Generation to Generation: Two Doctors

by Martin Terplan

By 1930 the University of Buffalo was looking for a pathologist to join its department. At the time, my father, Kornel Terplan, who grew up in Transylvania and attended the German University in Prague, was an assistant to Professor Anton Ghon there. Professor Ghon was still many years removed from retirement. Accordingly, my father accepted an invitation to come to Buffalo, and within several years he had become head of the department of pathology at UB. Shortly thereafter World War II interrupted any ideas he had of returning to Europe.

During the first half of the 20th century, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases were the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, both in the United States and around the world. The research and practice of pathology, quite naturally, concentrated on these disorders, and many of my father's publications concerned themselves with tuberculosis.

Between September 1952 and June 1953 my medical school class was the last one to take pathology at the old medical school on High Street. The proximity of the school to both Buffalo General Hospital and Children's Hospital enabled us to study fresh surgical and autopsy material, and we were thoroughly exposed to the gross and microscopic changes brought on by various diseases. Pathologists described what they saw, a practice my father continued throughout his career. Indeed, this need to describe prompted him, already in the 1930s, to provide space for Buffalo's first medical illustrator, Melford Diedrick.

By the time my father retired from medical school in the 1960s, he had probably taught most if not all of the pathology department members in the hospitals in Western New York. What began in central Europe at the beginning of the 20th century had spread widely, the way knowledge has to spread in order to be of real benefit. When my father did retire, the University had become the State University of New York at Buffalo. His monthly retirement from the University was approximately $47.00 - a sum, which, if he even bothered to think about, made him smile.