The best things in my Ufe have come to me by accident and this book results from one such accident: my having the opportunity, out of the blue, to go to work as H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.'s, research assistant at the Institute for the Medical Humanities in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas, in 1974, on the recommendation of our teacher at the University of Texas at Austin, Irwin C. Lieb. During that summer Tris "lent" me to Chester Bums, who has done important scholarly work over the years on the history of medical ethics
