A Visit to a Medical Giant

Bob Chamovitz is my cousin: his mother and mine were sisters. We lived as block away from each other in Aliquippa and grew up together. He is now a retired gastroenterologist. The visit he describes took place around 1978.

Dear Dan,
I went to New York to see Burill Crohn. I called Mt Sinai Hospital and asked for him. "Which Doctor Cohen, the operator asked...never heard of Dr Crohn."

Finally I got a phone number and spoke to his wife who invited me to their apartment near the Museum of Modern Art. I walked in to see a grand piano and there he was, all 94 years of him
seated in a big chair, his edematous legs on a hassock.

He asked about me, why was I there, etc. (His wife said to be brief but he was enjoying himself).  I asked if he was still practicing medicine.

"No," he said. "In NY you can't get a licence after age 93!!", so he gave up consulting a year earlier. He volunteered that no one knows who he is anymore.  He tried to get his grandson into med school but the "bastards" paid him no mind. He told me the story of how IBD (inflammatory bowel disease)became Crohn's Disease. It was at a conference in Australia (?); discussion was on IBD and all its variants and the question was, what to call this bizarre illness and someone shouted, let's call it Crohn's disease. The moderator said, "Let's take a vote All in favor say aye," and it carried by unanimous vote. That was it.

He told me what he wanted on his tombstone:  the prescription that he prescribed, an elixir of codeine 1/4 gr plus small amount of barbital. "So what if they got addicted!"

Was a thrill for me to have been in his presence on a one-to-one setting.