Monday, June 9, 2014

The Bone Man

It is impossible not to pay attention to the picture of Mr. Armelagos that accompanies his NYT obituary.

Mr. George Armelagos is a recently deceased, and quite famous bone doc. Not an orthopaedic M.D. kind of doc, but a Ph.D. anthropologist whose study of bones revealed how people lived and what kinds of natural conditions existed in the world around them, perhaps even thousands and thousands of years ago.

Mr. Argelagos started out in medical school, choosing not to follow in the business of whatever business his Greek immigrant parents were in in Lincoln Park, Michigan. From medical school he switched to anthropology and became one of the founders of paleopathology, a discipline that studies bones to determine how people lived.

I once read a book about surgeons that said that M.D.'s know a lot about their patients, but the pathologist knows the most. This of course being because the pathologist can be a medical examiner who examines bodies to determine cause of death. Hindsight is 20/20.

Mr. Armelagos's specialty is sometimes referred to in movies, TV and books when a skeleton is found in the woods, or sand dunes, but it's usually in the context of a recently missing person, so their opinion is helping shape an ongoing murder inquiry. They are never referred to as a paleopathologist, because frankly it probably just doesn't sound like a word someone would understand, let along able to spell.

Thus, Mr. Armelagos missed out on the glamorization of his job. No Quincy, M.E., no cute Laura Hobson, with a budding romance holding hands and snoggin' with detective Lewis.

George, or "Yor-GEE" in Greek, if it's any consolation to you, you did resemble the late Dom DeLuise auditioning for a gravedigger part in a summer production  of 'Hamlet.'

Come to think of it, Your name in Greek and Yorick's do have a similar ring.

(With a nod to Margalit Fox, who can write and type in Greek.)

http://onofframp.blogspot.com

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