Local surgeon Dr. Gordon carves out a role in medical history

| October 24, 2024 | 0 Comments

Dr. Leo A. Gordon
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Did you know that President James A. Garfield was shot in an assassination attempt in 1881, but he died because germs weren’t understood and doctors with unwashed hands removed the bullet? Or did you know that there was a clandestine medical school in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust? Decoy books were even made so the Nazis wouldn’t discover that the Jewish students were studying forbidden subjects.

Those are two of the many topics covered in lectures by local surgeon Dr. Leo A. Gordon as an affiliate faculty member in Cedars-Sinai’s History of Medicine Program, an initiative begun and directed by historian and philosopher of medicine and science Gideon Manning, who believes that studying medicine’s past can lead to a better future. Dr. Gordon’s presentations to the Cedars community and the interested public are part of that effort, along with other lectures and in-depth six-week courses. He and his colleagues in Cedars-Sinai’s program value the importance and broad appeal of medical history.

“Everybody is a patient,” Dr. Gordon explains. “It’s the great common human bond. Whether you’re sleeping under the freeway or you’re the chairman of Citibank, everyone is a patient.”

And since Veterans Day, a day to honor all who served our country in the armed forces, is Nov. 11, this is a perfect time to talk with the Windsor Square resident about his work with the History of Medicine Program. As he discovered, the history of medicine and the history of warfare are often linked.

D-Day
One of Dr. Gordon’s popular lectures, “Miracles on the Beach — the Medicine of D-Day,” looks at how the medical establishment improved battlefield care in World War II. Today we benefit from the new protocols and discoveries implemented then.

He took on the topic after an encounter with a medical student in the operating room. Dr. Gordon was assisting with a surgery, and as one of Cedars-Sinai’s educators, he quizzed the student about various aspects of the operation. The student nailed every answer until asked about the significance of that day’s date, June 6. The student’s wildly incorrect guesses led Dr. Gordon to think, “We need to weave the date into a program at Cedars.”

In his presentation, Dr. Gordon explains that D-Day, the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, was the beginning of the end of World War II. Some 350,000 Allied personnel were deployed. That day saw 9,000 casualties and 2,400 deaths, 1,200 in the first hour.

World War I medical personnel would never have been prepared for the enormity of those numbers, but many changes had been implemented since then. Dr. Gordon recounts in his lecture how the American College of Surgeons reviewed World War I procedures for handling the wounded and made adjustments. The timeline for medical school was altered to more quickly ready doctors for the battlefield. Similarly, in 1943, Congress approved the Bolton Act, which funded accelerated training for nurses and added classes in working at high altitude because flight nurses would accompany patients being flown for further medical treatment.

Another change that improved care on D-Day, explains Dr. Gordon, was the implementation of a chain of evacuation: a series of steps that created an order for delivery of medical treatment. The injured would proceed to a nearby triage tent, then a regional center and finally be flown to a regional center and finally be flown to an established hospital for further care if necessary.

Patient survival was greatly increased by the widespread availability of penicillin. The antibiotic was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but without the capacity to produce it in vast quantities, it had limited use. In 1943, a technique for mass-producing penicillin was found, leading to fewer deaths from infections, both on the battlefield and off.

Anatomy atlas
Another of his lecture subjects that links war with gained medical knowledge is the story of the “Pernkopf Anatomy Atlas.” Dr. Gordon inherited a friend’s library. There he found the atlas with beautifully detailed renderings of the layers within the human body. Dr. Gordon learned that an ethical controversy surrounds it. In his presentation, he discusses the moral quandary of whether or not to use what many consider an invaluable resource because the author, Austrian anatomy professor Eduard Pernkopf, was an avowed Nazi, and circumstantial evidence suggests that deceased Nazi victims in WWII were dissected and used as models for the illustrations.

Still a surgeon
When not giving lectures about war-related medical subjects or Presidential illnesses (his most popular lecture — who wouldn’t want to hear about George Washington’s abscessed tooth or William Howard Taft’s sleep apnea?), Dr. Gordon is a general surgeon with extensive expertise in breast and gastrointestinal surgery. He is a senior consultant in clinical surgery with the Surgery Group of Los Angeles.

Originally from Massachusetts, he met his wife, Jan, at Iowa Wesleyan University. After earning his medical degree from Northwestern University School of Medicine, he completed his surgical residency at Tufts New England Medical Center. In 1978 he moved with Jan and their first son to La Jolla for a fellowship at the Scripps Clinic. “I thought it was another planet!” says Dr. Gordon. “We moved from a basement apartment in Boston to a hill overlooking La Jolla.” Compared to the lush greenery surrounding their new place, he jokes about their Boston apartment. “It’s called a garden apartment because we had a window box with a daisy in it!”

After the fellowship, Dr. Gordon accepted a job at Cedars-Sinai. “We had friends on Muirfield Road who enthused about us living in the area.” The Gordons first lived in Hancock Park, where their second son was born, then settled in Windsor Square. Forty-five or so years later, they are well-ensconced in the neighborhood. His wife is involved in the local Daughters of the American Revolution and enjoys genealogy, and they both profess to be avid readers of the Larchmont Chronicle. Son Ari is a pharmacist at the Beverly Glen Pharmacy, and Jason is a physical therapist at Larchmont Physical Therapy.

Dr. Gordon has no plans to retire. He assists with surgeries, stays very involved with the History of Medicine Program and is dedicated to his hobby, writing. He wrote two medical-related books and is now working on “a lighthearted look over my career in surgery.” It’s sure to be irreverent. “At the end of every joke, somebody gets hurt,” Dr Gordon asserts. “That’s why it’s called a punch line.”

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Category: People

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