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You know, it was very difficult, you know.

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All he wanted to know was did Otis give you what you wanted?

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Yeah, five.

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And you came out and said, here's the manuscript, read it aloud, we read it aloud, and he thought

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Love is good and that was the end of the discussion.

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Do you know what I mean?

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Well, you know, today they'd have the managers and all the guys with scripts and this, that, and the other.

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He didn't.

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So, do you think that, um...

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Good, thanks.

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People in those days controlled their own destiny a lot more.

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And it was up to you. Nobody was saying you can't do it, but nobody was saying you can either.

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It was, you just, you did it or you didn't do it. If you didn't want to do it, all right, if you didn't want to do it.

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The world wasn't going to stop.

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I was, um...

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I think I took advantage of every opportunity that I could.

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I was a bit of a maverick myself.

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That's why I think I understood Tom better.

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I think that, but the things that I objected to, I suspect, were really things that were of principle I would try to change.

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I would try to create something new. And I think that maybe, I don't know about Ruth's motivations,

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but the things that I've gotten into have been lucky choices in a way, like arteriosclerosis, hypertension, brain chemistry,

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things like that, that were going against the tide at the time.

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And then subsequently turned around and became then the in thing to do.

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And I watched this time after time.

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Now Dr. Page, when you were head of the American Heart Association, and the word, the watchword was, you know,

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if you've had a heart attack or you suspect heart trouble or you want to avoid it, be careful.

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It was practically, you know, tiptoe your way through life.

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You, in your inaugural address, sort of stood everybody on their ear by saying,

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well, say what you said at the time, you know, that that was nonsense,

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that it was destroying the quality of life and that people should be more sensible about it.

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How did you have the courage to say that? They just made you head of the American Heart Association.

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Well, I think that I was used to saying things as I saw them.

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And I felt at the time, and this was around 1950, that we were going a little too fast, a little too far,

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that medicine was becoming a proscribing profession rather than a prescribing profession.

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But at the time, there was very little interest in the environment.

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Exercise and all this was forbidden.

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You see, when people had a heart attack in those days, they put you right to bed and you didn't move.

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You couldn't even feed yourself.

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And it seemed to me that this was not a good idea.

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And I couldn't see any reason, chemically or physiologically,

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why you should subject people to a totally abnormal environment,

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which is a hospital that won't even let you feed yourself,

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and that I wasn't sure that the heart was really that much damaged.

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So on really technical grounds, I decided that that was not the thing to do.

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The thing to do was to exercise it to its capacity, but not more than its capacity.

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And you weren't afraid to say that?

48
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No, I wasn't afraid to say it.

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The only time I ever really got into trouble was when I gave a speech as I was president of the AAAS.

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I gave a speech, and I don't know really why I did it, but it was on intuition in medicine.

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And they didn't like that at all.

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I was reminded of it because I'd long since forgotten it.

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I guess it was 40 years ago.

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I got a letter from a publisher that knew me, Harcourt Brace,

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and said somebody had written in and said that a fellow by the name of Pager had given a speech about intuition in medicine,

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and he wanted a copy of it.

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Well, of course I couldn't.

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I couldn't even remember that I did give such a speech, but I had the vaguest idea where it was published.

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But I've always believed, and this has been, I think, greatly augmented by what my wife has always believed,

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that intuition is perhaps as important or more important than the scientific point of view.

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Well, I must say that very reluctantly over a period of years I've come to agree with her.

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And I guess we're closer in a sense that I don't criticize intuition because, as I looked at it,

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I realized that what you used to call bedside manner was intuition,

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that a sympathetic approach and understanding of a patient's problems was just as important

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as being able to tell you whether there's too much lactic acid in the blood.

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So I don't have any, the two have melded in my mind now.

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I don't have any great problem.

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It's like religion.

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I can't accept a sign of petition or a sign of a document saying that I believe everything in the church because I don't.

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So I don't belong to the church even though I go.

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That's the difference.

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My wife belongs, but I don't. But I go.

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So, see, I believe in God, but I'm not willing to say that I know how he looks like

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or whether he's going to deal with me fairly or whether I'm going to sit next to him.

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What about? I don't know.

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But you have the intuition that he's there and that you trust.

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I have the intuition that he's there.

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And that's the way I look on life.

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You were talking before about Tom Fisher and the kind of man he was.

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And I suspect it was partly your intuition that enabled you to get along with him so well you understood him.

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And you were talking about the kinds of things, the way he used to twit people.

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And I said, for example.

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Well, I think an example would be, for instance, today he would say,

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I still see, you still believe in Reagan, don't you?

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And I'd say, yes, I do.

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Well, I don't.

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Well, I'd say, why not?

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Well, then we'd start.

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And he would cite all kinds of things.

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He would always say, the fact of it is.

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And I'd say, now, wait a minute, Tom.

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You don't know what the fact of it is.

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If you know what the fact of it is, say the fact is, but don't use it otherwise.

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That would slow him down, you know, because he kept saying, that was sort of one of those things like saying er.

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So we got along very well.

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But as I say, I can see why he used to drive juries completely into wacko.

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Because he'd tie him up in knots, you know, with these confrontational statements.

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He was, Tom knew a lot.

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I had a lot of respect for him.

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But it was hard sometimes to separate fact from fantasy with him.

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And I, you know, in science, that's what your business is.

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And it is to not.

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And it's very hard for people to understand that the scientist isn't just a sort of raising trouble about minor things.

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He has to be very exact.

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He has to be very careful what he says.

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And have it really factual.

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And if it isn't, you get the kind of things going on today.

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Or somebody said, what you're talking is fraud.

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And so we've got a thing that I don't like at all.

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I mean, and I don't think it's necessary, is that we're losing our professional morale and ethics.

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Because we're starting to shout at each other.

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We're starting to go to court.

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We're putting doctors in saying, you can't play God and all that.

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I played God all my life.

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And I don't even know what God wants.

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Whoa.

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It's true, I'm sure.

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You were saying before about that kind of pushing that Tom did.

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Do you think you pushed Ruth around?

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Do you think you dominated Ruth?

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No, not at all.

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Ruth, if she doesn't want to do something or accept something,

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any suggestion just flows off her as though it didn't exist.

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Never bothered her at all.

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So Tom never dominated Ruth?

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No, no.

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Tom did what Tom hated.

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I think he would have hated to admit it.

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But Tom did what she wanted to do.

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But she did it so quietly that he didn't realize that it was not his idea.

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I've seen that happen many times with Ruth.

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She just quietly said, well, I don't want to do it right now.

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Tom, we'll do it later maybe.

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And that was the end of it.

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And Tom then got the signal and did what she wanted to do.

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And that was it.

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Everybody says that he was, they all use the same phrase, crazy about her.

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Well, I don't know what crazy means in that sense.

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I think that Ruth dominated him in that he used all of his legal capacity

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and all of his charm when he wanted to turn it on to please Ruth.

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And he liked it.

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He didn't fight it at all.

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I used to say, well, why should you do it that way?

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Well, because Ruth wants to do it that way.

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And that settled the argument.

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So I think she quietly dominated him, not the reverse.

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Was your mother like that?

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No.

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Mother was more like Ruth, I think.

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Although Mother was a very dynamic person, much more dynamic than Ruth was.

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More dynamic?

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Oh, yeah, oh, much more.

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She was very strong and very active and in everything.

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She never tired.

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And right to the end of her life, she was the same way.

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She was always busily doing something involving herself.

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The difficulty that Mother had was that she had married early.

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She was in the Leipzig music school, and she'd married a doctor

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who was trying to make his way in Indiana.

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And I think that her career was sputtered by my father.

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And as I told you, my father was not a person that you argued with.

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We just did things the way he wanted to do them.

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He was never obtrusive about it.

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But you knew who was running the show.

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And Mother knew it, too.

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But she kept up her own activities, pretty much.

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Well, to just pick up and go to South America for two years with Ruth

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is to show you just the kind of person she was.

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Do you think she was sort of in some ways then living through Ruth,

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that Ruth was doing it kind of?

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No, I don't think so.

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I think she was very fond of Ruth.

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And I can tell from the letters that she wrote that she was very fond of Ruth.

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And they got along very well indeed.

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I never heard a morale about anything.

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But Mother was always willing to subject, to subjugate her own views to Ruth.

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If that seemed to be necessary for her to go.

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And I know she didn't want to go around the world with Ruth.

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But she did it.

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She and Father both did.

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And they loved it, I think.

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I would have hated it.

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This is the sort of thing I don't like to do.

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But she did.

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Was she spoiled by your parents, Ruth?

186
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No, I don't think so.

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I didn't see any difference between the way I was treated

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and the way Ruth was treated or my brother.

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We were all treated the same.

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I don't think there was any concern about any of us particularly.

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I don't remember any problems that we had.

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As I said to you before, they sent my brother to Asheville School.

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And as my father said, they kept me as a control by sending me to a public school.

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Well, that's all right.

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I think I got more out of the school than he did out of Asheville.

196
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But he wasn't a student, really.

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Speaking of the three of you and of you and your sister,

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is there any trait that you wish that Ruth had?

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No, I don't think so.

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I couldn't judge a thing like ballet.

201
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I don't have enough technical knowledge.

202
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I sometimes think that Ruth, as in my own case,

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was not quite a perfectionist enough.

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I think both of us were sometimes in a little bit of a hurry.

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We assumed that what we did was all right and we could go on from there.

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I think that was a weakness that I know I had

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because I was always interested in a wide variety of things.

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I didn't want to...

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After I thought that...

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Well, put it this way.

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I couldn't go on with surgery because the last sewing up, I got so tired of it,

212
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I thought, oh, heck, let's do it this way and forget it.

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That isn't the way you do good surgery.

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You've got to be absolutely meticulous.

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I am not meticulous and my sister is not meticulous either.

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Now, this is unfair because I can only judge about what I have done.

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Now, whether that is a fair evaluation of the ballet, heaven only knows,

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because I don't know.

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I don't know what is demanding as a ballet.

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That's my feeling about it.

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I wish that I had been a little bit more of a perfectionist,

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but on the other hand, I am perfectly satisfied with what I did.

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I think you have done very well, Dr. Page.

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Is there anything else, last question, unless there is something I have missed that you can see?

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Last question.

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Is there anything that I have not asked you that you would like to talk about?

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Oh, nothing particular, I think.

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I think this was a pretty fair evaluation of both Ruth and my careers.

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No, I don't think so.

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I think that I hate to repeat.

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I am a scientist enough to know that people, when they get older, they get repetitive.

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The reason for that is they don't remember what they have talked about.

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The reason I have quit giving public speeches is that sometimes in the middle of the speech,

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I think, gee, you have been saying that for years.

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Do you have to say it again?

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Did I just say it?

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This gives me a feeling of uncertainty.

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I don't like it, because I can sometimes tell that when I am talking,

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that my wife will look at me and say, which tells me, look, you just said that.

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I think that we have covered both of us in pretty good fashion.

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I would rather leave it that way.

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I won't repeat myself, so you won't have to look at me and say...

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He just said that? Oh, stop.

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Nice name.

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I have a question.

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Who of your parents do you think that Ruth and yourself got your senses of humor from?

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My father.

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Our sense of humor comes from my father.

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My father was a great punster.

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He also loved jokes, but his jokes were of a very erudite form.

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He was nothing like a stand-up artist.

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But he was very sensitive to fun, even though he was not a funny man at all.

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I think I see funny things all the time, because I am always laughing within myself.

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I have had to learn to not laugh at my own jokes, which is very hard,

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because I think they are awfully funny.

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That is my idea about humor.

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What is your next question?

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Is there anything? I think we are fine.

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I think we are fine, Tom.

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Thank you.

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