One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?

I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments.

I was performing skin grafts and became interested in why skin wouldn't graft permanently.

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations.

Its the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago.

To the patient, any operation is momentous.