Martin C. Mihm Jr: Remembrances of a great physician, charismatic person, and good friend

I am most pleased to be one of the contributors to this special issue of the Journal of Cutaneous Pathology in honor of Dr. Martin Mihm, one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and coming to know very well. These remarks will be short on skin pathology because I quickly realized soon after my career in pathology started and, certainly, when I came to the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that exotic world was beyond my ken and decided to devote myself to the more simple worlds of gynecologic and urologic pathology. When I joined the pathology department of the MGH in early 1977, I was very quickly impressed with the academic excellence and stature of many individuals, but two vividly stood out to me more than the others because of their obvious vast knowledge. Both were steeped in traditional anatomic pathology but also were simply great doctors having vast knowledge of clinical medicine. One of the two was Dr. Robert Scully, someone known well to many reading this, but it is not of him that I comment on here, only parenthetically, but rather the second of these two remarkable individuals, of course, Dr. Mihm (Figure 1). I knew of Dr. Mihm when I arrived at the hospital because of the reputation he already had well established and because of the famous melanoma levels. His remarkable knowledge was very quickly evident to me and other trainees at our routine sign-out of cases with him and at the daily surgical pathology conference, at which Dr. Mihm would present on a rotating basis skin cases from the MGH and his own consultation material. I was impressed immediately not only, of course, by his remarkable knowledge of skin pathology and all the nuances that were evident to someone with his astute eye, but also by his knowledge of the diseases of the skin from the general clinical perspective and his remarkable ebullient personality; one certainly did not fall asleep when Dr. Mihm was presenting! Somewhat sadly, my professional experience with Dr. Mihm was largely limited to the occasional sign-out with him as a resident and the departmental conference just noted. However, when I specialized in gynecologic and urologic pathology, I did avail of his expertise on occasion when evaluating atypical squamous proliferations of the vulva and penis, which readers know can be quite a challenge. My only paper with him, and others, concerned another challenging issue, the subclassification of atypical papillary squamous lesions, specifically those occurring on the penis; this was published in the American Journal of Surgical Pathology in 2000. I came to know Dr. Mihm particularly well a little later in a fortuitous way. Once I decided to pursue gynecological pathology, my main subspecialty area, and joined Dr. Scully as a fellow, Dr. Mihm's great friend from his training years at the MGH, Dr. Philip Clement (by then working in Vancouver), contacted Dr. Scully asking if he had any ideas for someone who could present a course with him at the annual meeting of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. I was a young buck, as they say, at the time, trying to make my own name in the field I had chosen; Dr. Scully was well aware of that, and over the telephone, he introduced me to Dr. Clement, whom I had never met at that time and very quickly a warm friendship developed. Then, in many conversations his close friendship with Dr. Mihm would come up quite frequently. Through Dr. Clement, Dr. Mihm and I became friendly much more than otherwise would have likely been the case. In time, my wife and our two daughters also came to know Dr. Mihm well, and Dr. Mihm would invite my wife and me to dinner about every 2 months or so. He would also treat all the family to an annual brunch at Christmas or Easter (sometimes both) often at the Four Seasons hotel, not a cheap treat! My daughters developed a remarkable affection for Dr. Mihm, which was really quite touching, and they still speak of him in the most warm manner. They both now live in England, and not long after they moved there, Dr. Mihm asked for their addresses and sent them flowers, an indication of the trouble he would go to and the generosity he exhibited to so many. When preparing this they reminded me of the role Dr. Mihm played in their younger days as Santa Claus at the department Christmas Party and how vivid the memory was to them. Dr. Clement shared a few stories with me. The first relates to Dr. Mihm's love of good food. He frequently dined out at many nice restaurants in Boston and far beyond. It was a special experience dining out with him; from the moment one arrived with him, he received the proverbial royal treatment from the owner, if present, and certainly, from the maître d'. I do not think Dr. Mihm would ever have claimed himself to be much of a cook. However, on one occasion he and Dr. Clement hosted a dinner party and prepared a rather complicated dish taken from a book by the famous chef Julia Child. They were so happy with the end result that Dr. Mihm surprised Dr. Clement by rather quickly being heard talking to the eminent chef on the telephone as he, to their surprise, found her number in the telephone directory. She was very pleased to hear of their cooking prowess! Another story is of Dr. Clement traveling with Dr. Mihm in Europe and being at a festival in Aix-en-Provence, France, at which José Carreras, one of the famous three tenors, was to sing. They, by chance, were at check-in at the same time as Mr. Carreras, and next thing, the three of them were chatting in the hotel lobby. I can almost see Dr. Mihm approaching the great singer and introducing himself with his usual panache. Dr. Clement and Dr. Mihm, both great opera lovers, knew the famous soprano Dame Joan Sutherland well and I know they once had a very wonderful lunch at the home of Dame Joan and her husband in Switzerland. Dr. Clement also told me of how the Metropolitan Opera in New York city for many years had a spring tour visiting various cities in the northeast, one being Boston. Dr. Mihm and Dr. Clement heard that the Met often needed extras and they signed up to play a proverbial bit part in the performance of the particular opera (Aida) that was being performed one evening. The costumes were elaborate, and they had to carry a statue across the stage; it was quite heavy, but it only took about 1 minute to walk from one side of the stage to the other, so their careers on the opera stage were short and sweet. They were paid the princely sum of one dollar each! I believe Dr. Mihm played a little American football in his youth, and certainly, his size would have lent itself to that sport. Overall, to the best of my knowledge, although he followed professional sports a little, he was certainly not much of a sportsman. Dr. Clement recounts the story of he and Dr. Mihm deciding they wanted to learn to play tennis. They hired a coach who utilized an empty paved lot in Cambridge to serve as a tennis court. Both were slow learners, it seems, and many of the balls landed on the roof of an adjacent building! Dr. Clement developed some proficiency in the sport, but Dr. Mihm soon abandoned it. Dr. Mihm's generosity was remarkable, as many experienced over the years. It almost came back to haunt him on one occasion. He was very close to his mother, who alerted him when she noted that a sale was on in a well-known clothing store; she further wondered if a mink coat might be on offer as she had always wanted one. A coat was duly bought at a very significant price despite it being “on-sale,” but nonetheless, it was suggested to the dutiful son that the prices were so good that a second purchase might be in order. Despite the maternal pressure Dr. Mihm was able to talk his mother out of the idea! To say that someone is larger than life is a somewhat overused phrase but there are certain individuals for whom it literally nails it. Dr. Mihm was larger than life, wonderful company, made remarkable contributions to the field of medicine and those of us who had the great fortune of knowing him will never forget this wonderful human being. Although it is, of course, sad to note, it is somewhat fitting for parochial MGH-related reasons that Dr. Mihm was from Pittsburgh, and that is where he lies in rest. There is a connection between pathology at the MGH and that city; the first full-time pathologist at our hospital, a great figure in the history of pathology, Dr. James Homer Wright, after whom the main pathology laboratory at the MGH is named, was also from Pittsburgh. That Dr. Mihm also served pathology at our hospital and far beyond, and humanity in general so nobly for so many years links him with that great figure and, for that matter, all the other wonderful contributors to the discipline of pathology and indeed, dermatology over the years. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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