Description
Over the course of three interviews, Dr. Herbert Griswold looks back on his fifty-five years in cardiology. Griswold was a student at UOMS from 1939 to 1943, and returned in 1949 as an Assistant Professor in physiology and cardiology. In the first interview, conducted by fellow cardiologist Dr. Jack McAnulty, Griswold discusses the history of cardiology, both nationally and locally. He discusses the Starr-Edwards heart valve and the development of the cardiac catheterization laboratory. He also discusses UOMS' relationship with the Portland Veterans Administration Hospital, and attitudes toward the Medical School as it grew over the course of his career.
The following two interviews were conducted more than two years later and look more broadly on Dr. Griswold's life and career. He discusses his early life and upbringing in Portland; his mother, Zula Griswold, principal of Portland Public Schools night school program; and his education at Grant High School and Reed College. He participated in military drills, taught physiology courses, and served as an extern at the Portland Medical Hospital (now known as Gaines Hall) in his early career. He talks about influential faculty members, including Bill Youmans, and discusses the particular challenges faced by women medical students in the 1930s and 1940s. After completing his internship and residency at San Francisco's French Hospital, he embarked upon a seventeen-month fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital with Dr. Helen Taussig, which was one of the first cardiology fellowships in the country.
Further talk covers the growth of the Division of Cardiology during Griswold's tenure, faculty recruitment and training, and grants and funding. He discusses the research of Albert Starr and Miles Edwards, Charlie Dotter, Richard Sleeter, and Jim Metcalfe. He also talks about the Division's efforts to train cardiologists from Portland area hospitals in newly developed techniques; UOMS fellows went on to establish cardiac catheterization labs and cardiac surgery programs in many local hospitals.