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Foreword
interpretation. Many greats of cardiology nationally and internationally were invited to
speak at these seminars. Regardless, it was Barney who set the curriculum and the infor-
mality that characterized his personal approach to teaching. Those landmark courses put
Barney and his talents in front of literally tens of thousands of doctors and nurses around
the world for the next 40 years. All the while, he published over 17 books, mostly on
electrocardiography. His scholarly writing was not limited to books. His list of published
scientific papers is prodigious.
The New England Journal of Medicine
alone published papers
spanning over 50 years of his vibrant productivity. Barney’s love of language is apparent
in one of his least well-recognized contributions. For many years, Dr. Marriott was the
author of the Medical Etymology section of
Stedman’s Medical Dictionary
. He reveled in and
revered English and its many quirky words and grammatical rules.
In addition to his visiting professorships at Emory and the University of Florida, the
University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa was fortunate to have Barney on its volun-
teer clinical faculty beginning in the 1980s. Monthly or quarterly, Barney would bring
a mountain of carousel slide trays to our evening conferences. It was the glorious, now
bygone era of big pharma. The fellows and faculty alike would be repeatedly skewered by
Barney’s rapier-like witticisms as he led and pushed us to be better ECG readers. His acu-
men and sharpness for his task and his boundless enthusiasm were hallmarks of the con-
ferences. Aphorisms such as “Every good arrhythmia has at least three possible interpreta-
tions” poured forth like the sangria that fueled raucous audience participation. Barney’s
old friends from around the United States and the world would drop by to be toasted and
roasted by the master. David Friedberg, an immigrant to the United States from South
Africa, was one of the first I encountered. Later, Bill Nelson joined our faculty at USF and
became a suitable stage partner and foil for Barney. One particularly memorable evening,
Leo Schamroth himself, from South Africa, joined Barney, David, and me for an evening at
Bill Nelson’s home, where we argued about concealed conduction and AV block late into
the night.
As the decades in the Tampa Bay region wore on, Barney and his companion, Jonni
Cooper, RN, spent more time at their place in Riverview, Florida, where he had a large
library and workspace for his many books and teaching projects. Chief among those books
was his personal favorite,
Practical Electrocardiography
, a bestseller up to today. It remained
a single-author volume through the eight editions he wrote. He graciously facilitated Galen
Wagner’s evolution of print and electronic formats through the subsequent editions. In
those first eight editions, beginning in 1954, Barney loved to write with his uniquely con-
versational style, unlike just about any textbook that you might find in a medical book-
store.
Practical Electrocardiography
was and remains, however, a very special, now multi-
format text suitable for students of all ages and skills at ECG interpretation.
Barney and I continued our monthly lunches as he and Bill Nelson and I put together
his last book,
Concepts and Cautions in Electrocardiography
. Barney’s health held on until his
terminal bout with lung cancer; we increased the frequency of those meetings as his health
declined. To the very end, he remained gracious, charming, curious, and firmly attached to
his ECGs. Every week, tracings continued to come to him from former students around the
globe. On my Thursdays with Barney, my task was to bring the Guinness so that we could
chat, look at ECGs together, lift a few pints, and reminisce a bit. He reminded me, as his
life ebbed away, that being bitter and holding grudges was “a useless waste of time.” It was
a lesson for all of us. His legacy remains much more than the eponymic moniker for this
volume. Pour me another Guinness. Cheers, Barney.
Douglas D. Schocken, MD
Durham, North Carolina
July 2013
