Earle P Scarlett: A Study in Scarlett

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practicing in
Toronto.

The medical profession has contributed numerous outstanding individuals
to other vocations. Rarely, however, have they been able to continue the
delivery of effective health care while pursuing these second careers.
An outstanding exception is Scarlett, the subject of the latest volume
in the continuing Hannah Institute series.

His late-Victorian rearing and many of the principles it represented
followed Scarlett throughout his successful and active life. On occasion
periodic apparent inflexibility proved to be a bothersome trait.
Nonetheless, his professional years demonstrated a first-class
scientific and clinically trained mind within a man who wished to be a
philosopher of as well as a practitioner of medicine. Despite
considerable resistance, he introduced the electrocardiograph to Western
Canada. Despite his busy private practice, he became increasingly
involved with the University of Alberta. In 1952, he proudly became the
first physician named as the chancellor of that university, a post he
held until 1958.

In that year, having cut back his medical responsibilities as well,
Scarlett returned to his first love, literature. Soon he would become
known to colleagues and admirers worldwide as a respected contributor to
the Archives of Internal Medicine, thus bringing full circle a medical
literacy that had started with his founding of the University of Toronto
Medical Journal during his student days in the 1920s. His erudite topics
and polished writing style reflected a sensitive man of letters,
recognizable not only for his knowledge of literature, but also for an
equally bottomless understanding of the arts, especially music.

To future practitioners of the healing arts, Scarlett proved to be an
archetypical role model. His broad-based accomplishments, crossing the
boundaries of various disciplines, reinforce the profession’s need to
encourage the well-rounded individual into a career in the healing arts.
Musselwhite, himself the author of a multifaceted career, has penned
this biography in a highly entertaining and informative style.