Today we took a field trip (on far too little sleep) to the New York Historical Society in Manhattan, to visit an exhibit on the first five years of AIDS in New York. After a private, hour long introduction by the curator of the exhibit, we were guided through the displays by about ten of our medical faculty. They both explained the significance of part of the exhibit and told personal stories about their first encounters with AIDS.
Each doctor's experience had made a lasting impression. One ran a birthing clinic in Africa that in 1972 had made great strides in improving child survival rates, only to be closed by 1974 when all of the 100+ babies born were born with and shortly died from undiagnosed AIDS.
Another talked about the total lack of universal precautions for the health prescribers (the concept didn't exist until the AIDS crisis) and yet out of irrational fear, the patient was wearing a full gown, mask and goggles, while she wasn't wearing gloves.
My favorite story was from the Chancellor, whose first experience was from his residency training at Harvard. While walking through a lab, he came across three eminent physician researchers looking at a slide under a microscope. As he approached he heard them mutter things like, “Hmmm, it's not good," and, "Quite ugly." Upon hearing the resident approach, they turn and tell him to look into the 'scope and ask him what he thinks. And like any sensible person would do, he says, “Oh, doesn't look good."
He inquired about what he had just seen to find that this was “that new thing from San Francisco." At the time, in 1981, the disease was neither identified nor named.
TIL: When George Washington was being vetted for the first presidency, he was criticised as a choice because the old lesions on his face from a childhood bout of small pox. Detractors said that he would never be embraced as a leader because of the stigma of his blemishes. At the time it was literally true - no one shook his hand.
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