Retired Richland doctor compiles medical humor
Laura Kate Zaichkin, Herald staff writer
w A person walks into a medical library and asks, "Do you have any books on spinal surgery?"

The librarian responds, "We did until we cut back."

w Name some titles of extremely thin books.

The wit of hospital administrators or Titles of humble surgeons.

w What are some athletic medical team names?

Heimlichs (they never choke under pressure). Or The Sphincters (nothing gets by them and they have the best tight end in the business).

Are you laughing yet?

Retired Richland urologist Harold Ellner complied these jokes and hundreds more like them to bring smiles to people's faces before the medical humor column they appeared in got the ax.

"I felt that this stuff just shouldn't go to waste," said Ellner, who retired nearly 10 years ago.

When a national physicians' magazine canceled the column in 2004, Ellner pulled down the boxes and boxes of thousands of jokes that medical professionals and others submitted to him over the 15 years he compiled the column.

Four years later, the contents of those boxes are in a nearly 450-page book, The Best of Wits End: Medical Humor at its Brainiest, which was published in November.

"Generally speaking, people have to laugh," said Ellner, 81. "You've got to be able to laugh at yourself. And if you can't laugh at yourself, you're lacking something."

And the medical humor column Ellner compiled monthly proved medical professionals knew how to laugh based on the amount of entries Ellner received -- sometimes hundreds of thousands a month, he said.

"It served a purpose," said Ellner, who practiced in the Tri-Cities for 39 years. "And the purpose not only was a voice of humor, but a way for doctors to voice their concerns about the medical practice."

Sometimes doctors slipped commentary about malpractice or the bureaucracy of medicine into their jokes.

And it wasn't just medical professionals who submitted or enjoyed the humor, Ellner said.

"Everybody, sooner or later, gets touched by medicine," he said. "A lot of terminology that was once understood (only) by doctors is now understood by a lot of people."

Ellner wasn't the one who started the humor contest column. For 10 years before Ellner began compiling it, he was a contestant. And he won at least 10 first places and numerous honorable mentions, he said.

"Since it requires a bizarre sense of humor ... I figured it was for me," Ellner said. "(The former editor of the column) called the house once and wanted to know if they all came from me."

It turned out that Ellner and the former editor, Norton Bramesco, who compiled the column under the pen name Daedalus, went to the same high school in the Bronx, New York City. And when Bramesco became ill with Lou Gehrig's disease, Ellner took over under the pen name Icarus.

For 15 years, Ellner had a blast choosing the first-place and honorable-mention jokes each month with his staff.

"We would have wonderful laugh sessions sitting around reading these entries," he said. "I never ceased to be amazed. Apparently we struck some kind of chord."

And some entrants would send more than jokes.

"Sometimes contestants would become a little personal -- they would tell me of their troubles," Ellner said.

Ellner would receive notes of appreciation for the column and people wanting to know his real name.

"I had to fight off some lovestruck lady from New York who demanded to know my identity," he said.

All the winning entries that appeared in the column also appear in the book -- with a few extras in the back of the book that didn't make the column.

"A lot of the best ones were X-rated," he said.

The book can be found at or ordered from most major book retailers in the Tri-Cities, such as Bookworm, Hastings Books Music & Videos and Barnes & Noble Booksellers, or online.

Ellner says he hopes the book is as successful as the column, but doesn't know how far its reach will go.

He's asked the American Medical Association to review it, with no luck so far, he said. It usually reviews more technical books.

Guess it might need a better sense of humor.

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