Michael Kennedy

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From Chicago Boyz commenter Miguel Cervantes comes the sad news that Dr. Michael Kennedy has died.

Michael was a prolific contributor to Chicago Boyz from 2008 to 2024. His posts are here. He also posted a huge number of comments in response to other contributors’ posts here.

Michael’s personal blog is here. He contributed to a wide variety of other blogs (including lefty blogs that, Michael occasionally complained, banned him as a dissident). Neo has a lovely post about Michael here.

He self-published two books: A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine and a memoir, War Stories: 50 Years in Medicine. (I read “War Stories” and highly recommend it.) Michael’s Amazon bio hints at other fascinating books yet to be published — alas.

Michael was obviously a brilliant man, accomplished, full of energy and with many interests. He must have been an excellent physician. He was a student of history, a skilled and experienced sailor, and a father. His observations on politics, current affairs, technology and other topics were always well informed and insightful. I will miss him.

RIP. Alav hashalom.

Condolences to the Kennedy family.

19 thoughts on “Michael Kennedy”

  1. He lived a lot of the life I wish I had, especially the sailing part. Requiescat En Pace and Godspeed Mr. Kennedy.

  2. RIP Dr. Kennedy. I will miss you. I always “perked up” when I saw your name when reading through the daily posts and through the comments. I think others likely had a similar reaction. May G_D welcome your soul into his eternal rest.

  3. One of Michael K’s posts or comments mentioned a sailing trip he and his son took from California to Hawaii…I believe it was in a race…navigating by celestial navigation.

    I have been working on a post about the method of celestial nav known as Lunar Distances, and had been looking forward to MIchael’s comments.

    We will miss him.

  4. It’s happened several times over the years – a co-blogger or regular commenter suddenly vanishing from blogs and threads, and sometimes we can find out they have passed away, and sometimes … they are just gone.
    I’ll miss his comments, since he was so very knowledgeable about medical matters.

  6. One of the things Michael mentioned a couple of times was the treatment of Emperor Frederick III of Germany for throat cancer, shortly after he had acceded to to the throne. Frederick’s wife Victoria (daughter of Queen Victoria) was convinced that English doctors were superior to German ones and insisted that he be operated on by an English surgeon. According to Michael, the odds of success at that time would have been much better with a German surgeon.

    This may have been an inflection point in world history. Frederick’s reign lasted only 99 days, and he was replaced by his son, Willhelm II…Kaiser Bill.

    I wrote about how Frederick reacted, when he was still Crown Prince, to an outbreak of anti-Semitism in Germany:

    https://ricochet.com/1519877/frederick-iii-a-model-for-what-biden-should-do/

  8. I never had the chance to directly correspond with Michael but I knew who he was through the years from here, comments elsewhere, and his blog. The blogosphere is a community in a way a lot like a small town, you know who everyone else even though you might not know them personally. I drove by Michael many times over the years through his comments and posts and thank Jonathan, David, and et al for rounding out the type of person Michael is.

    To turn Tolstoy on his head, we are all unique in our own way. You get to know someone over the years as you pass by them in through their comments, but I didn’t know about his love of sailing and navigating by the stars across the Pacific

    As SGM said, I’ll miss him and thanks to everyone for your comments.

  11. That is sad news. Over the years as I have visited ChicagoBoyz I came to view Michael as a friend and one whose viewpoint on any issue was valued. I felt like I knew him and much of his family, although I never met him.

    His insight into historical sicknesses and remedies was particularly interesting.

    He will be missed.

  12. I looked forward to reading his comments. It is sad that he is gone, but he lived a long, productive life. RIP

  13. Sometime, I hoped, my travels to S Cal could include a route diversion to visit Mike, maybe take him out for lunch. I bet he would prove even more interesting in person than in he already was in his writing. That trip never happened.

  16. That is sad news. Over the years as I have visited ChicagoBoyz I came to view Michael as a friend and one whose viewpoint on any issue was valued. I felt like I knew him and much of his family, although I never met him.

    Thank you for this, as it expresses most of what I’d like to say far better and more succinctly than I could ever say it.

    I’ve had the honor to read his comments for many years and I’ve occasionally had the greater honor of interacting directly with him in the comment section here. I’ve also occasionally read through the comment section of another site just to see what he had to say.

    My small town section of the blogosphere has just lost one of its leading citizens.

    My condolences to his family and RIP.

  17. We interacted from time to time. I thought I had an Old School view of medicine. Did not realize his age – as he sure didn’t sound it – but he had a generation on me.

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