January 1957

Alumni Bulletin

Winter 1982

Yale Medicine

January 1957
Alumni Bulletin

Bone Engineering

“An unusual research project involving an orthopaedic surgeon and an engineer from the Yale faculty was the subject of a recent nation-wide television program originating from the Yale-New Haven Medical Center. Dr. Charles O. Bechtol, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery, heads the research work on bone engineering. His colleague is Henry Lepper, Jr., associate professor of civil engineering. Biomechanics of bone and muscle are being studied in an attempt to correlate the structure and biologic characteristics of bone with structural characteristics of metal. Such information is basic to considerations regarding the design and use of various metals in bone splints and internal fixation of fractures. Another aspect of the project deals with the microscopic structure of bone and is under the direction of Dr. Harold M. Frost, Jr., assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery. His particular interest is the changes in bone structure seen in the process of aging.

“The manner in which this research contributes to a better understanding of the treatment of fractures was shown on ‘Medical Horizons’ sponsored by CIBA Pharmaceutical Products, Inc., over the ABC-TV network in December.”

Winter 1982
Yale Medicine

A Review: A Sense of the Ending

“ ‘A Sense of the Ending’ is a television production about terminal illness as seen from the quite different perspectives of two women who had cancer. It was directed and produced by William Guth, director of Media Communications, Yale School of Medicine.

“Richard Sewall, professor emeritus of English at Yale, related with compassion and poetry ‘the very remarkable experience’ of his wife Mathilde’s death. Mrs. Sewall, a potter and weaver, was a woman whose spirit and sense of humor remained until the day she died at their home in Bethany, Connecticut. …

“Charlotte Barnard spent the last six months of her life in the hospital, conscious—reading and ‘thinking about things’—and attached to an intravenous, hyperelementation [sic] life care pump, with a tube out of her nose. She, too, was a woman of tremendous courage and a sustaining sense of humor. She had hoped to be able to die at home, but circumstances of her death necessitated hospitalization.

“During those six months, Mrs. Bernard did a great deal of thinking about her situation and what she could do to improve similar experiences of other patients. She agreed to be interviewed for a short videotape prepared for a seminar on medical ethics for Yale medical and law students. Her physician and friend, Dr. Howard Spiro, professor of medicine and well-known gastroenterologist, conducted the provocative and moving interview.”