Stories
When I started working in John Flynn's lab in 1962, I was immediately thrown into surgery, assisting David Egger on his experiments with the decortication of young kittens.
The cardiovascular surgery that I did with the team in Italy was an excellent experience, given the professional skills of my colleagues, the remarkable difficulty of the surgeries, and the successful results of our experiments.
Since then I have always loved surgery, the ability to work with my hands and to experimentally alter an animal. To me it seems like an artistic skill. Many pre-med students came through my lab at Wesleyan where they learned to appreciate surgery as well. We were always very sensitive to the lives of the animals, insisting on proper anesthesia and humane treatment of them in experiments. For this reason, also, I almost always insisted that we work with animals that had completely recovered from the surgery, what is called "chronic" preparations. And at some points, I refused to continue certain procedures, such as shock-induced fighting which seemed inhumane.
Surgery with Jaap Koolhaas in the Netherlands, 1981
Over the years, I mastered many kinds of surgery and did thousands of operations. In addition to the cardiovascular surgery in Italy, and some cardiovascular surgery for implanting chronic arterial cannulas in my own lab, as well as hundreds of vasectomies and tubal ligations, most of the surgery was on the brain. For my dissertation, as described elsewhere, I invented a new surgical technique for chronic recording of neurons. At my lab at Wesleyan, my students and I did precision brain lesions, implantation of chronic microelectrodes and stimulating electrodes and implantation of chronic tubes for administration of tiny amounts of neurotransmitters.
One of the things that I missed most when I finally closed my laboratory in 1993 to go to UNESCO was the practice of surgery.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme