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He was a brilliant experimental surgeon, but Dr. Jacob Markowitz may never have guessed his skills would be put to the test in such appalling conditions: as a POW in a jungle camp near the Thai-Burmese border during the Second World War.
Dr. Markowitz recorded his harrowing experiences, much to his peril, in a series of diaries and articles that miraculously made it out with him at the end of the war.
Born in Toronto on Sept. 17, 1901, Markowitz graduated from Jarvis Collegiate Institute in 1918 and received his medical degree in 1922 from the University of Toronto. He received his PhD in physiology from U of T in 1926 and continued his studies at the University of Glasgow in 1927.
There followed a three-year appointment as an assistant in the division of experimental surgery and pathology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and two years as professor of physiology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., from 1930 to '32. He then returned to Toronto to an honorary position as professor of physiology created by Dr. Charles Best.
The late Dr. John Wilson Scott, who retired as a professor in the department of surgery and medicine at U of T in 1980, recalled in an interview before his death his acquaintance with Dr. Markowitz:
"I was invited by Dr. Best, who was head of the physiology department, to take a Master of Science in physiology during the academic year of 1937 to 1938. The physiology department was on the second floor of the medical school with the operating room and animal room on the top floor.
"After that, I used to drop in at tea time, which was held every day at the same time at 4:30 p.m. Dr. Best, whose office was in the school of hygiene, came over every day. That was how I got to know Marko (everyone called him that) in the physiology department. Marko was working with...