SUNY Downstate Medical Center - Iatros Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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Michael Lebowitz learned of his acceptance at Downstate while on a ship off Gibraltar en route to Bologna for his second ear. Elected as a senior to AOA. Multitudes in the valley of decision Joel: III, 14 Joseph Mangiaracina, alias Boff, is one of the few who have gone through Downstate and left a legend behind. You have to be a little crazy to keep your sanity here.

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There is not a socioh politicaL or religious privilege that you enjoy today that was not bought for you by the blood and tears and patient suffering of the minority. John Bartholomew Gough Wluit is a Minority? In America, at least, the female medical student definitely represents a minority. But why female and not woman? Aside from the semantic hairsplitting, there is a somewhat deeper meaning to the above question. Truly, not all females are women (as not all males are men); but in recent years, the majority of those females in medicine are feminine, attractive, womanly. She no longer wears the dowdy business suit, the hair neatly gathered at the base of the neck, the orthopedic oxfords. She had a somewhat delayed entry into the world of modern fashion, but she wears the proverbial miniskirt with the best. One might assume that the hemline elevation was tolerated, if not appreciated. She will also marry in medical school (possibh ' at a rate of 50 or more) often to a fellow student. I believe women find medical school and medical training to be a less traumatic experience than that tolerated by their predecessors. We are accepted, and I would venture, acceptable to the men. Perhaps the situation grows out of the greater confidence we have in our own feminity, perhaps it is merely a re- turn to the natural situation of civil male-female interaction in a professional setting. One wonders why die natural state disintegrated to its depths of absurdit) ' in the past. We grant that certain special- ties impose limits on our choice of career. We are advised to choose those areas with regular hours, and many women do so readily. There are those who still feel the pressure of proving themselves professionally, and perhaps their flamboyant choices of specialties constitute a rather self-defeat- ing arrangement. But it is recognized that women are certainly adequate physicians; some are even exceptional. My own academic experience has been compara- ble to that of my husband, a classmate, except perhaps in surgery, where I was referred to as one of the fellas, and was clamped and sprayed and shoved at the operating table, though no more clumsy than any other fella. Perhaps these are only isolated incid ents, indigenous to the psychic pathology of a few Kings County surgeons and sur- geons in training. The changing face of . merican medicine may see the demise of the female question. With new areas of Adolescent Medicine, of Family Planning, of ex- panded ambulatory facilities reaching into com- munities dealing with patients one to one, the old prejudices may fade. I feel diat patients are die last to reject the woman doctor; and certainly, in medical care, the patients ' concerns must be primary-. Phvllis Selter Rochelle Hainiowitz Gordon Diane Schuller Bette Harig