Puzzles of a surgeon

“The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon”

Thomas E. Starzl…

“The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon”

Thomas E. Starzl

University of Pittsburgh Press 2003

Although organ transplants are relatively commonplace in our day and age, there was a time when procedures such as kidney or liver transplants were only dreamed about by doctors and their extremely ill patients. Thomas E. Starzl, who is the Director of the Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, was one of the founding fathers in this life-saving branch of medicine, and has written a memoir detailing how organ transplants evolved from primitive beginnings to the cutting-edge technology used today, and also discussed the people instrumental to the field’s development.

First, the reader learns about Starzl’s own life. His father owned a semi-weekly newspaper in LeMars, Iowa, the small town in which Starzl was born and raised. However, his father was not content to just publish a family-run paper in a small town in Iowa. He dreamed of bigger and better things, and secretly wrote dozens of science fiction stories at night, when everyone else in the house was sleeping. He was also a gifted inventor, always on the prowl for ideas that would make life easier. It was only after his father’s death, however, that Starzl realized his father’s genius and learned to respect his ideas.

After his early years, Starzl goes on to describe his education. He attended Northwestern University and Johns Hopkins University, where his interest for the new science of transplantation was piqued. He began doing research projects on dogs and how they responded to liver transplantation. Needless to say, it took many years – and even more failures – before he discovered the plethora of requirements needed in order to achieve a successful transplantation. The reader can identify with every setback and every failure, and finally rejoices when the first liver transplant is realized.

This memoir is fast-paced and entertaining. It provides a glimpse into a world most of us don’t even think about, but which is instrumental in saving the lives of thousands of people every year. At times, however, Starzl’s writing is too far removed from the reader and sounds more like a textbook, full of medical terms that the average person couldn’t even hope to understand, than a personal memoir. Also, the sheer number of people involved in making the field of transplantation possible is dizzying, and Starzl has a habit of giving the reader each person’s personal history. This aspect of the novel can be overwhelming at times.

Except for these few shortcomings, “The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon” is an interesting read. Pick it up over winter break and discover this fascinating, ever-evolving branch of surgery Dr. Thomas Starzl was vital in bringing to life.