Proc, Dr. Sam, Uncle Henry, and the "Little Green Book". Interview by Charles F. Wooley.
During his house staff training before World War II, Dr. W. Proctor Harvey encountered Dr. Samuel A. Levine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Following military service, Harvey returned to Boston and became Levine's first cardiology fellow. The book Clinical Auscultation of the Heart--the Little Green Book by Levine and Harvey in 1949 combined Levine's clinical wisdom with Harvey's objective phonocardiographic methods and brought an important objective dimension to the art of cardiac auscultation. Both Levine and Harvey shared experiences and friendship with Henry Christian, the first Physician-in-Chief when the new Brigham Hospital Opened in 1913. Christian, appointed Dean of the Harvard Medical School in 1908 at the age of 32, was referred to as the "Boy Dean." He held the Hersey Chair of Theory and Practice of Physic from 1908 until 1939, was one of the founding group of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and a major force in academic medicine. Levine served as intern to Christian and then joined the Brigham medical staff in 1915. Proctor Harvey followed Henry Christian's path from their mutual hometown of Lyunchburg, VA to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. A series of illuminating and respectful professional interactions--initially between Christian and Levine, between Levine and Harvey in the early 1940s, and between Harvey and Christian in the 1950s--provide the background for the genesis of the Little Green Book and a remarkable example of academic heritage.