LIFETIME and FORTUNE

About the Book

While it is clearly not my intention to review the history of Chicago, it should not surprise the reader to find that a considerable portion of the early material in the book relates to the city in which the author grew up. Few cities of this magnitude can boast of at least fifteen miles of lake shoreline along with outstanding universities such as the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and the medical center of the University of Illinois. Chicago’s medical past includes such pioneers of surgery as Nicholas Senn, Christian Fenger, and John B Murphy. In the 1920s, neurological surgery was developed in Chicago by Percival Bailey, Loyal Davis, and Paul C. Bucy. Dr. Davis, chief of surgery at Northwestern medical center, was for many years the editor-in-chief of Surgery Gynecology and Obstetrics, a premier journal of surgical literature in America.

Last but not least, the Chicago underworld was represented by John Dillinger, Bugs Moran (whose gang was massacred on St. Valentine’s Day), and the Mafia chief Alphonse Capone who, although responsible for innumerable deaths, was finally imprisoned for income tax evasion in the late 1930s.

About the Author

Edward R. Lang, a retired neurosurgeon, was born in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago's South Side. As a child he lived only a few blocks from the laboratory where Enrico Fermi was constructing the fi rst atomic pile, precursor to the nuclear weapon which was used against Hiroshima to end WWII. Following high school Ed was educated at Princeton University and the Yale School of Medicine. Married in 1960 he remained a resident of Chicago until 1964 while serving several years of surgical training at the Northwestern University medical center. In 1964 the Lang family (inc1uding two children) moved to the Washington. D.C. area where Dr. Lang completed three more years of training in neurological surgery at George Washington University. Following two years as an Air Force neurosurgeon at Keesler AFB, Miss. the family returned to Fairfax, Virginia where Dr. Lang practiced for over 30 years. During that period he had the opportunity to travel widely to the British Isles, Europe, Scandinavia and China. He presently resides in Gainesville, Va. close to much of his extended family.