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Arnold Blank, MD
Forest Hills, New York
arnold.blank@verizon.net

JAMA. 2006;296:1041-1042.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

I suspect that my memories of internal medicine residency—now more than 20 years ago—are not unlike those of most others who trained in that era; and by now, similarly blurred. I recall some remarkable teachers, a few memorable patients, and many nights with little or no sleep. I trained in Brooklyn; we spent a lot of our time and effort in that period trying to figure out what was, and what to do about, the condition that eventually was called AIDS.

Recently I came across an article about the ineffectiveness of pulmonary artery catheters¹ and the accompanying editorial virtually proclaiming the final demise of the Swan-Ganz catheter.² Reading these articles brought me to a Proustian petite madeleine moment. I recalled years ago standing by the bedside of a dyspneic man dying of end-stage congestive heart failure, trying to explain to him the technique and goals of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]