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

Page 31 text:

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.

Page 30 text:

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

Page 32 text:

With this broad base in the theory of treatment and disease, and steeped in eternal truth. We were now to be allowed to scrape a tooth. Grasping a dizzying array of scalers, curettes, files, and hoes firmly in our twittering hands, We advanced into uncharted lands; And, keeping well in check a mounting tendency to become hystiric, Achieved a victory only slightly Pyrrhic. MARKING THE PRACTICAL This skirmish with raw flesh, and three hundred finals, capped the year, Leaving, strangely, no wounds which could not be therapeutically cleansed in a Tropical tidal wave of beer. To the veteran, the junior year can only seem An opium dream, Somewhere dorsal to the ramus, Much too near the vertebrae, There are two cc. ' s of novocaine That aren ' t where they ought to be. With anesthesia now profound, and burs and handpieces spinning round, the net result was a colossal dental dent: Thank God for cement. The air was charged with eagerness; we had been clinically born, were even social animals again, and could think exodontally about the long pull; And, in short, life was happy and full. Save for one small hex From the ray called X; Our private version of nuclear fission Accompanied us on the transition