A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the O.R.

The painting career of surgeon Joe Wilder '42 started with Zero Mos tel's leg.When the actor was run over by bus in 1959, Wilder saved his limb from almost certain amputation. Mostel, who painted when he Wasn't acting, invited the surgeon to come to his drawing studio. "When I came out of that class," says Wilder,"I knew I was never going to be the same." He immediately set up his own easel and has painted virtually every day since.

An almost inevitable subject is his own practice. Wilder is professor emeritus of surgery' at Alt. Sinai School of.Medicine and a; former director of surgery at New York's Hospital of joint Diseases. One of his most popular paintings, "Contemplation Before Surgery." shows a masked doctor praying while a nurse adjusts his surgical garb. His paintings appear in a book, Surgical Ructions: Images in Paint and Prose (Quality Medical Publishing), alongside the essays of fellow surgeon Seymour Schwartz. The book garnered a Special Award for Artistic Production from the American Medical Association.