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

Page 22 text:

To my Friends and Colleagues of the Class of Seventy: A message of farewell to the graduating class should always be uplifting and filled with ideals worthy of in- spiration. I hope that my reflections will stimulate you towards an important dedication. I would like to be the first to bid you welcome to the Establishment . You may be able to stay on the per- iphery of organizations for another year or so, but ulti- mately circumstances will demand that you accept respon- sibilities and become actors as well as critics. Soon, you will be an integral part of the staff, the society, and most significantly, the profession. Our world and our lives are constantly in turmoil with new advances and with the swift dissemination of know- ledge through the air with the speed of light by radio and television. Pressures are brought to bear on decision makers by concerned individuals who often lack infor- mation and who do not have to share in the making of a judgment nor in the responsibility for the results. I submit to you that what we really lack are those people who can accept duties, who can be adaptive and flexible with their goals. I would call them actors but in reality they are doers, effective participants who can take any sys- tem and by their energy, cooperation, dedication and organizational ability make it work well. Your preparation for the practice of medicine has been a firm foundation upon which you will expand and ASSOCIATE DEAN Hugh D. Bennett, M.D. update your skills. Most of you will return in future times to tell me how you found yourself better prepared then graduates of other medical schools. The story becomes a bit monotonous from repetition, but I never cease to delight in the telling of the discovery by a physician I saw evolve from a first year student. With this preparation you can now assume the more meaningful role of being an actor. By this, I do not mean that you will have to give up any interests, participation, or dedication to causes. Quite the contrary, for I believe that the time has come for all of you to tackle the mas- sive difficulties in our society and to give your individual efforts to make certain that improvements are realized. Make these things work through dedication to your pa- tients, cooperation with your peers, implementation of new ideas, and enforcement of self-discipline. Work with the thought of the priceless aspect of each human being and his untold potentials and how you may preserve and enrich the lives of all people you may encounter. For each of you I wish health, happiness, and as much genuine success as can be won by worth. I have ob- served you mature with the skills of medicine and ac- quire that essential blend of confidence and humility so necessary in a physician. l offer my sincere congratula- tions to you upon the occasion of your graduation and perhaps our paths will cross again. Sincerely Yours, 2,126 f

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,gre AMEDEO BONDI, JR Ph D , Professor of Mrcroorology ff H .., in 'u 1' .V 1 W , W. -11 . .Q - - QI W, JEWELL L. OSTERHOLM, MD., Associate Professor of Surgery J f - J' o +fr- 'PP Q . . . the one a little more advanced than the other. Sir William Osler

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PRESIDENT Charles S. Cameron, M.D. To the Members of the Class of Seventy: For some years, in parting messages to the graduating classes, I have thought it important to emphasize two things. The first was the imperative to recognize the pace of change, particularly the rate at which new facts are being added to the store of knowledge, and the need to accommodate this expanding store through conti- nuing study. The second was the responsibility of the new generation of doctors to consider how they are uniqu- ely qualified to participate personally in bettering the human experience-in treating a sick community as well as a sick man. These things are no less important now than they were, but it does not seem to me in this year 1970 so necessary to restate them here, because the pace of change and the avalanche of discovery have become our daily experiences, and social disjunctions are now widely, although not universally, regarded as the fore- most challenge confronting every segment of leadership and special competence. On the occasion of your graduation, what does seem to me worthy of advice has to do with complacency- that comfortable attitude of mind which is satisfied with things as they are, which eschews involvement in, or even concern for problems not directly affecting its con- tentment and which is relatively unmindful of its capacity for savoring the wonders of its environment-an endow- ment given to a very small proportion of living things. Complacency is a sort of selfishness but I am not us- ing it in that context. I have in mind the kind of unaware- ness which cannot or does not sense tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones . An- other poet put it blithely The world is so full of a num- ber of things, l think we should all be as happy as Kings . Schweitzer called it a reverence of life. A partic- ularly moving account of deliverance from complacency was written by Hans Zinsser after he learned he had leukemia and realized his time was short. He said that from that moment of knowledge of his disease, it seemed as though all his heart felt and his senses perceived were taking on a deep autumnal tone and an increased vividness. He found that instead of being saddened, his sensitiveness to the simplest experi- ences, even for things that in other years he might hardly have noticed, was infinitely enhanced. Every- thing that went on about him or within him struck upon his heart and mind with a new and powerful resonance. Zinsser was an immensely gifted, perceptive and sen- sitive man, and l have many times thought that if so ex- traordinary an individual experiences fresh delight in merely living, only after he realized that it would soon be over, how much more constrained are most of us, less endowed with perceptive faculties, to strive for this en- riching experience consciously, purposefully. My earnest wish for you is that you will be able to shun the thrall of complacency. To have the knowledge and the skill to prevent illness, to make sick people well, and to ease the suffering of those you cannot are precious privileges, but even they do not determine the quality of one's life nor do they assure joie de vive. To each of you I offer my warm congratulations for having elected the highest of callings, for having sub- mitted gracefully to the discipline of these four years of preparation and for having finished with style. My wish for each of you is a long and noncomplacent life, rich in the satisfaction of service and of awareness. Sincerely Yours, dmusi.