Drexel University College of Medicine - Medic Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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X N F.. -.J it I Your concoction worked fine Dr. Oesper, but how do we get Larry Phillips back. Quality control at Hahnemann i I think the vagus is over there. on hemianopsia, or that hemiballism has nothing to do with crytorchidism. We worked our way down from the cortex through the maze of the internal capsule, the substantia nigra, the brachium pontis, until we finally arrived at the nucleus ambiguus - which it all was. Can we ever forget the day of the neuroanatomy final when the mercurial midget distributed what we thought were supplements to the Philadelphia telephone direc- tory and then announced, all right you rascals, count 'em and make sure you have seventeen pages. A few of us are still waiting for that lecture that was supposed to tie everything together . . . or did we have it'??'? BIOCHEMISTRY had us going around in cycles. ln this course we had a lot of contact with our professors -- particularly after exams. The de- partment knew us by code number, except Dr. DeFrates, he knew every- one by their first name the second day after the course started. We learned the Krebs Cycle forward, backward and sideways and could trace the labeled carbon all the way from pyruvic acid to carbon dioxide. We studied the work of Dr. Alper's two uncles-Embden and Myerhof. Dr. Boyd beguilded us with the intricacies of the Urea Cycle and as a result we knew what happened to the N15 in hamburger - as long as it was served without onions. During the spring we had 6 weeks vacation as we worked on individual research proiects. The labs were filled with chickens, rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits - and even an occasional student. Our first attempt at venipuncture were tried with the production of much mental trauma and hematomas. PHYSIOLOGY stimulated us at T5 millesecond intervals. It took us 5 weeks to learn the names of the equipment. We killed dogs, decorticated cats, pithed frogs la few pithed backl, fudged kymographs and got to the very heart of the turtle. While Mr. Bechtel was teaching the humani- ties, Corbett was demonstrating man's inhumanity to man, and proved to Slifkin that the fist is quicker than the nose. We learned -- chronaxie, d'emblee, recruitment, rheobase, threshold, and latent period - and fatigue is what we got out of it. Dr. Scott was all heart. Dr. Reed's lectures gave us nervous exhaustion - so we slept. Then he tried temporal summation li.e., when successive stimuli which are too boring to evoke a response are applied to an afferent student, they may be made effective by increasing the rate - but don't bet on itl. We utterly destroyed Van Slyke's theories and derived lll new meth- ods for figuring out a CO2 - all without a single case of mercury poisoning. The animals in physio were either very uncooperative or very dumb. They more often than not did the opposite of what the texts described as normal. Saturday morning was always a dread time. We did not mind the tests as much as we wondered if we would understand the instructions in time to do the test. The technicolor movies ran at half speed with English narrators were always a big hit. . . June arrived and our first year of Medical school was completed,

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nomenclature, Dr. Amenta with his daily ioke session, and Dr. Chunn's barehanded dissections will be forever with us. Practical exams were stimulating and we began to feel that anomalies were more frequent than the normal And who could live down the ignominy of missing a tagged structure on our own cadaver. Months passed as we systematically dismembered the cadavers. We had all the advantages that science could offer, red nerves, blue arteries, uniniected veins. Gross lab was always with us, foods had the added seasoning of cadaver juice. Recognizing our classmates became in- creasingly easy - all we had to do was get within 3 feet of them. Most of us began to develop better night vision or got no notes at all in many lectures. . . , thus amidst the rattling bone boxes, endless mnemonics, gory cross- sections, midnight labs and lseeminglyl 5 sec. buzzers in practical exams, we laid the foundation upon which we could build our future in medicine. EMBRYOLOGY developed so rapidly that we were into the blostocoele and out the anal pore before we knew what happened . . . Somite as well forget itll HISTOLOGY introduced us to the wonders of the cellular world, with its karyosome, mitochondria, reticulor fibers and nissle's bodies. It was the safety valve of the first semester and helped us to preserve what little sanity was left. Our sketching was interrupted occasionally by the sound of a B box crashing to the floor, a smoke in the corridor, or a trip to OR. A or D to be greatly impressed by a surgical procedure we could hardly see. Charlie lipton's glasses were aways so steamed up that he always saw more through the microscope than the rest of us. Dr. Perlmutter, lthe histology professors' histology professor and friend to the friendlessl won acclaim as the teacher of the year. l-le had mas- tered the art of showing us that we could be right and wrong simul- taneously la not too infrequent occurrence in medicinel. Dr. Van Dyke's classic descriptions of tissues le.g., - liver: marshmallows in chicken wirel lent strength to the rumors that he was taking LSD. He was every- where patiently explaining what normal looked like. And surprisingly enough, when we got to Pathology, we knew the difference between liver and spleen... By the way . . . who drew the lines labeling the structures in the exam- ination on the gingiva and teeth? And who said that l-lilton's White Line was a chain of segregated hotels? NEUROANATOMY was brain wracking. lf Barnum 81 Bailey ever chose to add a medical side show to their circus, it would surely include Dr. Truex's lecture on the Sth Cranial Nerve. Spasticity gave way to sheer terror as lll little buggers sat stunned while the Mighty Midget would draw, explain and erase the lateral Corticospinal tract faster than it took a motor impuse to traverse it, Our Betz cells strained to the utmost, were hydropically degenerated and become overgrown by microglia in the face of the terrifying onslaught. Who will ever forget our field trip to l'Uncle l?ay's Zoo lThe Mills Buildingl, or Dr. Perlmutter's lecture Of course I'm confused? a freshman! Why else would I be E.. . Xa,

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we learned that there were only 96 of us remaining from the lll who started that year. We felt land probably werel a few years older and were definitely more mature. We thought about summer iobs, research fellowships, much needed vocations, and, most of all, about the Sopho- more year described universally as the hardest ot them all . . . lt was September l96l and we were beginning our Sophomore year. The freshman year was only a vague collection of memories, pleasant and unpleasant. We were a tanned and healthy bunch resembling little the drooping, weary group that had parted company in June. So after a few days reminiscing about the re-exams, vacations and iobs, who was back - and who wasn't, we soon buried ourselves in the task that lay before us. MICROBIOLOGY introduced us to the cultural side of medicine. Here the lecture series and lab program was so well organized and the instructors so friendly that it was frightening. Dr. Bondi, the kindly father- figure, was a true friend. We worked on unknowns, known only to Selma, and answered exam questions, the answers of which were known only to God. As Dr. Gaby put it - We ask the same questions each year, it's only the answers that change. Dr. Moot stimulated us with his fly series of lectures lSond fly, Deer fly, Bar fly, etc.l, and baffled us with bacterial genetics. Vicky virus neutralized, agglutinated, and lyophilized us with the wonders of the sub-microscopic world. And, in spite of Both , Neither , we survived with a deeper appreciation of penicillin, whoht lightnin' and beautiful women. PATHOLOGY, The queen of the sciences, was a ruthless tyrant, and Dr. Imbriglia, her able prime minister, saw to it that her every whim was fulfilled. The queen was also a sorceress and we soon fell prey to her spell. She mesmerized us with voluminous lecture material, cross- sections, gross specimens, kodachorme slides, and seemingly endless seminars reviewing the literature. The textbooks were so heavy that we all suffered from Anderson's Syndrome lscoliosis, monoplegia and claw handl. The mimiogrophed path notes linaccurate as they werel proved to be our salvation, as no human hand could possibly record the flood of words that spued forth like water from a bottomless geyser. One syndrome will never be forgotten. lt occurred in the class sporadic- ally, always following lectures and consisted of diffuse pain in the gluteal region, claw hand, and various mental aberrations usually accompanied by headache and confusion. No one will ever forget Dr. lmbriglia's punctuolity at lectures, or his gentle admonitions for us to do better in the exams lWho said they were threats?l, or the first autopsy in the Green room, or the great debates lBendon vs. Kashotus, or for that matter Bendon vs. anybodyl, or Dr. Rathmell's mealy pear, or Dr. Meranze's extemporaneous, but accurate lectures on the kidney, or Dr. Koiwai's warm cigar, and cool reserve. Practicals were always fun - unless you were the last man in line to receive the slides and gross specimens. Then you received beautiful slides of your colleagues fingerprints with or without oil immersion. The heart specimens were great. During one practical a heart started out as In spite of what you think, o B.S. in Biology is good for something.