From Anaconda to the North Star and Beyond

About the Book

At the height of his career, during the 1950s and 1960s, Lester Dragstedt was, arguably, the most famous surgeon in the world. His early life was spent in Anaconda, Montana, where he was born in 1892 of hardworking, Swedish immigrant parents. Educated at The University of Chicago, where he received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in physiology, as well as the M.D. (Rush Medical College), he spent the major part of his professional life at Chicago. When he reached retirement age, his desire to continue an active and productive career motivated him to move to the University of Florida, where he continued his research and teaching until his death in 1975.

Dragstedt began his professional life as a physiologist, but a fortuitous encounter in 1925 led him into the field of surgery, where he was able to combine his knowledge of physiology with his clinical acumen in a way that enabled him to make major scientific and clinical breakthroughs. He will be longest remembered for his introduction of vagotomy in the surgical treatment of peptic ulcer, and for his elucidation of the endocrine function of the distal portion of the stomach, the gastric antrum. His experimental and clinical work proved conclusively that vagotomy—the severing of the vagus nerves to the stomach—markedly reduces the secretion of gastric acid, thereby leading to permanent healing of duodenal ulcers. Because the operation can be performed with lower morbidity and mortality than other effective operations, it has completely supplanted alternative surgical approaches in the management of duodenal ulcer disease. His work on the gastric antrum proved conclusively that the antrum secretes a hormone—gastrin—which acts as a potent stimulant of gastric acid secretion. Subsequently, he detailed the mechanisms through which the hormone is released, the ways in which gastrin release is inhibited, and the circumstances in which unrestrained release of gastrin can cause peptic ulceration.  

Momentous as were these and his many other contributions to the fields of physiology and surgery, an even more important part of his legacy resides in his application of physiologic principles to a clinical discipline previously dominated by the anatomic approach. His efforts in this regard played a dominant role in altering the very nature of the field of surgery.

Utilizing a variety of sources, including extensive interviews with Dragstedt, Landor has traced the many influences that helped shape this singular, highly productive career. The narrative, interlaced with diary notes, correspondence and anecdotes (for example, how Dragstedt happened to encounter Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler during his self-designed education in surgery) captures the essence of the unique character and personality that made Dragstedt such a widely admired, revered and loved person.

About the Author

After a childhood spent in Canton, Ohio, John Landor earned Ph.B. and M.D. degrees from The University of Chicago, where he also received graduate training in surgery. His career in academic surgery, from 1958 to 1992, included periods at what is now UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where he was Professor and Chief of General Surgery, and SUNY-Health Science Center at Brooklyn, where he was Professor and Chief of Surgery at the Brooklyn Veterans Administration Medical Center. Now Professor of Surgery Emeritus, and retired, he lives, writes and walks the forest trails in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.