York Avenue to work with him. Frank would light up his cigar and they would talk about neural pathways or the flow of ions through ion channels. “He didn’t just want me to tell him what to do,” said Dr. Peterson. “He wanted me to give him the guidance of where to look to get started.”15 Then Frank would go off perhaps to the Academy of Medicine and read what Dr. Peterson recommended, research it for himself and return with innovative ways to illustrate some of the things. Dr. Peterson explained:

Occasionally we would get into a situation where there were very complex neural pathways, like the plate that talks about input pathways to the cerebellum.16 Frank came up with a cut-out section of the brain stem to view it from underneath. If you sit there and puzzle through it, it is a very good way to visualize those pathways. I never would have thought of such a thing. It is a clever concept. He shows the plane of section at the lower right.

I was not making much money then. I got about $150 a plate, and it is not a lot of money, but it was a little extra something and it was fun to do. I would explain the topic to him, we would discuss it, he would go make the pictures, and then we would discuss it some more, maybe do revisions, and then I would write the text to go with them.

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