A new horizon for surgeons: Genetics and cancer control

Abstract

Claude H. Organ, Jr, MD, FACS, Omaha, Nebraska The officers and members of the Southwestern Surgical Congress honor me with your invitation to present the 1977 Edgar J. Poth Lecture. The “roots” of both Doctor Poth and myself lie in Texas, and as a young student living in north Texas and aspiring to be a physician, I had heard the name, Edgar Poth, mentioned often. Having spent his formative years in Seguin, Texas, Doctor Poth started his medical career at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, then as now a stellar university of the medical world. He journeyed to the West Coast for his residency training in surgery at Stanford University. It can be said that he had the best of all worlds: Hopkins, Stanford, and Texas! As is so often the case with successful men, he was blessed with a fine and talented wife, Gaynelle Robertson Poth, an ophthalmologist of distinction in her own right [I]. After World War II, Doctor Poth rose to the rank of Ashbel Smith Professor of Surgery at the University of Texas (Galveston) and during this period contributed significantly to the experimental and clinical literature on various aspects of intestinal obstruction, intestinal sepsis, and peptic ulcer disease. His work on the bacterial flora of the small bowel and the use of the nonabsorbable sulfa preparations represented a landmark in antimicrobial bowel preparation. His has been a full life in which there are lessons of courage, excitement, stimulation, and respect. Albert Camus, the noted Frenchman, once related that in his lifetime he had known two types of aristocracy: the aristocracy of courage and the aristocracy of intelligence. I am pleased to join the previous guest speakers of the Congress in honoring Edgar Poth, an aristocrat of both courage and intelligence. Surgical progressafter World War II and extending up to the present time has allowed us to participate in and benefit from the most prosperous era in