Golden Swamp

Two days post tsunami borrowed Indian Space Agency equipment was replacing swept away connections that doctors in Port Blair and Car Nicobar were used to using to consult with specialists at distant medical centers. The tone of the report here from Bangalore makes such established connections seem routine. I suppose and hope that they are. My father Louis W. Breck, was prominent in the early orthopaedic specialty, practicing in the middle of the 20th century in El Paso, Texas. He, Mother and I took a trip in 1971 based on invitations he accepted from local orthopaedists to consult at problem clinics in Athens, Greece and Alexandria, Egypt. While Mother and I toured those fabulous places, Dad presided over clinics to examine patients whose maladies were causing problems for the local doctors. He told Mother and me that orthopaedic knowledge was five years behind in both places. It is a golden swamp for sure in which even after the worst tsunami for five centuries the docs could, in only two days, get reconnected into tele-medical digital networks for real time consultation with remote specialists.