Fred Plum obitudiary
(1924 – 2010)
For those of us a certain age
“Plum and Posner” became synonymous
with bedside medicine at its brightest
even as it became the cicerone to the darkest
moments of the brain, and the mind –
One wonders if Fred had an opinion
(neurological or otherwise) about such
split-function definitions
He probably did.
My guess is he often thought, when examining
a patient who could think and communicate
while paralyzed, eyes closed, immobile and bodily inert,
“There’s a mind in there. We need to respect it,
protect it, honor it and what it wants.”
The MRI’s and PET scans proved him right, of course.
They always do when the bedside examiner is a Fred Plum.
How tragic – how ironic –
that a physician who had unlocked the speechless,
had given voice to the shut-ins of cerebral cataclysms
should die mute
a neurological curiosity
of the temporal lobes called
primary progressive aphasia
no longer able to unlock himself,
much less others.
One day a Fred Plum will, no doubt,
elucidate whether such people are
diseased in brain alone or mind as well.
This too is important.
NYT 6/13/2010
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