Gerald Marks, MD ’49
Career-wise, where has life taken you? Is it what you expected to do when you were a student, or did you change your trajectory sometime in medical school or afterward? If so, what inspired you to change? Did you take an interesting path to where you are now, and if so, what was that path?
GM: Going to medical school was beyond my wildest dreams. I dreamed about making an impact and being more than an ordinary doctor.
I went to Jefferson while in the Navy in 1945, graduating in 1949. After interning, I went into the Air Force. I did high-altitude physiology research because of my work as a medical student with Dr. Gibbon. He wanted me to become an anesthesiologist and first chairman of anesthesia at Jefferson. I had my heart set on being a colorectal surgeon. At the time, there were only 13 double-boarded physicians in general surgery and colorectal surgery in the nation.
I worked with Dr. Thomas Shallow, who had a big rectal cancer practice—98% of the patients had a permanent colostomy. I was driven to make their lives better. My mission was to create a means of preserving a normal sphincter for individuals with rectal cancer who would otherwise have a permanent colostomy.
I returned to Jefferson and completed my surgical training. As chief resident, I worked in the tumor clinic under Dr. Harry Knowles. Dr. Simon Kramer headed the first Department of Radiation Therapy and referred rectal cancer patients he had irradiated to me for surgery. The thinking of the period was that operating on an irradiated intestine had a high mortality rate and was to be avoided at any cost, but Dr. Kramer’s experience in London differed. This opened the door for me to operate on irradiated tissue, and it became the standard of care.
I was enthralled with a new device, a flexible colonoscope. I purchased the first production model in 1969 with my life savings—and didn’t tell my wife. I developed operations to preserve normal function for patients who had undergone preoperative radiation. I was one of the earliest proponents of colonoscopy. I chaired the first symposium in the world in 1974 and developed the first teaching model in 1976.
Jefferson became an international center for rectal cancer patient management. In 1984, I created a Division and Residency Program of Colorectal Surgery. In 1992, they established a chair of colorectal surgery in my name, the first professorial chair of colorectal surgery named for a practicing physician in the nation. I left Jefferson in 1998 for Hahnemann Hospital, where I started the Division of Colorectal Surgery, leaving to go to Lankenau Hospital for the same purpose, where, joined by my son, I practiced until the age of 88, performing colonoscopies until almost age 90.
How did your Jefferson education help you achieve your goals as a physician?
GM: My Jefferson experience was so important. Jefferson had expert clinicians and great bedside doctors who were inspirational role models and gave me the courage to do some of the things that I did. They tempered my thinking about who I wanted to be in pursuit of my career.
What is your fondest memory of your medical school and training days?
GM: I met my wife in the operating room as an intern. She was a beautiful surgical suture nurse to professor Thomas Shallow. Meeting her was the singular event in that part of my career. We were married 63 years before she passed away in 2013.