Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery - Dental Columbian Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Because before you can do you have to know and you start to know by finding and proudly exhibiting a piece of merchandise called for some reason the Anterior Serrator; Then rocketing through chest, abdomen, hip, knee, toe, and bursa (Which in this case is not a ship ' s officer but a labyrinthine pocket with no way in and no way out like an Ezra Pound versa) Till you emerge with what eagerness you may yet retain into the anatomist ' s version of the Hayden Planetarium: Discovery: There isn ' t any instrument small enough for the First Class III Foil. The calvarium. Or miserarium. Having mastered this, next phases were nerves, glands, hormones, cats and dogs both spastic and flaccid Ending at length in the calm world of alkali and accid; To discover that with a window on the court, even a biochem lecture can be pretty saxey, Especially for Axey. One day a man with big thumbs came around with wax and said, Make an incisor if you can. So we measured and cut and got a new one and measured and scraped and worried and cursed and brought it up to him and he said, Oh no, not for a rabbit, for a man. This was year number one and we had faced it with all the courage we could muster, But they were saving the blockbuster. It is said that painful experiences are wiped from the mind in time by a merciful repression, But we are supposed to remember everything that happened from September 1950 to June 1951 and not even to permit ourselves a momentary digression

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Performing a bilateral alveolectomy while preparing three crowns and taking a Coe-flo impression may be very romantic, Eut four years in dental school is enough to drive anyone frantic; Unless, of course, he is able to think serene and lovely thoughts with atomic bombs exploding in the vicinity Or endure a gastric ulcer with equanimity. seniors In the beginning cold bodies sprouted from lab tables as if someone had seeded them. And a man with a mallet came around removing shell crowns before we did. So who needed them? But later, we didn ' t think of them so much as human beings but in about the same way we think of those little blobs in doctors ' offices in jars, Or men from Mars; And here was a more valuable lesson than we knew, And quite true, too, As we learned when, long after, we were flung into the big room with all the chairs on the eighth floor called a clinic, And found that the best way to get through dental school was to be a cynic: For when you take that last look inside and find that suddenly the pulp is visible and leering, You must face the situation with clear eye, firm grip, and calm countenance and not let anyone guess that you ' d much rather be disappearing Out the window in a breathless dive, Or even somehow cramming into drawer No. 5. We started fresh and new when the kind voice asked us to put the handpiece together, And we replied that we ' d never picked one up before, not even in rainy weather; Which was a nice mixture of truth and temerity. Desirable attributes both, till they began talking about a Spanish fellow named Manual Dexterity Who was at first unobtrusive, Then exclusive, And elusive. But more of him later, class of 1953

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s? REDi ' Ce ft use tin ova pamous % SS,32 DRINK. oU O ioo?. PwM ' Lest penance be enacted, And peace of mind extracted. Sell your television sets, get rid of your girl friends, say goodbye to your families, and prepare to lose fifty pounds or so, Was the word for the day, and they weren ' t fooling, for in a month there wasn ' t much resemblance to a human being in the bent and bloodied torso. Bite blocks must be optically smooth, crown preps have no scratches, Study that bacti some more, grab your sleep in snatches, Let me see that finishing line, I thought so — there ' s a shoulder, Do it over three more times [ch oke, (but smile) and smoulder], No bubbles allowed on castings here, Problem: find the virus, Can anybody primaquine? flatten every gyrus, Buy your Opotow downstairs, anneal to relieve tension, Birdshot makes the wire stretch right through the fourth dimension. This, and unfortunately we know whereof we speak, Was a typical week. True, this required adjustment, but we were resourceful people and might even have mastered Histoplasmosis and mycology, If we hadn ' t had to take our merit badge in pharmacology. The student was in on awful hurry — just suppose they ' re some new type of temporary dentures. . . . Goodman and Gilman, may their tribes increase, Put an end to all of our dreams of peace: There ' s a drug for every cell, dry drugs and diuretics, Drugs to kill worms, and parasympathomimetics, Drugs for sleeping, Drugs for weeping, And on top of the already enormous pile of pharmacolo gical agents more drugs they ' re continually heaping.