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

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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.

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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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'11, 1 vf . I PM QT V 5 i I Q h -J iv '. -. V! 0 C ,t L 'I' ' .I -'af x at mi' C ' I 1 a tetrology and thanks to the eagerness of one of our classmates who wanted to measure the degree of pulmonary stenosis with his index finger, everyone after him made the wrong diagnosis - Eisenmenger's complex. Rosy ManigIia's course in Clinical Path was supposed to be a respite where we could fall back and regroup, and perhaps improve our overall average, but the final exam almost proved to be our undoing - even Page 81 Culver fiunked. When the course ended we breathed a sigh of relief, and went away with a feeling of pride. Pride at having met a challenge successfully. Pride in our new knowledge of life and the corruption thereof. Let it be said that course in Pathology was a source of constant stimula- tion. It was here that the basis of clinical medicine was conceived. Regina gravida erat. EDC 6f4f64. PHARMACOLOGY DriIled us in fundamentals of drug actions and uses, and taught us to disdain Brand names in favor of the seldom used, but more precise generic name. This course was a maddening mixture of well organized and detailed lectures, well meaning but seldom suc- cessful lab experiments and bizarre exams - the answers to which were democratically arrived at by a vote of the Department faculty. Most of the drugs we studied had a reverse effect on the class. The study of digitalis gave us heart failure . . . clextropropoxyphene, a head- ache . . . the barbiturates kept us awake at night . . . ethanol sobered us . . . and the analgesic symposium was a very painful experience. The British film on A Career in Pharmacology and Lipton's dissertation on the clinical effects of thyroid extract proved to be the highlights of the course. We learned to write drug prescriptions and we took a few our- selves. We also learned that a placebo mixed with the power f sugges- tion can be a mighty potent combination. Famacologee was an ex- perience never to be forgotten. During the middle of the ,sophomore year, and while Pathology and Pharmacology were still upon us, we dofted our long white coats and donned our clinical years. Wearing short white coats and with black bags in hand, we walked around percussing, tables, doors, walls and anything within reach. PHYSICAL DIAGNOSIS was the course and it seemed as though we had finally arrived. Inspection, palpation, percus- sion, and auscultation were the order of the day. Dr. Brest's little blue book was a best seller. Hx and Physicals read like War and Peace. OB-GYN entailed the first 500 pages of Eastman and the mechanisms of labor practiced on a dummy. PEDIATRICS was read to us by Dr. Lipshutz. PSYCHIATRY taught us to put out the right signals - so our gait became a little slower and our bearing more dignified - as a physician's should be. It also put us on the defensive and the big ques- tion was: What did he mean by that. And we finally learned the meaning of the word ONCOLOGY. We were impressed by a series of lectures by eminent physicians in a course called MILITARY MEDICINE. PUBLIC HEALTH was a course in medical diction and microbiology, which ended, for some, with two re-exams. MEDICAL PHYSICS also