With an eye for detail, an expert on the lung shares his life’s work

In a basement office in Brady Memorial Laboratory, the evidence of a half-century of lung cancer research clutters the shelves, pours from filing cabinets and covers the desk and nearly every flat surface. The remaining spaces are filled with a few unremarkable pieces of office furniture, several microscopes and drawers of slides, and a sign that thanks visitors for not smoking.

Although semi-retired at age 85, Raymond Yesner, M.D., continues to teach the craft and science of pathology while documenting the knowledge he has amassed during 53 years on the Yale medical faculty. In November 1997, Lippincott-Raven published his Atlas of Lung Cancer, a compendium of knowledge and insights gleaned from a life spent studying diseases of the lung, particularly cancer and tuberculosis. Yesner, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in pathology, is “the premier authority on the pathology of lung cancer,” according to the book description; its pages contain some 450 photographs and conclusions based on his work with more than 25,000 cases.

Yesner’s keen understanding of the lung and its vulnerabilities has won him praise in medical circles as well as the emnity of the tobacco industry that he has testified against in legal proceedings. Outside the courtroom, he recalled in an interview, industry agents followed his movements in a fruitless search for a way to discredit him. “If I had any skeletons in the closet,” he said, “they were interested in uncovering them.”

Last November, he was honored with a Yale professorship in his name. In announcing the news—and the appointment of pathology chair Jon S. Morrow, M.D., as the first incumbent—Dean David A. Kessler, M.D., praised Yesner for his accomplishments as a scientist and his skill with students. “Dr. Yesner,” the dean said, “is particularly known for providing the kind of support and encouragement that comes with great teachers.” Morrow also offered kind words for Yesner. “He has been a mainstay of the pathology program. He has taught legions of residents. He remains intellectually active,” Morrow said in a recent interview. “I marvel at the remarkable contributions he has made over the years.”

Born in 1914, Yesner spent his youth mostly in New England. The family’s travels took them from Georgia, where he was born, to Maine, where his father ran a general store catering to lumberjacks who arrived on skis, to New York City, where he excelled as a pupil and skipped two grades. When the family settled in Massachusetts, Yesner attended Boston Latin School and proceeded on to Harvard on a scholarship, then to Tufts Medical School.

Through it all, he developed an interest in writing that persists. He has published hundreds of articles in medical journals, ranging from landmark studies of lung disease to an account of his visit to hospitals and clinics in Kenya. Resisting the computer age, he still writes by hand, although he is working on the CD-ROM edition of his lung cancer atlas. “I like to see things in long hand and let them marinate for a little bit,” he said, “in case I want to change them.”

Yesner came to Yale as an assistant professor in 1946, shortly after he mustered out of the Army and began a career at the Veterans Administration in West Haven. In 1974, he retired from government service and devoted himself to teaching at Yale, an activity he still enjoys. “This past weekend I supervised two autopsies and have just gone over them with a resident,” he said during the interview several months ago. “This kind of teaching, which is done one-to-one over a microscope, is the best kind of teaching.”

It is during these sessions that Yesner feels he can not only discuss what is being observed in the laboratory, but also shape the views of his students and the future practice of his discipline. He rallies energetically in favor of the autopsy, all too rarely performed in this day and age, he believes.

“In order to understand disease you have to be able to follow cases from biopsy to autopsy,” he said, using a writer’s analogy to make his point. “The autopsy is the last chapter of an individual’s life. This is a very important thing.”