International Witsies

CHAIM ROSENBERG

BY HEATHER DUGMORE

At the start of the COVID pandemic, the idea popped into my head to find out what happened to the members of my 1960 Wits medical school graduation class,” says Chaim Rosenberg (MBBCh 1960, MD 1966) who lives in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He teamed up with classmates from the era, notably ear, nose and throat surgeon Ronald Auerbach (MBBCh 1960) and his wife Geraldine Auerbach MBE (née Kretzmar, BA Wits 1960) “and, with the phenomenal assistance of Avroy Fanaroff (MBBCh 1960, MD honoris causa 2004), Gary Katz (MBBCh 1960, MD 1971), US Wits representative Nooshin Erfani-Ghadimi and the Wits Alumni Relations Office, we located most of the members of the class and created a fantastic website to store all the information.

“As a group we also decided to raise money for the Phillip V Tobias Bursary Fund to help current Wits medical students,” says Chaim, adding that all these decades later it remains “a thrill to be part of the Wits family”.

It was truly an extraordinary class, with many brilliant minds. Chaim explains how he sees it: “I think some people are born highly intelligent, but a large part of brilliance is a drive to succeed. I have also always been interested in the drive of immigrants to do better than their parents, and many of my peers in our Class of 1960 were the children of East European parents. They had an extremely strong drive to succeed and to do good in the world, and they have never lost it.”

The mid-1950s when they started medical school were troubled times. “Repression and racial segregation increased,” says Chaim. “The Treason Trial started in 1956, and in 1959 the apartheid government instituted the Extension of University Education Act forbidding black, Indian and Chinese students from attending ‘white’ universities. Our classmates Essop Jassat (BSc 1955, MBBCh 1960) and Costa Gazidis (MBBCh 1960) took heroic stands against the injustices and were subjected to banning and imprisonment.”

About 20% of the Class of 1960 left South Africa after graduation. Chaim explains that most did not leave for political reasons: “Having a Wits MBBCh was a passport to heaven; you could go anywhere in the world and practise medicine.” Chaim and his wife Dawn were among them. They had met in the Johannesburg General Hospital where Dawn was a nurse. “It’s the classic story of a final year medical student meeting a lovely nurse, and 61 years later here we are!”

Psychiatry was only a small part of medical school training at Wits at the time. Chaim vividly recalls a distressing visit to Sterkfontein Hospital to observe institutionalised patients with schizophrenia. People with mental disorders were regarded as “lunatics”, and the first half of the 20th century witnessed the building of gigantic “asylums” (later called psychiatric hospitals). Weskoppies served Pretoria and Sterkfontein served Johannesburg.

He explains that change came in 1949, when Wits initiated the first South African postgraduate training in psychological medicine. Five years later, Dr Lewis A Hurst was appointed part-time lecturer in psychiatry at Wits Medical School. In 1959, Hurst became a full-time professor of psychiatry, with the aim of integrating psychiatry into the teaching of general medicine and to pave the way for similar departments at other South African medical schools.

Chaim started his psychiatric training in 1962 in England at the 2 000 bed Napsbury Hospital (formerly known as the Middlesex County Asylum). He lived and worked as a physician and then as a psychiatrist in England and Australia before moving to the US in 1969. In the US he has lived in Boston, Massachusetts; Jupiter, Florida; and now Chicago, Illinois, where he is retired from psychiatry but writes history books. This year he also penned a publication called Medicine Then and Now: Mind Over Matter – Advances in Psychiatry 1960–2020.

Today, he says, “most psychiatric illnesses can be managed in mainstream society rather than confining people to institutions. Disability programmes in the US provide cash payments, health benefits and housing grants, allowing the mentally disabled to remain in the community.”

However, he adds, “studying the brain and the mind has proved more difficult than researching the liver, lungs, kidneys or heart.

“The human mind is still such a mystery. If you look at TV and novels, everyone is interested in the human condition and how we find balance and meaning in our lives. Each person is unique. Emotions like anxiety, sadness, stress, alienation, dissatisfaction, disappointment, difficulties in getting along with others, bearing grudges, jealousy, differ widely from person to person. They are not akin to blood pressure levels, pulse rate, blood sugar, sodium or potassium levels that can be measured and treated with medication.

“I do not believe that psychiatry is served with only a brief evaluation aimed at prescribing medication. The too-free prescribing of oxycodone, benzodiazepines, barbiturates and sleep aids can lead to addiction. The relief of suffering and helping in the pursuit of emotional balance and happiness are better served by carefully combining medicines with listening and understanding. A caring psychiatrist should help patients to know themselves.”

Chicago emerging from pandemic

Chaim was happy to report that two-thirds of the adult population in the United States had been vaccinated by July 2021.

“The restaurants and shops are all open again, but habits have definitely changed with Amazon deliveries, food deliveries to your home, and movies available via Amazon Prime and Netflix,” says Chaim.

After many months of confinement, he and Dawn recently took a vacation in Florida where they had dinner with Avroy Fanaroff, Jeffrey Maisels and Arthur Rubenstein, distinguished members of the Wits Medical School Class of 1960.

He is also able, once again, to visit a favourite haunt, “the incomparable Art Institute of Chicago”. It’s one of the world’s great art museums, housing the US’s second largest art collection.

Four of his favourite works are: Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte; Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day; Grant Wood’s American Gothic; and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. The Hopper and Wood paintings (pictured) are hung close to each other and suggest different views of the American experience: pessimism vs optimism; solitude vs engagement – appropriate for this era of political upheaval and pandemic.

Even though things have opened up, downtown Chicago is still quiet. “Downtown has remarkable architecture with iconic buildings like the 100-storey John Hancock Centre, or 875 North Michigan Avenue as it’s now called. I don’t know what is going to happen to all these huge buildings now that so many people have switched to working from home.”

You can view the Wits Medical School Class of 1960 website here: https://wits_med- ical_alumni_1960.mailchimpsites.com/ whos-who--the-class-of-1960

One of Chaim's favourite art works housed in the Art Institute of Chicago.