Remembering Joseph Marotta: Master Teacher
“If you really listen to your patients, and I mean really listen, most often the patient will give you the diagnosis... if you can see, look; if you can look, observe... the perplexing triad of nephritis, arthritis and carditis, may be resolved by the recognition of disseminated lupus erythematosus.”
Dr. Joseph Marotta, as a master teacher, certainly left his thumbprint on my forehead. His precepts became embedded permanently in my consciousness. His mentorship, and later friendship, continued until his death on December 20, 2016.
Dr. Peter Kopplin, in his poignant eulogy delivered at Dr. Marotta’s funeral, was also a recipient of his indelible teaching style.
He wrote about a particular patient: “We later returned to the bedside to present (to Dr. Marotta) our diagnosis of a stroke in the right cerebral hemisphere, hoping to bask in the glow of our intellectual achievement.
“With painstaking, but gentle dissection, he pointed out our errors both in examination and analysis. The diagnosis was a lateral medullary syndrome, the details of which I have never forgotten.”
To be transfixed by his - “Paupst, I want you to stay after prayers” - gaze was more than daunting. When the owl hoots, the rabbit quavers; under his tuition, I quavered a lot.
After he formally retired from St. Michael’s, he wanted to continue seeing patients. I was able provide my consulting office in the Royal Bank every Friday.
On Friday mornings, he would board the early train from London to Toronto, see patients all day, then leave to walk down Bay Street to Union Station, with his leather satchel filled with charts, arriving in London in the early evening, a 12-hour day at age 80.
I was fortunate enough to have two great mentors, my Latin teacher at Cathedral Boy’s School and Dr. Marotta, who once explained to me that the structure of Latin, its grammar, with its complex conjugations and declensions, neurocognitively follow the same pathways deductively as the act of diagnosis.
Time is an unmanageable velocity: I looked up from my desk and almost 50 years had gone by during our deepening friendship.
Earth receive an honored guest, the Italian vessel is laid to rest.
Dr. James Paupst, BA, MD, Senior Fellow, Massey College