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 Medicine in St. Louis as professor of surgery, setting a notable precedent: he was to be a full-time professor, operating only for the instruction of junior surgeons, or in cases affording opportunity for scientific advance. Previously, professors had been part-time teachers and part-time surgeons making a living in private practice. At the university Dr. Graham made no more than perhaps a tenth of the income he could have commanded from fees. He became an outspoken and effective foe of such evils as fee splitting and ghost surgery. To his scientific achievements he soon added a dependable X-ray technique for diagnosing gall-bladder disease. But his most dramatic accomplishment did not come until 1933.
Cavities & a Grave. Dr. James L. Gilmore, a Pittsburgh obstetrician, had consulted Graham about what he believed to be a lung abscess. Graham jolted him with the news: it was cancer. Gilmore went home to Pittsburgh to decide whether he wanted an operation to remove the diseased part of his lung. In a few days he returned, ready for the operation, and told Surgeon Graham that while in Pittsburgh he had had some teeth filled. Said Graham with a laugh: "I like an optimistic patient." Replied Gilmore: "Yes, but I ought to tell you that I also bought a cemetery lot." The patient had with him a gynecologist friend, Dr. Sidney A. Chalfant, who sat in the gallery of Graham's famed Operating Room No. 1, looking down on the proceedings.
Surgeon Graham opened Gilmore's chest. What he saw brought him up sharp. The cancer was not, as he had expected, confined to one lobe of the left lung but had its origin in the bronchus (one of the two major branches of the windpipe) supplying air to the entire lung. Graham looked up to Chalfant. "I'm not going to be able to remove the cancer without removing the whole lung," he said through the muffling layers of his mask. "What do you think about it?"
Chalfant asked: "Has it ever been done before?"
"No," replied Graham, "but I've done it in animals and I don't see why it couldn't be done in a human. I think I'll go ahead."
He did, and for the first time in history an entire lung was removed.* Dr. Graham was worried about how to fill the huge cavity remaining. He need not have been: Dr. Gilmore made a good recovery; his remaining lung expanded to fill the space.