Francis W. Peabody entered medical school in 1903 and almost at once was recognized as an extraordinary human being. After a varied and exciting indoctrination in his profession, including responsibility for children ill with the dreaded poliomyelitis, an extensive medical trip to China, and an unintended role in the start of the Bolshevik Russian Revolution, he became the enormously successful chief of a new Harvard unit at the Boston City Hospital. The expectations for a long productive life were snuffed out by cancer six years later when he was only 45. Gifted in many spheres and possessed of great courage, his especial compassion and wisdom in patient care have made Francis Peabody's short life an inspiring legend for all time, an essential message for anyone who practices medicine, and an uplifting experience for any patient.

Oglesby Paul, a native of Philadelphia, is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School. His three years of service in the U.S. Naval Medical Corps Reserve in World War II were followed by training in cardiology in Boston at the Massachusetts General Hospital under the eminent Paul Dudley White. He then pursued an active career of practice, teaching, research, and administration in Chicago, both at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Lukes Medical Center and at the Northwestern Medical School. He lectured and wrote extensively, and among other activities served as head of the American Heart Association and the Subspecialty Board of Cardiovascular Disease, and as chairman of a large long-term study of coronary heart disease supported by the National Institutes of Health. Since 1977, he has been a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and a senior physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. In 1986, he published Take Heart. The Life and Prescription for Living of Paul Dudley White.

Read More by Oglesby Paul:

• Take Heart: The Life and Prescription for Living of Dr. Paul Dudley White