published online 31 January 2007.
Article Outline
Charles F. M. Saint (1886–1973) was born in Bedlington, Northumberland, England, and received his early education at the King Edward IV Grammar School in Morpeth. He was awarded his medical degree at the University of Durham at Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1908, then served as assistant to Rutherford Morrison, professor of surgery. In 1919, following meritorious service as a medical officer in World War I, he accepted appointment as professor of surgery at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, a post he occupied for the remainder of his professional career. At retirement, he took up residence on the Channel Isle of Sark where he died at age 86. The triad that bears his name remarks the concurrence of hiatal hernia, gallstones, and diverticula of the colon. Saint himself never published this observation; rather, what became known as Saint’s triad was cited in a paper written by one of his students, C. J. B. Miller. Clinicians tend to dismiss the concept as mere coincidence of 3 common conditions. In doing so they missed Saint’s intent. He was challenging the reductionism of Occam’s razor, namely, that differential diagnosis should be pared down to a single explanation. Saint tried to convince his students that occasionally one was obliged to postulate two or more concurrent diagnoses to properly deal with a complex of symptoms.
