Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine - Synapsis Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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The student starts as a practitioner, as an observer of disordered machines, with the structure and orderly functions of which he is perfectly familiar. Teach him how to observe, give him plenty of facts to observe, and the lessons will come out of the facts themselves. Each case has its lesson — a lesson that may be, but is not always, learnt, for clinical wisdom is not the equivalent of experience. The whole art of medicine is in observation; but to educate the eye to see, the ear to hear and the finger to feel takes time. And to start a man on the right path is all that we can do. Variability is the law of life. As no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease. This is the fundamental difficulty in the education of the physician, and one which he may never grasp, or he takes it so tenderly that it hurts, instead of boldly accepting the axiom of Bishop Butler, more true of medicine than of any other profession: ' Probability is the guide of life. ' With thanks to Sir William Osier, M. D., 1900

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PaulElinson, D.O. ' Death doesn ' t end a relationship . . t-q CO is SB it just changes it. James Sheetz, D.O.

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We desperately need to reaffirm the human values in medical practice. We must not be so sterile in our approach to disease that we overlook man. The patent is more than his body, he is more than his disease. A true physician cannot be a physician to the body alone. He must be concerned with the internal homeostasis which relates to the patient ' s mind, his spirit, his soul. Some may say that these words sound well to the ears, and that they are what everyone obviously believes. But our deeds fall too far short of our beliefs. We are too often diverted by the siren song of financial security and professional complacency. But can we be morally justified in being complacent in our world? Can we bask in the glory of having extended so dramatically the human life span, when we have failed so often to make that life worth living. George W. Northup, D. O., 1980