Jefferson Medical College - Clinic Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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BACTERIOLOGY When as freshmen we entered the spacious auditorium for the opening lecture of the course in hacteriology, little did we realizelthat we would he the last group ol' medical students fortunate enough to he trained hy a physician with fifty years' experience in practicing and teaching the art. For, shortly after we became sophomores we were all deeply grieved 'to hear that Dr. Randle C. Rosenherger. Professor of Bacteriology, had been striclcen down hy a dis- ease of unlmown etiology, myelogenous leu- lcemia. To say that we were taught hacteriology hy Dr. Rosenherger and his able colleagues, Doc- tors Kreidler, Blundell and Meranze would be a masterpiece of understatement. Under their vigilant guidance we were introduced to such famous personalities as Streptococcus, and his brother Staphylococcus, to their first cousins Gonococcus and Pneumococcus, to their friends the Bacilli family, and even their distant rela- tives the Spirochaetes, Parasites and Riclcet- tsiae. Agar slants and Petri dishes became as familiar as salt and pepper, the techniques of many stains were practiced, memorized for the examinations and soon 'forgotten again: the morphology of the diplococci and Neisseria were' ground deeply into our cerebral cortex: parasites and viruses were convicted of mass murders, and before it was all over not a few of us were convinced that we had learned some- thing in the way of etiology. We were given an excellent series of lectures and when our final practical and written examinations rolled around we were all convinced that we had been schooled in hacteriology as well as any group of medical students anywhere. We have missed Dr. Rosenhergefs familiar encouraging remarlcs during our clinical years. hut we lmow that the hacteriology department under Dr. Kreidler, his close friend and associ- ate, has continued to uphold the high standards of teaching and efliciency which he as Professor demanded of everyone associated with it. Who lmows, mayhe some day in the not too distant future one of the memhers of this class may stumble upon the etiology of leukemia. Tai H

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'mf' ,,. '2r, CHEMISTRY, With the retirement of Dr. George Russell Bancroft in June, 1945, a chapter in the history of chemistry at Jefferson came to an end. The encyclopedic course in Physiological Chemistry. with liberal portions of etymology, hotany, mineralogy, animal hushandry, and meta- physics hecarne a memory.. ' We recall Dr. Bancroft as a man of inex- haustihle energy, great personal integrity, and deep sincerity. His lmowledge of matters animal and vegetable and mineral was vast, and his storehouse ot facts bottomless. As we loolc laaclc, with as much detachment as is possihle, upon the course in chemistry, we discover that we memorized an unhelievahle numloer of complex formulae, and thereupon quiclcly forgot most of them. Our concepts of chemistry are inextrica- bly entwined with the Venus Hy-trap, the Dalmatian coach-hound, whale millc, and the tinlcle of glassware. Faint memories of a ter- rihle morning spent chewing paraffin and ana- lyzing the saliva- thereby-generated appear he- fore us. Friday afternoons matting up haclc worlc in a lonely laboratory.. Our first introduc- tion to the business end of the Rehfuss tuhe. Three hoards full of minute discourse, lantern slides and mimeographed sheets to hoot. Two sheets of paper, yellow, folded down the middle, name and numher on the outside. Those in- ternal huretsl Sheaves of needles and fuzzy hurrs. lvlinlcowslci and Casimir Funlc, hormones and chalones. Logarithms. These and dozens of other pictures come to mind. But, all in all, we learned our chemistry, really learned it, albeit the hard way. Dr. Bancroft was succeeded hy Dr. Abraham Cantarow, who had heen associated with Jef- ferson Medical College and its Hospital for twenty years. At the time of his appointment to the chair of chemistry, he was associate pro- fessor of medicine, and hiochemist to the Jeffer- son Hospital. Under Dr. Cantarow a new de- partment of chemistry, different in many ways from the old, is talcing shape. Dr. Cantarow hrings to the department ot chemistry a broad haclcground of teaching and practice in clinical medicine, as well as wide experience in the laboratory hoth as teacher and investigator. He is uniquely fitted hy this haclcground to present the subject of chemistry to the student in its true relationship to medicineas a whole. The spirit ol investigation, so conspicuously alznsent in recent years, has been revived. The prospect of a department of chemistry unsurpassed hy any medical school in the country seems very bright indeed.