From the Archives: Herb Griswold goes to London

Education
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Herb GriswoldStanding in front of the National Heart Hospital in London, Oregon’s Herb Griswold looks nearly as dapper as his British colleagues Paul Wood and E. Lawson McDonald, Director and Assistant Director, respectively, of the Institute of Cardiology at the University of London. (You can tell the American by the fact that he has kept one hand in his pocket.)

In September 1957, Dr. Griswold had taken sabbatical leave from his post as Chief of Cardiology at OHSU (then University of Oregon Medical School) to work with Dr. Wood. Dr. Wood’s now-classic text, Diseases of the Heart and Circulation was in its second revised edition, and his Institute had gained an international reputation for its pioneering programs in both cardiac catheterization and cardiac surgery.

Dr. Griswold applied lessons from London immediately upon his return to Oregon, working with Drs. Charlie Dotter and Al Starr to make OHSU a center rivaling Dr. Wood’s. Called “the heart of OHSU’s cardiology program,” Dr. Griswold is credited with taking a “hodgepodge of dedicated but unorganized doctors” and fashioning OHSU’s stellar cardiology research and training programs.

“From horse and buggy to moon” is the hastily scrawled but apt phrase noted by an OHSU writer who interviewed some of Dr. Griswold’s colleagues shortly before the man’s death in 2002. What would he have thought of today’s discoveries? To infinity and beyond!
 


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