Lawrence Avery Pottenger, MD, PhD, associate professor emeritus of
surgery and pathology at the University of Chicago, died on September 25th,
2006, at sixty-two years of age. He was an orthopaedic surgeon who was
especially interested in treating arthritis, caring for the orthopaedic
problems of older patients, and working toward the improvement of artificial
joints.
Pottenger was born in DeKalb, Illinois, on May 21, 1944. He attended the
University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelor of science degree in
physiology in 1966, his doctorate in pathology in 1972, and his medical degree
in 1974, with honors.
His original goal had been to do medical research rather than become a
physician. As he explained in his unfinished book on the role of healers,
which he was in the process of writing in his retirement, his sole reason for
going to medical school was because "in those days, people doing medical
research had to have an MD degree or they would find themselves working for
someone with an MD degree." It was only after he began to interact with
patients during his third year of medical school that he realized that he
wanted to become a doctor. He found the complicated, real, and immediate
problems of his patients compelling in comparison with the abstractions of
scientific proofs.
During his five-year residency in general and orthopaedic surgery at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Pottenger met his future wife—Barbara
Merlo, who was a transplant nurse. They married in 1977 and went on to have
two daughters, Katherine and Lindsey.
After his residency at Johns Hopkins, where he had been groomed to become
the first intramural orthopaedic surgeon at the National Institutes of Health,
Pottenger was recruited back to the University of Chicago as an orthopaedic
surgeon in 1979. He was promoted to associate professor in 1984, and he served
as chairman of orthopaedic surgery from 1984 to 1986 and as vice-chairman from
1986 to 1992.
As his laboratory research in arthritis progressed, he soon found himself
working mostly with adults rather than with the pediatric patients he had been
accustomed to caring for during his early career as a pediatric specialist.
Although he greatly missed the enthusiasm and pleasant naiveté of the
younger patients, it was in caring for adult patients who were in constant
pain from a disease for which there was no real treatment that he learned the
invaluable lesson of treating the whole patient. Seth Leopold, who was an
orthopaedic surgery resident at the University of Chicago Medical Center at
the time, fondly recalled Pottenger as a "gracious educator, who spent
much of his energy trying to impart compassion as a surgical skill."
It was after operating on a patient with acquired immune deficiency
syndrome (AIDS) in the 1980s that Pottenger became especially interested in
medical ethics. He wrote several papers in which he discussed the obligation
of surgeons to treat patients and examined the attitudes and practices of
orthopaedic surgeons in treating patients with human immuno-deficiency
syndrome (HIV).
Pottenger served on several committees for the Association of Orthopaedic
Chairmen, the Orthopaedic Research Society, and the American Academy of
Orthopaedic Surgeons. He was an editorial board member for the Journal of
Surgical Research, and he served as a regular peer reviewer for
JAMA. During the course of his professional life, he wrote six book
chapters, thirty scientific articles, and more than sixty abstracts.
Although he was much sought after as a scientist in a field that did not
attract many top-flight basic scientists, Pottenger made it clear from the
start of his career that he wanted to be known mainly for patient care. He was
completely devoted to his patients. He went to their homes, and he saw them in
the clinic without an appointment. Every afternoon and evening, he would have
many little pink message slips on his desk, and he would call back all of the
patients himself.
Pottenger enjoyed gardening and hiking. He attended museums and concerts,
and he especially enjoyed studying Native American history. He was extremely
intelligent, with a broad depth of knowledge in medicine as well as in other
fields. He had a personal commitment to altruism, empathy, spiritualism, and
the role of surgeons as healers. He was a very loving man, and he will be
missed dearly not only by his family but also by his patients, colleagues, and
students.