"Patient's Point of View", 1970 Josef Warkany (1902-1992) Private Collection

Josef Warkany was a distinguished medical investigator, pediatrician, and humanist whose impact perdures and is worldwide. Warkany was a medical pioneer and arguably is perhaps among the few who, on their own, gave rise to a whole new modern medical scientific discipline - Medical Teratology (there is now a Teratology Society, as well as sister European and Japanese Teratology Societies - Teratogy is a discipline dedicated to the study of environmental causes of malformations such as those caused by radiation, medications, viruses, and environmental pollution agents).

This etching illustrates Warkany's profound understanding of human nature and his artistic talent to articulate human predicaments - in this instance, the loneliness of being ill and relegated to a hospital bed. Warkany wrote about his experiences as a patient and about "vertical doctors" (those who walked around hiim) treating "horizontal doctors", often with cold disregard of their humanity.