Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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DIt. O. KPUUUtiOX IX.IINII AS SHAKESPEARE has left us with the immortal thought that some men are born great, others achieve greatness, while still others have greatness thrust upon them, we the Class of 1945 consider it a distinct privilege to dedicate this record of our medical school careers to one. whom we feel was not born in great circumstances nor had greatness thrust upon him, but who has achieved the distinction and honor of his position through his own ambition and native abilities, Dr. O. Spurgeon English. Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry. It was during those memorable first few days back in August of 1942 that the Class of 1945 and Dr. English met. It was a meeting steeped in the atmosphere of critical surveillance and suspicion that only a group of over-cautious freshmen can confer upon a new professor. However, as the tall, well-dressed, handsome gentleman stood before us and with well chosen words introduced us to his subject. Psychiatry, we soon found ourselves laughing with him when some humorous incident was related, and presently here and there about the room someone was whispering to his neighbor, Say this guy is all right! Before the close of the period the decision was unanimous; Dr. English had won the respect and friendship of 125 freshmen. And with the passing of four years here at Temple, he has kept our respect; he has kept our friendship, for he has been more than a professor who has taught us well ... he has been a friend who is vitally interested in our making satisfactory adjustments to our own life problems. As a class, we probably know Dr. English as well as we do any other man on the Temple University Medical School staff. One might attribute this desirable relationship to many things but probably paramount are a friendly manner, an attractive personality, and his never-too-busy-to-talk-to-you attitude which go far toward making you feel that you know him. And certainly there was that unforgettable Saturday night during our sophomore year when Dr. and Mrs. English threw open the doors of their beautiful Righter's Mill home and graciously welcomed and delightfully entertained our class in its entirety. It was indeed a rousing convivial affair with beer and cokes, music and singing and still remains in the opinion of many of us as THE social event of our stay here. What greater tribute can we pay it or justification for it make than to say that statistics showed a class average rise of upwards of ten points in exams taken during the following two weeks. But for all this congeniality there is much about this prominent man of which we the class and you the reader are not aware. The son of a farmer, O. Spurgeon English was born in Presque Isle. Maine on September 27. 1901. It was in this little town that the psychiatrist-to-be spent his younger days helping his father run the potato farm, fishing during his leisure time, and finally graduating from high school in 1918. It was while in high school that he spontaneously and with considerable finality decided that medicine would be his chosen field. The first step toward the realization of this achievement was two years spent at the University of Maine studying the pre-medical sciences, and we can well imagine that the high degree of positive socialization that this erstwhile boy from the farm exhibits Ten

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ENGLISH, M.D.

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today had its early beginnings with his membership there in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. It was in the Fall of 1920 that having been accepted at Jefferson, the tall, lanky. New Englander arrived in the big city of Philadelphia friendless and having the unenviable task of finding a room and getting settled in a strange and lonely city l efore matriculating with his fellow freshmen at Jefferson Medical College. However this enterprising young man soon became a member of Nu Sigma Xu and presently life became the busy but interesting one so typical of medical school. All too soon came the realization that the four fleeting years of the academic study of medi- Graduating day in 1924 was like a platoon that had captured an enemy position but which had gotten too far ahead of its supply lines and was now threatened on its flank . . . the goal had been won but one wondered if the cause had not been lost, for Dr. English had a pulmonary hemmorrhage on the day he was awarded his degree of Doctor of Medicine. An attempt at in-terneship at the Jefferson Hospital was unsuccessful, and a month later Dr. English was a patient at the White Haven Sanatorium. Another year had passed before lie was able to complete his inlerncship and begin once again his career in the Grandest Profession. It was this untimely incident with the recognition of the fact that a well regulated life was his greatest protection, as well as an active interest in the subject that led him to the decision that psychiatry would be his specialty. Freud, and his contemporaries in the field of psychiatry had won another disciple. Post-graduate studies were begun in Boston at the Psychopathic Hospital as an interne during 1927-1928. From here he ventured to the Montifiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases in Xew York City to further his study of neurology and psychiatry and its allied sciences, this being climaxed by his being granted a Commonwealth Fund fellowship for three years of study at Harvard University. This marked the first step in Dr. English’s rise in the medical educational world for it was at this time that he became an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Fortune smiled once again on the promising young psychiatrist for soon after news of the Fellowship came an opportunity to travel to Vienna and Berlin for a year’s study of the European approach to his specially. Additional training in the field of psychiatry was not his only gain while in Europe for it was in Berlin that Miss Ellen Brown who was living there at the time with her parents, entered his life story. A common appreciation for old and cultural Berlin and a mutual enjoyment of its entertainments made for a beginning court- cine had come . . . and gone. Eleven