Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons - P and S Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Qeobcafion Teaching is the essence of a medical school. No one disputes the ideal of the teacherg student and faculty both share it. Yet, in practice, faculty needs for research, practice and publication, student frustration and apathy, and the demands of a swollen curriculum combine to distort the student- teacher relationship. VVhen, however, faculty and students do interact in a creative leaming experience, both are inspired. In this process we not only leam, but seem to grow. The ideal is revitalized. Two preclinical professors, whose concern for teaching was constant, exemplified this ideal. They taught us a critical approach to medicine which involved mobilizing our minds rather than our notes. It is to them that we dedicate, with gratitude, this Yearbook of the Class of 1965: xjllvrrgy qgose efvin gjavdaf

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HARRY M. ROSE ELVIN A. KABAT

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7, f7Ae Class Cf 7965 I am particularly happy to be able to address the Class of 1965 on this oc- casion, since the current academic year is my twenty-fifth on the Faculty. More- over, it is the first year in which I have taken sabbatical leave and I cannot be held officially responsible for anything said here, since this brief note was written before the period of leave ended. Temporary retirement from the teaching program was an interesting experi- ence. It brought to my attention, more vividly than ever before, the immense bene- fit that teaching brings to the teacher himself. It is he, of course, rather than the student, who gains most from their association, in part because the teacher must attempt to focus his attention fully and accurately on all aspects of his subject, and equally because he is brought into challenging contact with a large group of inquiring young minds that never get older and never lose their enthusiasm or vigor. In considering many of the relationships between faculty and students, I was reminded again that doctor really means teacher and I was hard put to decide just who teaches whom. Having more time in which to read and to work again at the laboratory bench, I consequently had a greater opportunity to worry about the deluge of new in- formation in all areas of medicine, but I also remembered what Gliver VVendell Holmes had to say about the uselessness of inert facts, as well as Whitehead's classic remark that Uknowledge keeps no better than fish. In this latter connection. I could not restrain the thought that the teaching machine is a dangerous snare - almost as dangerous, in fact, as its human counterpart who believes that the direct transplantation of facts or techniques is his chief function. I mused, too, once more about the relation between science and medicine and could not avoid the conclusion that a good deal of scrcalled medical science is un- avoidably nothing more than medical technology, rooted in empiricism. Unavoid- ably, because the scientific method can be applied to medicine - or anything else for that matter - only in so far as the imaginative hypothesis can be tested by ac- curate observation or controlled experiment. The key word here, of course, is imagination, which undergirds the art, the science, the practice and the future of medicine. I can only hope that the Class will enter its professional life with the healthy skepticism which is the hallmark of the scientific attitude, that it will consider graduation only the beginning of a life-long education, and that many of its mem- bers will contribute to the lasting verity of VVhitehead's epigram. Harry M. Rose