Robert J. Gorlin as a humorist

Bob Gorlin was an astounding humorist (Fig. 1). His outrageous comments, his amusing stories about patients, his good-natured banter with children, and his mirth-provoking behavior endeared him to everyone. Bob Gorlin in good humor. The day before I started my Fellowship at the University of Minnesota in September of 1966 with Dr. Gorlin, I decided to open a checking account near the medical center so I could withdraw cash during my lunch hour if the need arose. I filled out the forms at the bank and was then interviewed by a bank manager who asked me several questions. He informed me that I needed a recommendation from someone in Minnesota. I had just arrived the night before from Boston and didn't know a soul in Minneapolis or anywhere else in Minnesota for that matter. I had met Dr. Gorlin once about a year earlier in Boston, where he was giving a lecture, and I spent all of two minutes with him, so I certainly didn't know him. I got up my courage and blurted out to the bank manager, “Dr. Gorlin.” “Dr. Robert Gorlin,” he asked in surprise? “Yes,” I replied. “I was talking to him on the phone yesterday,” exclaimed the manager, “and he offered to do an autopsy on me!” The very next day, which was my first day as an American Cancer Society Fellow in Bob Gorlin's Department, was a memorable one. “Dr. Gorlin should be here soon,” said Susie the secretary, reassuring a waiting patient. Just then, Bob came down the hall imitating a trombone in a John Philip Sousa march. Rounding the corner, he greeted the patient, who exclaimed, “Dr. Gorlin, you sound just like a trombone!” “I am a trombone,” he replied, “on my father's side!” [Cohen, 2006]. Some of Bob's experiences during his earlier years in the service were unique. For example, he was drafted back into the service a second time because he had served one month less than the required two years in the Army during World War II! This time Bob was posted to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station as a dentist. There, he was looked at askance because of his un-Naval-like behavior as a Dental Officer. He practiced dentistry in his stocking feet and developed his own nomenclature for dental instruments. For example, to a dental assistant, he said, “Pookie, would you hand me a double bombo for this single frackle?” Clearly, a typical Naval Dental Officer he wasn't, so Bob wound up in the Navy court system prosecuting, defending, and judging such heinous crimes as “being AWOL, bringing 3.2 beer aboard base, being caught in the sack with a WAVE, and failing to obey the order of a noncom.” Since Bob set the docket, he attended court every other day and spent the rest of his time making furniture in the hobby shop [Gorlin, 1993]. One of Bob's early short-term jobs was at the University of Iowa. While he assumed his teaching responsibilities, he also enrolled for an M.S. degree in physical organic chemistry [Gorlin, 1993]. Many years later, he joked that his degree in physical organic kinetics was of great relevance to his career as a syndromologist! [Cohen, 2007]. I'll never forget Bob's lecture to about 200 medical geneticists at the Birth Defects Meeting at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1968 sponsored by the March of Dimes. He sported a beard and wore a red turtleneck jersey. Someone at the meeting, noting that every other medical geneticist wore a tie, asked Bob why he wasn't wearing one. Bob replied that he had “never found a shred of evidence that that constricting blood flow to the brain via the neck improves intellectual performance.” This philosophy had a profound effect on Wally Burgdorf during his dermatology training at the University of Minnesota. Later, as Professor and Chairman of Dermatology at another University, Wally wrote to Bob that he had inspired him to become the worst dressed dermatologist in the country! [Cohen, 2006]. The following is a heartwarming and humorous story of how Bob dealt with a troubled 12-year-old boy, who he saw on consultation. We went up to the floor and met the pediatric resident, who had consulted him, in the hall. He told us that his patient was very frightened and that he had not been able to examine the boy properly himself. He indicated that the 12-year-old was slightly dysmorphic and he wanted Bob's opinion about what syndrome, if any, the patient had. Bob strode into the room, took off his shoes, and with his bright red socks, climbed into bed with the child and started imitating Donald Duck. The boy smiled. Bob asked him if he ever did anything to amuse his friends. “Yes,” replied the boy. “I can imitate a buzz saw.” “Let's hear it,” said Bob. Following the boy's imitation, Bob said, “that's really good!” Then he examined the child in his own bed. The sound of Donald Duck brought two other pediatric residents into the patient's room. The resident assigned to the 12-year-old and the two other residents developed ocular proptosis because getting into bed with a patient, wearing bright red socks, and imitating Donald Duck had never been an approved method used in pediatrics, yet there was Bob doing exactly that with great success. Then Bob said to the boy, “I know this doctor very well,” pointing to the pediatric resident assigned to the patient. “Is it okay if he examines you too? I'll drop by tomorrow and make sure that the examination was okay.” The boy nodded, “yes,” and the following day, Bob did visit him again [Cohen, 2006]. Bob's lectures were always erudite and he often told humorous anecdotes about patients. Two typical stories often accompanied his lectures on the nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome, most commonly known as Gorlin syndrome. One involved a young man who worked in a pet store and was bitten by a cobra. He was rushed to the city hospital emergency room on a motorbike that crashed into a truck on the way, and he suffered a broken femoral neck [Gorlin, 1993]. To make a long story short, he was the first patient with Gorlin syndrome to ever present at a hospital ER with the “cobra/femoral neck syndrome.” Another anecdote involved a January phone call from a sheriff in Montana. He asked whether Gorlin syndrome caused “mental aberrancy,” as he put it. He went on to explain that a 16-year-old female was told that she had bilateral ovarian fibromas1 and that she would be sterile. To drown her sorrows, she got drunk and took a nosedive out the window, which fortunately was only six feet above ground level. She landed unhurt in a snowbank. The sheriff took her to the station to sober her up. Bob told the sheriff that in his experience, sterility was not a problem in the syndrome despite ovarian fibromas and that such good news ought to cheer her up considerably [Gorlin, 1993]. We cannot pass up the opportunity to express our admiration for Dr. Gorlin. A dentist by training, he roams freely and scientifically through the fields of medicine and genetics, as well as dentistry. When he gets down to the ovaries, he's gone about as far as he can go [Gellis, 1966–1967]. Bob could amuse himself with his own sense of humor if he were alone with a boring but necessary task to perform. A typical example would be selecting photographs for a paper that he had just written. He had in his files at least 50 or more photographs for each entity. He would lay them out and eliminate them one or two at a time until he had selected the best four or five pictures to use. One Saturday, I went to the office to work at my desk, which was just to right of his inner office. He didn't hear me come in because I was wearing sneakers. As I passed by his inner office, I saw that he was sorting photographs; I didn't want to disturb him and went straight to my desk. As far as Bob knew, he was the only one in the office. I remembered that earlier in the week he had mentioned that he was writing a lengthy article about erythema multiforme. As he was sorting pictures, he was singing to himself, “Ery-the-ma mul-ti-for-me—erythema multiforme, ha, ha, ha” (Fig. 2). I heard him crumple up what I assumed to be a worthless photograph, throw it into his empty wastepaper basket with a “ping” sound, and exclaim, “Take that, you brute!” Melody for “Ery-the-ma mul-ti-for-me.” Courtesy of Justin Cohen, Boston. The 1994 David W. Smith Workshop on Malformations and Morphogenesis took place at Saddlebrook, a resort outside of Tampa, Florida from August 4th to August 9th. The summer water levels were very low at that time of year, and the alligators were migrating, often by land, into various waterways in the area. Bob and I shared a suite with two bedrooms, a living room, and a closed deck slightly above ground level. Just in front of our deck was a small pool of water with an alligator in it. On occasion, we could see its eyes above the water. The deck enclosure was constructed with slats, allowing us to look out from our deck chairs and see out, but nobody walking by could see in. One early evening, when Bob and I were sitting in our deck chairs doing paper work, a small boy who was passing by saw the alligator's eyes above the water. He was very excited. “Mommy, there's a crocodile in this pool!” Just then, the alligator's eyes submerged below the surface of the water. “Where?” asked his mother. “Crocodile, crocodile, come on up again; we want to see you!” Bob answered playfully in a deep voice, “Nooo! I'd prefer to stay at the bottom of the pool.” “Mommy, mommy! The crocodile's talking!” The David W. Smith Meeting in 2000 took place in San Diego from August 2nd to August 5th. Besides our regular meeting, we went on an excursion to the Wild Animal Park located about 35 miles north of San Diego near the city of Escondido. There we viewed the animals from a train with open cars. Kurt Benirschke was holding forth explaining some fascinating biology about the various animals we saw. We learned that rhinos urinated and defecated backwards. In fact, one of the most amazing sights we saw was a rhinoceros shooting a stream of diarrhea backwards. The next morning at the meeting, Bob began his talk, “Yesterday we all saw that rhinoceros shoot diarrhea backwards. It's given me an entirely new meaning for the concept of rhinorrhea!” Bob's unique sense of humor that he shared with all of us will no longer brighten our days, although our memories of it will always be with us. I am grateful to Justin Cohen, Boston, for providing the melody for “Ery-the-ma mul-ti-for-me.” I also want to thank Annemarie Sommer, Columbus, Ohio, for providing me with some important details about the David W. Smith Meetings. Finally, I wish to thank Ken Jones for helping me with some details about the David Smith meeting in San Diego.

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