Duke University School of Medicine - Aesculapian Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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Dedication Miss Mary Poston was born in western Maryland and reared and educated in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1922 she made application to the Johns Hopkins Hospital for a position as a secretary and was given a standard intelligence and aptitude test. Her performance exceeded the other candidates by such a great margin that it became the subject of discussion in the hospital dining room. Dr. Harold L. Amoss. then Asso- ciate Professor of Medicine and later the first Professor of Medicine at Duke. decided to hire her as a bacteriologist although she never had had a course in this subject. She was given a special summer course in Bacteriology at Columbia University and her training was continued by Dr. Amoss in the Biological Laboratory at Hopkins. Dr. Amoss and Miss Poston published three papers on Brucellosis before they came to Duke in 1930. Miss Poston has been senior author and co-author of over 30 scientific publications. Most of these have been on some phase of Brucellosis but one was on the relatively rare Listerella meningitis. ln 1937, she received an M.A. degree from Duke University on the basis of her thesis on the Brucellri group of organisms and a four-hour oral examination covering all phases of bacteriology and immunology. There are hundreds of Duke medical graduates who remember with appreciation and affection Miss Mary's efforts to teach them the fundamentals of bacteriology. PAGE 5

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The End of an Era The year 1960 marks the end of an era for The Duke Medical Center. On the first of July. for the first time since it was established. Wilburt Cornell Davison will not be Dean. The story of The Duke Medical School and The Duke Hospital during these 33 years is largely his story. In 1927 The Duke Medical School began with the appointment of Dr. Davison as its Dean. This man in his middle thirties was already thc possessor of a remarkable career. Upon receipt of the A.B. degree from Princeton in 1913 he became a Rhodes Scholar residing at Magdalen College, Oxford and received the B.A., B.Sc. and.M.A. degrees between 1915 and 1919. lt was here that he began his medi- cal studies and first became a friend of Sir William Osler. He found time to serve with the American Red Cross in France and Serbia during Mr. Wilsons effort to Make the World Safe for Democracy. and from 1917 to 1919 he was First Lieutenant and subsequently Captain in the Medical Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces. He received the M.D. degree from The Johns Hopkins in 1917. Upon such activity is based his famous statement of interest in medical education because he never obtained one. At The Johns Hopkins between 1919 and 1927 he rose rapidly through Instructor. Associate Pro- fessor to Acting Head of the Department of Pediatrics and Acting Pediatrician in Charge. He was also the Editor of The Bulletin of Johns Hopkins and Assistant Dean. At this point another of the Four Horsemen played a decisive part in the future of W. C. Davison. William H. Welch recom- mended him for the newly created post of ,Dean of The Duke University Medical School. The measure of success of our Dean and his remarkable original staff of boys is the success of a 400 bed hospital and its subsequent growth in North Carolina. Students through the years have often heard the familiar statement: When I was a medical student in Baltimore- as the boys at Duke became known throughout the state and nation. The Dean's well known book The Compleat Pediatrician is his best known hobby and the compila- tion has filled otherwise idle moments on trains. Steamers, planes and at lectures and concerts from ls- tanbul to the Canal Zone. He could indeed be found any place on the globe and in such fashion did the name of Duke become a household word in medical circles. Yet such is this man's pervading pres- ence that he always seemed available to the perplexed student. Duke is unique in many respects but the central core of its uniqueness is the importance of the medical student. Few of us are given a name that will not be forgotten. ln the future. Dr. Davison. we shall say: When I was a medical student in Durham-. PAGE 7