Medicine: Death of a Surgeon

Evarts Ambrose Graham, a Chicago surgeon's son, fainted when at twelve he first saw his father operate. But he soon conquered his queasiness, went through Chicago's Rush Medical College ('07), became a World War I Army surgeon and made a distinguished record. Example: he discovered that faulty surgical technique in the Army was the main cause of death in thousands of cases of massive chest abscess following influenza. In some camps the death rate hit 98%; after Major Graham's findings, it fell to 4%.

In 1919, at 36, he joined Washington University School of...

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