CRP's Blog

Cory Franklin, MD, spent 25 years as the director of intensive care at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He is an editorial board contributor to the Chicago Tribune and the author of Chicago Flashbulbs. His work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the New York Times, the New York Post, the Washington Post and the Chicago Sun-Times. Franklin’s latest book, Cook County ICU, highlights unforgettable patients and odd cases Franklin encountered during his 30-year career at Cook County Hospital.

You treated some of the first AIDS patients in the country, worked with the CIA to treat one of the first known cases of ricin poisoning in the United States, record a regular podcast,  and were portrayed by Harrison Ford on the big screen. You have a wealth of stories to share at cocktail parties. What’s one of your favorite go-to stories?

Whenever the conversation is slow, stories about when I worked with Harrison Ford on The Fugitive [Franklin was a technical advisor for the film and was one of the role models for Ford’s portrayal of Dr. Richard Kimball] always liven things up. I usually tell a story he told me about when he met Hillary Clinton at a Democratic fundraiser in the foyer of his building before the 1992 presidential election. It turns out they went to the same high school but I’ll just say the story doesn’t end in warm nostalgia.

Literary confessions: What book have you faked reading? What’s your guilty pleasure/can’t-believe-I-read-that book?

I wince as I answer this because any cred I have is going to take a hit. I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities and could not finish it. Same with War and Peace. But yet I still pretend I have read them. Not any more after this. On the other side, I am a sucker for show biz biographies and autobiographies—Lucille Ball, Dwayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis), Cary Grant, Laurence Olivier, Linda Ronstadt, Tommie James (of Tommie James and the Shondells). Can’t get enough of them.

Wow, show biz bios are on the other end of the spectrum from your career in, and writing about, medicine. Are there any science or medical writers or books that you love or that inspired you as a young doctor?

Three doctors whose writing I admire are William Bennett Bean, who wrote great essays; Sir William Osler, his Aequanimitas is a classic; and Harvey Cushing, whose writing is interesting across the board. Two more doctor-authors are Lewis Thomas and Lester King. In terms of scientists, C. P. Snow, Jacob Bronowski, and Richard Feynman.

This is besides Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and of course Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

What five people—living, dead, fiction, nonfiction—would you have over for your dream dinner?

Two Englishmen, two Americans and one adopted American—Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, George C. Marshall, and Albert Einstein. If any of them couldn’t make it, I would have a back-up invite for Richard Feynman, Sir William Osler, Peter Cook and Larry Lujack.

What’s a book you love that most people have probably never read?

A book called Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood by James Lever. Cheeta the Chimp from the Tarzan movies writes his memoirs about his days in Africa and in Hollywood. One of them was a real jungle. The book was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

What are you reading now and what’s next on your TBR pile?

I just finished Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I really want to get to Shirley, I Jest!. It’s Cindy Williams’s tell-all and it looks like my kind of book.

For more stories from Cory Franklin, check out his interview on Chicago Tonight or pick up a copy of Cook County ICU at your favorite bookstore.