Charcot testified 110 years ago to a fundamental truth in medicine:

“Disease is very old, and nothing about it has changed. it is we who change as we learn what was formerly imperceptible.”

In ancient Grecian yore, when Hermes, son of Zeus and bearer of the Caduceus, was the heavenly messenger to mediate between the gods and man, the “embolon” was recognized as a mortal peril. Such ram, undetected beneath the waterline of the prow of an ancient warship, could be driven with hydraulic force into an unwary enemy vessel often with catastrophic or fatal effect.

Even today, the threat of sudden death from a pulmonary embolus - the clot which migrates from a source of origin on the inner wall of a vein to lodge in and thereby plug an artery within the lung - remains a major medical and surgical risk. Thrombosis and thrombophlebitis of the deep veins of the legs, often unpreventable and frequently undetectable clinically, are the nidus of a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism.

Copies of the 1973 Directory of Examining Physicians and Roster of Membership are still available from ASLM headquarters. The directory, originally prepared by the Massachusetts Society of Law and Medicine, contains the alphabetical and geographical listing of almost 150 physicians (primarily within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) who have indicated willingness and availability to perform medical examinations in their particular fields of specialization or interest for legal and insurance purposes, and whether and to what extent they will be available for testimony in court, at the Industrial Accident Board, or for retirement and other panel hearings.