A Tribute to Herbert Ratner, M.D.
(1907 - 1997)
I was a only a young thing in my thirties.That means it was over 40 years
ago.Pregnant with my third child I went to Dr. Herbert Ratner
in Chicago in the hope that he could steer me to a
doctor who would deliver this baby naturally.
...
That was what I wanted and Dr. Ratner told me Dr.
Gregory White was my man. As an added bonus, Dr. White's wife, Mary, and six
other women were starting a group to help women who wanted to breastfeed.
...
It was at Dr. Ratner's suggestion that I was asked to
write the chapter in the first edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding on
The Father's Role, published in 1958 in the days when breastfeeding was an
unpopular way to nurture a baby.
Then came more babies.And more writing.Small articles of mine describing my
experiences with breastfeeding, childraising, natural childbirth and family life
were published and you might say I was mentored by Dr. Ratner
who was THE voice in the area on these subjects.
...
My only hope was Dr. Ratner.I knew he
was a Christian and felt he would have to love me even
if I had gone crazy.
He did what Christians do.He
found time to see me every Saturday after his morning
office hours.There was no thought of charging me for my visits.Week after week I
would take my nursing baby and endure the trip on the trolley to
his office.How I envied the other people on the trolley
for whom the ride was still a routine, serene event.We would talk about
Dr. Ratner's work and my life and my writing.I wish I
could say Dr. Ratner cured my agoraphobia but
his caring was a healing of another sort.The agoraphobia
was destined to continue for many years despite psychiatry and medication.I
learned that I would not die from it and I could override the fear.
Eventually it yielded to serious prayer.Our family moved to Connecticut leaving
behind Dr. Ratner and Dr. White who continued to be the
M.D.s behind La Leche League, which now calls itself
"the world's foremost authority on breastfeeding."
...
Though the vaccine was free, Dr. Ratner refused to give
it to children under him and suffered a media blackout for his
concerns.Because he spoke the truth as
he saw it, Dr. Ratner was relieved of
his post as editor of Bulletin of the
American Association of Public Health Physicians.
Dr. Ratner died at 90 in 1997.
...
Ratner] who had an unopened case of polio vaccine from l955 which
he had stored in his
refrigerator for more than forty years…..Last summer Carbone finally completed
tests on the vintage vaccine. He found that the tiny
vials contained SV40 [Simian Virus 40] genetically identical to the strains
found in human bone and brain tumors and in monkeys." When the Salk vaccine was
replaced by the Sabin oral vaccine in 1962, some 400,000 people had been
inoculated in what has been called a "calculated risk."My research tells me that
FDA-approved polio vaccine has been free of SV40 since 1963.
In a letter to me in 1994 Dr. Ratner wrote, "I'll not
only be promoting children at the Couple to Couple League meeting but I've just
discovered that I'm listed for a talk on vaccines.It will stimulate me to put
together what I have to say about the dishonesty and even the corruption that's
going on in the actionist USPHS."
He was professor of family and community medicine at
Loyola University where he also
taught a course in Medical Ethics.Pope John Paul II appointed him as consultant
to the Pontifical Council on the Family in 1982.He
was visiting professor of community and preventive medicine at
New York Medical college.
Dr. Ratner was a Jewish convert to Catholicism partly
because of the Church's stand on marriage and birth control.As a member of the
Catholic Physicians Guild he
spoke often about the "gift of a child" and the sanctity of life."Without
science we all know that the pregnant woman is a woman 'with child.' This is
what pregnancy is about: two human beings, two lives, the life of the mother and
the life of the child, both patients of the physician."For 25 years as editor of
Child and Family magazine he
showed how the revelations from Scripture and from the Book of Nature do not
contradict each other.
I look at those old issues of Child and Family and my
heart swells.
...
Every so often I would write Dr. Ratner when something
of mine was published which showed his influence.He
would sometimes write back, sometimes phone.The time difference between Chicago
and Connecticut was such that his evening calls would
often find me asleep and I would try to rouse myself to coherent speech.On one
such night he told me he had had
a stroke, leaving him with a deficit as described in The Man Who Mistook
his Wife for a Hat.I promptly got it from the library
and was introduced to a new world of neurological illnesses.I was not home the
last time he called and found on my answering machine a
short message which I do not recall, but ending with the never-to-be-forgotten
words "I love you."
Why had it never occurred to me that he loved me?
...
Dr. Ratner also loved Thomas Aquinas.It is reported that
three months before St. Thomas died in 1274 he said
"such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw…"
Nevertheless I am sure there was much divine inspiration in what they both wrote
and we have much to be thankful for in "the straw" left behind.Others have
chronicled the brilliance and accomplishments of Dr. Ratner
over his long life.
...
Dr. Ratner's daughter, Mary Timothy Baggott, M.D., has
edited a selection of her father's writings which were published in 2007 as
Nature, The Physician, and The Family.