A DOCTOR ON THE FRONT LINE: DR. KEVIN CAHILL
By Georgina Brennan
Irish Voice, NY
Oct 12 2005
In an era of self-serving memoirs by stars whose lights flicker out
quicker than a candle, Dr. Kevin Cahill has written a very moving and
lasting memoir about his romance with his late wife Kathryn Cahill
and his observations of suffering and death around the world.
Like an old movie unfolding slowly but completely before your eyes, To
Bear Witness, a Journey of Healing and Solidarity (Fordham University
Press) involves the observer in a way few humanitarian writers have
ever done.
Cahill, familiar to almost all Irish Americans in different ways
because he is both historian and healer, says he decided last year to
compile the writings he had published and many more of his unpublished
thoughts because it was time.
His beloved wife Kathryn, mother to his five sons, had passed away
early in 2004, and the time since had left Cahill some room to ponder.
“During the past 45 years, I have undertaken medical and humanitarian
missions, or lectured on these topics in 65 countries in Africa, Asia,
Latin America and Europe; my wife Kate was my partner in 45 years,”
he tells the Irish Voice. And so it was quite impossible for his book
to leave her out.
Fortunate or unfortunate to have seen things most humans will never
witness, Cahill is a witness to history in a way few of his fellow men
are, from treating Pope John Paul II after his assassination attempt to
working with the poorest of the poor in slums from Calcutta to Africa,
to dealing with major public health crises in the United States.
Yet, it is to his wife that the book is ultimately dedicated. “The
spirit of my wife Kate can be found throughout these pages,” he writes.
In one photo caption, he writes that theirs “was a marriage made in
heaven, and honed to perfection in some of the hell holes on earth.”
Cahill’s medical career began in 1959 when he studied tropical diseases
in the slums of Calcutta, alongside Mother Teresa. “Nobody knew Mother
Theresa then,” he muses.
Cahill treated refugees in the Sudan, was among the first to predict
the famine in Somalia, and has been caught behind lines of armed
conflict in Beirut and Managua.
While serving in the U.S. Navy, he was the director of Clinical and
Tropical Medicine in Egypt. From 1975-81, Cahill served concurrently
as the special assistant to the governor for Health Affairs, and
chairman of the Health Planning Commission, and chairman of the
Health Research Council of New York State. From 1981-93 he was a
senior member of the New York City Board of Health.
Cahill now offers his expertise on humanitarian efforts to a number
of national and international organizations, including the United
Nations and the NYPD, where he is the chief medical advisor for
counterterrorism.
He is chairman of the Department of International Health at the
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, director of the Institute of
International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University, president
of the Center for International Health and Cooperation, the Tropical
Disease Center at Lenox Hill Hospital and a clinical professor of
tropical medicine and parasitic diseases at New York University
Medical School. He is also the president of the American Irish
Historical Society.
He has received 25 honorary doctorate degrees and has written 29
books on a range of topics, including tropical disease, humanitarian
and foreign affairs and Irish literature.
The titular chapter in the book begins, “Shortly after completing
emergency abdominal surgery on Pope John Paul II…” With an opening
like that it might at first glance seem the most compelling chapter,
but yet other chapters are equally as interesting.
“Armenian scholars no longer search for God in the Near East school of
Theology in West Beirut. The cool archives room in the cellar is now a
blood bank, and the conference hall where ecclesiastical nuances were
once the topic of discussion now contains two operating tables for
assembly line amputations and a bin for severed limbs,” he writes in
Beirut’s “Smell of Death.” Dispersed amongst the chapters that tell
in horrific but moving detail of the struggles faces by nations in
conflict, including Northern Ireland, Cahill reflects on America’s
attitudes to foreign nations.
In “A Doctor’s Reflection on the Libyan Situation,” he ominously
writes, “History does not indicate that we will be treated kindly.”
Cahill is not afraid of words. “Humanitarian assistance, particularly
in the midst of conflicts and disasters is not a field for amateurs,”
he writes in a “Framework for Survival: Health, Human Rights and
Humanitarian Assistance in Conflicts and Disasters in1993.”
Cahill knows things. In 1984 he was writing about Ireland, in “A
Perverse Silence,” chronicling the atrocities in Northern Ireland
and airing the truth that there were no charitable outlets then to
channel money in Northern Ireland to fund some kind of peace.
On current matters he offers that the world is at risk for a
devastating outbreak of avian flu. “It’s a real danger, historically
we are overdue an outbreak but I hope the world has gotten on enough
to fight it,” he said.
“Biological terrorism is a real threat to our society,” he admits.
“But there are now better techniques for detecting it.”
While Cahill might warn about such things, he admits that most of
the book talks about the humanity of life.
“Somehow in the twisted wreckage of war and in the squalor of refugee
camps, the beauty of humanity prevailed for me,” he admits.
In fact, at the very end of the book in a poem written to him
by his wife she writes, “You can’t foresee a life without love,
without feeling.”
Possibly for that reason, To Bear Witness is one of the most feeling
compilations to hit bookstores this year.