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06/16/2004
Versatile Barbers and One Smart Dog
Last week my wife and I attended the last in our series of Friday
afternoon concerts of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra,
after spending the morning in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I hadn’t expected the day to tie in so closely with the subjects of
recent columns, including today’s. For example, Gil Shaham,
the soloist with the Philharmonic, played the 1699 Countess
Polignac Stradivarius. I got a chance to hear firsthand one of
those instruments that I discussed in my column of 5/12/04 on
the possible effect of the Little Ice Age on the wood used by
Stradivari in their construction. In Shaham’s hands, the violin’s
tones were pure and mellow but, in all honesty, I’m completely
unqualified to judge its quality compared to other violins.
The Metropolitan featured a collection of works by Caravaggio
and other artists of his time. Having just written about Leonardo
da Vinci and Tupperware two weeks ago (column of 6/2/04),
seeing a handful of very small, simple sketches by Leonardo in
the exhibit was worth the price of admission. There were only a
few works by Caravaggio himself in the show, but one large
painting grabbed my attention. It was a disturbing depiction of
people gathered around a man with blood running out of his
mouth. Initially, I thought the poor fellow was having his mouth
slit by the person behind him and, being the queasy type, I
quickly moved on.
My wife, however, took a closer look and pointed out that the
picture was titled “The Toothpuller”! The man behind the
“victim” was actually extracting a tooth. Earlier last week, I had
attended a dinner meeting of the faculty of the Department of
Surgery of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New
Jersey (UMDNJ), Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. I’m an
adjunct associate professor in the department but, as one who
would probably faint if I had to witness any significant surgery, I
was hesitant about joining all those surgeons at the dinner. The
speaker was Josef Fischer, currently a professor of surgery at
Harvard Medical School and Chairman of the Department of
Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Fischer is one
of America’s outstanding surgeons with some 500 publications
and I learned quite a bit from his talk.
Fischer spent most of his talk decrying the current leadership of
the medical profession and the separation of the surgeon from the
care of the patient after surgery. However, he also brought in
some interesting history of the medical profession. Around
6,000 years ago, the medicine man was not only the healer of
one’s ills but he had another function. He also meted out
punishment to those involved in serious transgressions. He
would take clothing from the perpetrator, boil it up in his pot
containing some sort of a brew and then pronounce the offender
dead. The guy was obviously still alive; however, shunned and
ostracized by the group, he soon did indeed die.
Later, the medicine man’s dual role dealing with healing and
death was split, the physician doing the healing while the priest
took over the death part. The physician became a highly
regarded and well-rewarded member of society. Fischer showed
paintings of physicians in medieval times. Invariably, the
physicians were dressed quite well and were pictured holding up
a vessel containing urine. By examining the patient’s urine, the
physician was supposed to be able to diagnose all manner of
diseases. There was no need for him to touch the patient! It was
the rare physician who stooped to perform anything resembling
surgery.
Who did perform surgery, however primitive it might have been?
I just came back from getting a haircut and my barber was
surprised when I told him that in earlier times he would also have
been a surgeon. And that fellow in Caravaggio’s painting pulling
the tooth? He might also be a barber. After all, the razor is at
least 5,000 years old, so barbering must rank among the oldest
professions. The “Barber Surgeon” not only cut and shaved hair,
but also extracted teeth, performed surgery on wounds, did
bloodletting, gave enemas and performed other services that
physicians of the time deemed beneath them.
According to the Browns Hairdressing Web site, today’s familiar
barber pole derived from the bloodletting practice. Originally
the pole represented the staff that the patient held onto during the
bloodletting. The bloody and clean bandages would be hung out
to dry on the pole and sometimes would twist in the wind
forming a spiral pattern, now depicted on the barber pole.
In England, it was the mid-1700s before the Barber Surgeon’s
functions were separated, with the formation of a body that was
later to become the Royal College of Surgeons. Today, in
Fischer’s view, medicine has come full circle. Remember the
medicine man’s dual role in healing and in death? With
transplants and implants, together with all kinds of life support
and traumatic therapy options, the physician again has to deal
with both healing and the death part. When do you pull the plug;
who gets the available heart or kidney?
On a lighter note, the media highlighted the work of another
Fischer this past week. Julia Fischer and her colleagues at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig
have confirmed something many dog owners have long
suspected. In the June 11 issue of Science, they make the case
that dogs may understand more than you think. In earlier
columns (3/20/01 and 10/23/01), I mentioned a famed African
grey parrot, Alex, which has an extensive vocabulary. Now
there’s Rico, a border collie. Unlike Alex, Rico can’t talk;
however, he knows more than 200 words and is able to learn new
words as easily as many children. In this regard he’s supposedly
at the same level as a typical 3-year-old.
The experiments confirming Rico’s knowledge of over 200
words involve asking him to fetch balls or toys by name, the
objects being located in another room from the one where the
researchers name the objects. Rico’s most impressive
performance occurs when he is asked to bring back an object, the
name of which he has not heard before. The new object is placed
among other, familiar toys. About 70 percent of the time, he
brings back the new object. The workers believe that he deduces
that the unfamiliar name he hears does not correspond to any of
the familiar objects and hence selects the unfamiliar one to
retrieve. Just as impressive, the new object is then put away for a
month and, when asked again to retrieve that object, Rico picks
the correct object half the time. To remember the name of that
object after only hearing it once, and having a month intervene,
is no mean feat.
Does Rico actually know the meaning of the words and does his
remarkable talent mean that he understands “language”? As
usual, skeptics come out of the woodwork. For example, an
article by Randy Dotinga on the healthfinder.gov Web site,
quotes LouAnn Gerken, a professor of psychology and
linguistics at the University of Arizona. Gerken considers the
study not to be of any use or significance to the study of
language development and doesn’t see it as serious science.
Hey, I’m still impressed. Remember, the study was carried out
at a Max Planck institute and the dog had to respond to over 200
words in German! I couldn’t do that.
Perhaps you were wondering, as I was, about the significance of
the 1699 Countess Polignac Stradivarius that Shaham played for
us. I found on the Philadelphia Orchestra Web site that the violin
reputedly belonged to Countess Polignac, allegedly the French
mistress of Benjamin Franklin when he was our first ambassador
to France. Had old Ben himself listened to the same mellow
tones when visiting his lady friend? Had I known this bit of
history last Friday, I would have paid even closer attention to
Shaham’s performance!
Allen F. Bortrum
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