Cos, Cnidos, and CAOG

Abstract

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, I took part in the dedication of a statue at 1300 York Avenue in Manhattan. The bronze bust was a memorial to a faculty member in the Department of Anatomy at Cornell University Medical College. That individual had devoted his life to research, working not only long days but also long nights and weekends. In this, he was ably and devotedly supported by his wife, Mary, but he received no support from external funding sources for the first 27 years of his work. The only support for his research came from the meager funds of the Cornell Anatomy Department. A clinical test, which he announced in 1928, was greeted with profound professional skepticism. It was almost 20 years before the significance of his work was recognized. This man to whose memory we gathered to pay homage was Dr. George Papanicolaou, devoted physician and far-sighted research worker. There was also another side to Pap, as he was known to generations of his colleagues and students. For 48 years, he was a devoted and inspiring teacher at Cornell. Even after his formal retirement, he continued to teach a course in exfoliative cytology. SO, when a memorial to him was planned, the decision was not just to seek the issuance of a special United States postage stamp, although that was done; nor just to commission a statue, although that was also done; but to plant, in the courtyard garden of the Medical College, a tree grown from a seed from the grove of Hippocrates, in his native Greece. It was that lineage, that continuity, which George Papanicolaou represented with such devotion and distinction. And it is this living link with Hippocrates which forms the theme of my address, for Hippocrates was the most celebrated member of the School of Cos, a loose fraternity of physicians who played a critical role in the history of medicine. It was members of this