The CDC's Robert Tauxe, M.D.

Written by NANCY HUMPHREY
Photography by STAN KAADY

As a Vanderbilt Medical student in the late 1970s, Robert Tauxe, M.D., learned medical detective work from the legendary Thomas E. Brittingham, M.D., a beloved faculty member who taught his students to follow their instincts and really get to know their patients.

On Saturdays, students would present difficult patients to Brittingham, who would have already interviewed the same patient or a member of the patient's family, asking the right question in the right way to come up with a "remarkable bit of diagnostic detail" that nobody else had picked up, Tauxe said.

"He treated really complicated patients as sort of a mix of human issues and detective stories – something a whole generation of Vanderbilt students and residents learned from him."

Brittingham's quest for knowledge particularly rubbed off on Tauxe, who was permitted to take a year's leave of absence – something unheard of at that time – to get a Master's of Public Health at Yale. Then, at the recommendation of his medical school adviser, William Schaffner, M.D., he served a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiology elective during his fourth year, assigned to the viral diseases division.

"I wanted to know how to prevent disease as much as how to diagnose and treat it," he said. continued..