Earle A. Davis, Jr., PhD

Earle A. Davis, Jr., PhD has been our dear friend and the Professor of  Anatomy who has been our honored and beloved teacher for the past two decades. He has been the primary teacher of anatomy and consultant to all the surgeons who have worked with the American Society of Cosmetic Breast surgery for all these years.

His career as Professor of  Anatomy in Orange County began before the University of California School of Medicine of Irvine was formed and organized. He was member of the faculty of the school that preceded the Medical School and was in the same location here in Orange County. One of our past presidents  of the Breast Society, Bernard Koire D.O., was one of his students in those early days and they have known each other for more than 40 years.

It was at the anatomy course called the Billroth course at Loma Linda University in the 1970s that the editor first encountered Dr Davis. His knowledge of anatomy was fluent and sparkling in wit and charm. He made the acquisition of knowledge not only easy and possible but enjoyable and full of friendly, generous, kind, helpful camaraderie and good cheer.

Pertinent Quotes from Billroth  follow:

«Taking care of such an unhappy patient, with so little prospect of any success, is one of the heaviest loads one can lay on a human being, which only women can carry for any length of time with never-ending patience.»
Letter to Johannes Brahms, January 7, 1874 (tr. by H. Barkan).

«Let what you observe penetrate your inmost soul, let it so warm and replenish you that your thoughts constantly refer to it, and then you will find true pleasure and delight in your intellectual labours.»
Lectures on Surgical Pathology and Therapeutics.

«A person may have learned a very great deal and still be an exceedingly unskilled physician, who awaken little confidence in his powers... The manner of dealing with patients’ of winning their confidence, the art of listening to them (the patient is always more anxious to talk than to listen), of soothing and consoling them or of drawing their attention to serious matters, - all this cannot be learned from books. The student can learn these things only from immediate contact with the teacher, whom he will unconsciously imitate ... The patient longs for the doctor’s daily visit; it is the event upon which all his thoughts and emotions turn. The physician can do all he hast to do with speed and precision, but he must never appear to be in a hurry, and never absent-minded.»
The Medical Sciences in the German Universities, Pt. III.

«The pleasure of a physician is little, the gratitude of patients is rare, and even rarer is material reward, but these things will never deter the student who feels the call within him.»

«He who combines the knowledge of anatomy,  physiology and surgery, in addition to the artistic side of his subject, reaches the highest ideal in medicine.»

Earle A. Davis, Jr., PhD is just such a person and teacher. As our professor of anatomy he has been an essential supporter of this society since it's inception in 1984 and the first meeting in 1985.

There are several reasons anatomy is very important for surgeons to learn, to review and to know very well. Though it may seem to change as we learn more each year, it is the same, changing only with evolution. It is the road map that not only shows the destination but how to get there. Knowing it well makes the surgery easy and trouble free. Not knowing it makes the same surgery difficult and fraught with problems. We work through small incisions and cannot through them see all the peripheral parameters of the surrounding anatomy that is important. As much as surgeons work with it sometimes almost every day, it is the anatomist and anatomy professor who specializes in it and teaches it as Dr. Davis does,  who always knows it best.

Since 2003 at the young age of 86, our dear friend Dr. Davis has retired and can no longer attend and lecture to the workshops. We are filled with gratitude and appreciation for all his contributions to our welfare and to that of our patients. He has trained thousands of doctors and surgeons of which many hundreds are his grateful students in this society.

In addition to granting to the society digital copies of his slides and lectures on anatomy, Dr. Davis has contruibuted to us his list of most important references especially in regards to anatomy for breast surgeons which can be seen by clicking here at this link Bibliography of Earle Davis PhD.

edited by William Roy Morgan, M.D., F.A.C.S.