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Page 15 text:
“
CO this was medical school; this was the Temple University School of Medicine. Monday morning, July 2. 1945, and we were sitting on the sixth door waiting for our first class to begin. The room was noisy with the voices of people getting acquainted, with laughter and questioning. We had descended on Gerry Deemer in the hook store just a few days ago, heckling her for 100ms to rent; asking “What hooks do we need, ma'am?’” And then trudged the dirty streets in search of a hed and a desk, during the hottest summer Philadelphia had seen in years. We had talked briefly to awesome upperclassmen, some of us. and been told blithely, “It’s no so had— tougher than undergrad, hut you will make it.” Now, one by one, we turned to stare into the window across the areaway where Russel was busy embalming a fat white man whose umbilicus ballooned dangerously. There was a horrid fascination in the sound of the little pump, in the wail of the circular saw as he removed the calvarium. And in the silence of watching, Dr. John Franklin Huber entered the room, followed by four men and a woman, all in long white coats. We were about to begin. He stood behind the long black table, hooked his fool over the central rung, smiled a smile that some of us called friendly and the rest interpreted as glacial, and spoke the first words to us as a class. “I want to welcome you.” he said, “to the medical profession, and especially to the study of anatomy. The years before you are not so difficult that a person of average intelligence cannot get through, if he spends the time necessary to learn well. While he talked we looked him over, for this was the professor of anatomy. He was much younger than we had expected, with sparkling ey es and his black hair slic ked back and shining. X ith all the poise of a man who knows and likes what he’s doing, he continued, Don’t listen to what the upperclassmen have to say—they II only confuse you. And if you get worried, just remember that hundreds of other people have accomplished what you’ve set out to do and that we’re here to help sou with your problems. Don't he afraid to come to us. At the time, we were afraid to believe that what Dr. Huber had said about his being behind the students was true, hut as the year progressed we were to discover that it was. Here was a man. a teacher at heart, who was more cognizant of our tribulations than any other. He was sympathetic with our shortcomings, and possessed, moreover, the tact and insight necessary to help us overcome them. Tuesday, in chemistry, we met Dr. Robert (fa r n squar ) Hamilton. Ilis little introductory speech was not. however, encouraging, for before many minutes had elapsed, he drawled. “There's no doubt that some of you won’t be with us next year. Now. we don't like to fail people, hut sometimes we just can’t see our way clear . . .” We were perfectly willing to believe that, for we’d heard that most of the freshman l.cft: New students, new cadavers, more work for Russel. Center: l)r. John Franklin Huber, Professor of Anatomy. Right: Looking over the new freshmen—Drs. Weston. Kimmel. Moyer, and Huber. 11
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Page 16 text:
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failures resulted from unsuccessful tussles with physiological chemistry. During that first week we picked up all sorts of interesting information about the school. For instance, we could ride the elevator up, but we had to walk down; and if “Gravel Gertie,” the housekeeper, were running it. she'd always stop short of the floor, then rasp out, “Go ahead, you can climb it!” We learned that the Dean's word was not only law, it was Holy Law; that the library was safe ground only from twelve to one o’clock when Mrs. Krieble was furthering the cause of the peptic ulcer in the hospital dining room. We learned that you could get sea food at Fishers, salads at H H, clean and uninteresting food in the cafeteria and gastritis at Keesal’s. Anatomy, at first was confined to room 603 where the effect of the central front light was hypnotic, and to the histology lab where the effect of long hours over the microscope was paralytic. We learned how to adjust the light on the microscope, and having accomplished that, investigated the developing embryo on multi-colored slides. Dr. Donald L. Kimmel lied his arms and a piece of gauze into intricate knots to explain the growth of the human embryo; he diagrammed it in sections horizontal and vertical, while our sweat blurred the ink on our rapidly filling cards of notes. Some of it we understood. Patterned in red and yellow and green chalk, in surrealistic lines that crossed at mad angles and were forever being muddled. the intra-uterine human followed Dr. William Pritchard a few steps further along in development and drove some of us a few steps nearer that borderline between reality and insanity. Then came the great day when we first donned white coats ourselves, the day we got our cadavers. Dr. Huber lectured first, reassuring as usual. He told us that we belonged to the few people of the world who are privileged to study human material. He hold us that there is nothing about a cadaver to fear or to arouse disgust. And remembering that, we walked down the hall to the gross lab, which we had only sniffed cautiously before. We started where we could do the least damage. on the back. Meticulously we broke off the nerves we were supposed to save. Wielding the scalpel and the probe (the instrument, not the professor! separating layers with our fingers, slimy with grease, we assumed a fragrance that a bath in Clorox wouldn't dispel, one that turned our stomachs at the mere thought of liverwurst. So this is medical school. Well, we like it. The long days in anatomy are hard, physically and mentally; read and dissect, read and dissect til our eyes bulge and our hands are numb, but we like it. The odor, the frequent threat of quizzes, the heat, the lack of sleep are ever with us—but still we like it. Chemistry . . . when we think back over chemistry, none of us can deny that the course we got was excellent, but few of us can truthfully recall those hours with any degree of pleasure. There Left: Now, wc don't like to fail people ... Dr. Robert Hamilton, Professor of Physiological Chemistry. Center: Dr. Weston obtunding the CNS. 1 feci no pain. Right: Nay and Molthan sweat out a cross section with Dr. Moyer. 12
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