AAMC Reporter: November 2008

Mightier Than the Sword

Blair Grubb, M.D., has more than 200 specimens in his fountain pen collection.

In this era of constant communication, where the chirp of the cellphone and the tap-tap of the PDA user almost always seem to hang in the background, some wonder if we've lost something along the way. Why the big hurry? For instance, what happened to writing a letter? Sure, it takes longer, but maybe that's part of its charm. It's a more personal means of communicating, and in the end, perhaps a more rewarding product to create. A yearning for these bygone days may be at the heart of an Ohio medical school professor's fascination with one of the signature tools of this dying art: the fountain pen.

"Nothing else writes like it," says Blair Grubb, M.D., a cardiovascular medicine professor at the University of Toledo Medical Center.

"It has a great connection to the past. I am putting things down on paper the same way that Thomas Jefferson or Charles Darwin did."

Grubb, who has amassed more than 200 of the implements over the past three decades, writes out almost everything—including lengthy scientific papers, essays, and poems—by hand.

"It's like a piece of jewelry or work of art that I can use every day—it adds color to the process of writing," Grubb says.

Recently, Grubb has started repairing vintage pens. This process, he says, involves flushing out old ink by soaking the nib, or part of the pen that comes into contact with the writing surface, in water and ammonia for a few days. It's also important to make sure the nib is aligned, and for that task, Grubb breaks out a magnifying glass and a small clamp. For serious repairs, Grubb opens up his address book and calls a friend for help.

"It is nice to take something that was old and abandoned and then restore it to function and beauty."

—By Elissa Fuchs