J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2004;128:950-951
© 2004 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery
Henry T. Bahnson, Hopkins, and harmonica
Tsung O. Cheng, MD
Department of Medicine, George Washington University Medical Center 2150, Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20037
To the Editor:
Like many of Henry T. Bahnson's surgical peers at Johns Hopkins who were cited in the in memoriam article by Griffith,1 I was privileged to be a close cardiology colleague of Hank at Hopkins. My association with Hank was primarily through my work in the cardiac catheterization laboratory at Hopkins. At that time, the cardiac catheterization laboratory was under the department of surgery because the laboratory was considered as a preoperative diagnostic facility before patients, young and old, were operated on for their congenital and acquired heart diseases by Blalock and associates. I was a fellow in the respiratory laboratory of the late Dr Richard L. Riley, who arranged with Blalock to let me work 1 day a week in the cardiac catheterization laboratory because Riley knew of my interest in cardiac catheterization. I still remember the few times that I needed some advice from Hank during cardiac catheterization of babies. I asked the nurse to page H.T.B. for me. She immediately tried to correct me by saying, "Do you mean H.B.T.?" H.B.T. stood for Helen B. Taussig, of the Blalock-Taussig operation, and H.T.B. stood for Henry T. Bahnson. Because the patient was a baby, it was natural for the nurse to think I wanted to speak to Helen B. Taussig rather than to Henry T. Bahnson.
Because Griffith's article began and ended with a reference to Bahnson's harmonica, I wish to amplify a bit on Hank's association with this musical instrument. As Griffith1 mentioned, The Wall Street Journal in 1999 published an article titled "Of artificial hearts and artificial harps in a Pittsburgh laboratory," with the subtitle "Cardiac surgeon and bioengineer study a harmonica virtuoso from inside his mouth."2 The reporter mentioned Hank's application of his artificial heart experience to that of artificial harps, more commonly known as the harmonica. Because many of your readers might not be familiar with publication number 250 in Hank's bibliography mentioned in Griffith's article, I wish to mention that the article by Hank was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Figure 1).3 I suggest that everyone read the entire article to understand the history, physics, and physiology of the harmonica. As Hank said at the end of his article, "This helps keep the harmonica interesting, and indeed has helped to sustain its enduring prominence throughout the world."3
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Figure 1. Top portion of the first page of the article on the harmonica by Bahnson, Antaki, and Beery3 published 3 years before his death. My initials are T.O., commonly used by my colleagues at Hopkins. (From Bahnson HT, Antaki JF, Beery QC. Acoustical and physical dynamics of the diatonic harmonica. J Acoust Soc Am. 1998;103:2134-44. Published with the permission of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, American Institute of Physics.)
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References
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- Griffith BP, Henry T. Bahnson, MD (1920-2003): Himalayas of the mind—challenges and expectations. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2004;128:1-3.[Free Full Text]
- McGinley L. Of artificial hearts and artificial harps in a Pittsburgh lab: cardiac surgeon and bioengineer study a harmonica virtuoso from inside his mouth. Wall Street Journal. 1999 Feb 8:A1, A10..
- Bahnson HT, Antaki JF, Beery QC. Acoustical and physical dynamics of the diatonic harmonica. J Acoust Soc Am 1998;103:2134-2144.[Medline]
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