Passing the Baton: The Brooke Formula, Colonel Basil A. Pruitt, and the ISR Rule of Ten.

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To the Editor: On Saint Patrick’s Day, 2019, the sky was torn asunder and the Earth beneath me shook violently. A mentor that my whole generation of burn and trauma surgeons called their own had left this Earthly plain. I first really got to know Dr. Pruitt during my American Burn Association Traveling Fellowship, decades ago. In a quest to understand the basis of burn resuscitation, that fellowship was graced by private audiences with William Monafo, Charles Baxter, and Basil Pruitt. The origins of hypertonic resuscitation (Monafo), the Parkland (Baxter) Formula, and the Brooke Formula (Dr. Pruitt’s World-Famous Burn Unit) were thus explained to me in original detail. All burn surgeons aged 45–65 have a deep catalogue of “Colonel Pruitt stories.” My favorite is when “Basil” related to me how, every year, he “bit his tongue” whenever examining for the American Board of Surgery, as the examinee knee-jerk quoted the Parkland Formula when resuscitating a severe burn injury!