By David Woods, PhD, FCPP
The Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia has hundreds of employees. At 8 o'clock in the morning it
sometimes seems as though all of them are coursing through the hospital's entrance
doors at the same time.
Up on the 5th floor though,
in the pathology area, things are appropriately more tranquil. Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams
had sent me an e-mail confirming the 8 AM time for our 2nd interview. It came from
her office at 4:47 AM -- her usual time of arrival at the hospital, where she
is head of the department of neuropathology.
She drives her Infiniti the
17 miles to work from her home in Moorestown, New Jersey, a town that Money magazine rates as one of the best
places to live in the United States. Through it runs the King’s Highway,
charitably named for King George III.
A petite and trim 84, white
coated and perfectly coiffed, she greets a visitor to her small book lined
office where can be heard the strains of classical music from the Temple University
radio station, which served as background to our hour- long discussion. She
describes her evident youthfulness to hard work, keeping up her interests, and
a sense of curiosity. In fact, she attributes her strong work habit to several
of her forebears.
When she's not hard at work
though, her interests include music and reading; in fact, she describes herself
as a ‘bookaholic. ‘As well as an entire floor-to-ceiling wall of medical texts
in her office she has a substantial library at home. Reading for pleasure
includes mainly history and biography… but she’s also a big fan of detective
stories, especially those involving Brother Cadfael, the fictional 12th
century Welsh monk and sleuth.
Her musical tastes run to
opera. She’s a particular fan of Verdi, and a regular at the Metropolitan Opera.
“But I don’t watch
television,” she says, “because I’d rather be doing something than watching
other people doing it.”
She's also an inveterate
traveler and for 14 years owned a house in Austria. During one visit to
Thailand she watched silk being spun, taking samples and having them made-up
into dresses in Bangkok. These she wears with notable elegance to the opera and
theater.
In fact, in her teens, Lucy
considered a career in opera. But a chance reading all of The Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd Douglas put her firmly on the
path to a life in medicine. It's the story of a feckless playboy who indirectly
caused the death of a famous neurosurgeon, and which led him to embark upon a
career as a physician. ‘The powerful effect of this book fired my decision to
select a career in medicine,’ says Lucy.
The daughter of Armenian
immigrants, she was born in St. Paul Minnesota. When she went to kindergarten
she could not speak English. She entered the University of Minnesota in 1947
and left 10 years later, having earned a BA and an MA in psychology a BSc in
medicine and her doctorate in 1957.
Lucy had several mentors in
medicine and psychology and during the first two years of medical school she
did psychological testing at a local private psychiatric hospital. Between 8 AM
and 5 PM she attended medical lectures; at 5 PM she drove to the psychiatric
hospital for consults until 10 PM; then home by 11 PM to study until 2 AM and
then up in the morning at 6. Thus was formulated not only a strong work ethic,
but an early bird ethos that even today sees her starting work at or before
dawn. No wonder one of her friends calls her the Energizer Bunny.
There were five women in her
medical school class of 110, but she says that being a woman was never a
hindrance to her career. In fact, she notes in her memoir that at Philadelphia General
Hospital, “I was asked to participate in endeavors beyond the confines of the
hospital. This resulted in my involvement in many fascinating projects that greatly broadened my world. Eventually,
I became known as ‘the girl who couldn't say no.’ “In matters limited to
science,” she adds coquettishly.
She entered with the goal of
becoming a psychiatrist but during her clerkship rotations in psychiatry she
decided that a career in that field would force her into close contact with too
many colleagues who themselves appeared to her to be in need of psychiatric
treatment. Her focus shifted to neurosurgery, with a residency in pathology
which she describes as “the most remarkable time of my life.”
She went on to serve as chief
of pediatric pathology and assistant neuropathologist at Philadelphia General
Hospital, known as a place for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the insane;
in other words, those people who private hospitals and usually turned away. While
there, Lucy had an annual caseload of more than 1000 brains, plus surgical
specimens including tumors nerves and muscles .With the advent of Medicare
though, it became possible to farm out those patients to surrounding hospitals
and Mayor Frank Rizzo ordered the hospital, where Lucy had served for 20 years,
closed in 1977.
Because of her experience in
pediatric neuropathology she began to work with pediatric child abuse cases,
acquiring experience and expertise in that area, and in 1986 became president
of the medical staff at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Since
neuropathologists were in short supply the demands on their expertise involved
so much traveling that she says, “I began to look upon the airport is my home.”
Lucy's association with the
Medical Examiner of Philadelphia plunged her, she says, into the world of
murder and mayhem. All unexplained deaths of infants and children became a
special focus, including the unsolved murder in 1996 of Jon Benet Ramsey.
Of all her consuming passions––and
the one that would be a high spot for any specialist in neuropathology -- she
came into possession at about this time
of 46 slides of Albert Einstein's brain. The tissues were beautifully preserved
and Lucy noted the absence of vascular lesions, the lack of gliosis and the
pristine nature of the neurons. She held this precious trove for 35 years and
then gifted it to the Mütter Museum where it is now on display, along with her
bequests of the table and instruments belonging to Sir William Osler.
Dr. Rorke-Adams was married
to Robert Rorke for 42 years. A sales manager with Plexiglas, he died at 89 in
2002. “He taught me how to laugh” she says with a grin at the reminiscence. Two
years later she married Boyce Adams, an electrical engineer and, she says, “an
inventor and a genius.”
A longtime fellow of the
College, Dr. Rorke-Adams is also a trustee. She is the recipient of numerous
awards, including one for excellence in teaching, and, she says, her greatest
legacy is the Lucy Balian Rorke-Adams Chair in Pediatric Neuropathology at
CHOP.
But even today, once every three
weeks she's on call nights and weekends examining tissue and spinal fluid
samples. In addition, she is a consultant to the medical examiner and gets
cases from pathologists throughout the country and currently from Iceland and
Sweden.
During her remarkable life in
medicine, Lucy has found time to write some 300 articles in scientific
journals, as well as an autobiography… and she is especially happy to have
passed along her wealth of experience to hundreds, if not thousands, of medical
students. She is sustained, she says, by her abiding faith as a Presbyterian …
and finds it hard to understand how anyone can go through life without some
religious belief.
Does she have any plans to
retire? Hardly, she says, she's getting too much fun and satisfaction out of
everything she does.
