“
“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. Goethe I would like to thank Dr. Lindor and other members of the editorial

board of HEPATOLOGY for honoring me by asking me to contribute to the “Masters of Hepatology” series. My background is very different from that of other renowned hepatologists who have already contributed to this series. For this reason, I will go back to the beginning of my medical career to explain why I left Argentina selleck to continue my medical career in this country and why, once in the United States, I decided to pursue an academic career. I hope that this brief memoir will inspire potential researchers in this generation with the excitement of scientific discovery that has sustained me through my career. FHVP, free hepatic venous pressure; HVPG, hepatic venous pressure gradient; NSBB, nonselective beta blocker; VA, Veterans Administration; WHVP, wedged hepatic venous pressure. I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where my father was a Jewish Hungarian immigrant and my mother was Argentinian of Jewish Hungarian descent. My father arrived in Argentina in the 1920s fleeing an already convulsed Europe. I attended public school and then studied medicine

at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine, which was also public and free. At the time, the best schools were public and funded by the government so tuition was free. In order to limit class sizes, NSC 683864 solubility dmso to matriculate at the School of Medicine, it was necessary to pass a rigorous academic exam that excluded many candidates. Nevertheless, the medical students’ classes were very large (approximately

4000 students the first year) and impersonal and did not allow for any close contact between students and professors. The intensely interesting study of medicine in Buenos Aires in the early 1960s took place against a dramatic backdrop of inescapable political unrest and violence in a country that was alternately governed by short-lived democratic government and military PtdIns(3,4)P2 dictators. Dr. Bernardo Houssay, one of three Nobel Prize winners from the University of Buenos Aires, had brought the Department of Physiology at Buenos Aires School of Medicine to its highest prestige. Dr. Houssay and his collaborators had written a seminal textbook of physiology from which we studied at that time and which was also widely used in translation at U.S. medical schools. The tradition in Physiology was to teach through practical demonstrations in classical experimental models. Most experimental demonstrations were performed in a toad (Bufo arenarum Hensel, a species commonly found in Argentina). I found this part of my medical education especially riveting. From these experiences, I developed a great respect for the power of well-designed experimental models to translate science from the realm of ideas to the laboratory bench and from there to the clinical bedside.