Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

Page 31 text:

1E had wailed so long for the beginning of ” our junior year that when it finally arrived we found it antic!imactic. The prospect of sitting seven hours a day in Erny Amphitheatre bore promise of middle-aged spread, of great aversion to spend the night—still at a desk— reading Babcock or Cecil or “The Green Book.” That year of chronic attachment to pen and desk began with surgery at eight o’clock, with Dr. Rosemond’s drawling exposition of the vicissitudes of the human appendix. We expected surgery to he the best course of the year. We were disappointed. We were never sure there would In a lecture at that early hour. Faculty became notorious for cutting, but the famed Surgery Club included only sleepy juniors. We sat through lectures good, lectures had. and lectures indifferent, until it was only Dr. “Mose Burnett who really held our interest in surgery. With his pungent wit, his perfect timing for comedy and clowning, and his ability to reduce a confused complex of symptoms and signs to a simple understandable entity, he taught us his subject so that it cleared in our minds to he remembered almost until exam time. The bridge teams blossomed during that year, polished up on their bidding techniques at the expense of a boring lecture, or when a professor didn’t appear in the allotted ten minutes. The class learned to dissolve as quickly from Emy as sugar does in hot coffee—and appear in the cafeteria with a deck of sticky, battered cards and the score of yesterday's rubber. The disappearing act approached perfection during those hours when Dr. Swalm made his way through sixty tortured minutes of diarrheal -tools and disjointed allusions to gastroenterology. Our lectures in obstetrics were somewhat different that year compared with the rollicking hours we had spent with Dr. Quindlen during our introduction to the subject. Dr. J. Robert Willson, eyes flashing devilishly, told us dogmatically that there is no dogma about OB. routinely that there is no routine on his maternity floor. Me informed us handsomely that he was going to teach us obstetrics, and that we would leave Temple knowing obstetrics. He was right. We soon learned to expect the best from Dr. W illson and only very rarely were we disappointed. Simply and directly, he taught us his approach (“the only approach”) to conception. pregnancy, delivery, and post-partum care. But not always seriously, for he, relaxing all over the front of Erny, could easily amuse us with his cynical wit. his sometimes frightening sarcasm. Along with the principles and practice of obstetrics, we discovered Dr. Willson's psychology of women. “You can’t trust any of 'em. not even when they’re asleep.” Wednesday mornings we went to PGH. It usually rained so we wondered if we could cut without forcibly joining The Club. However. Left: The bridge (cams blossomed. , , . , .... r. . Center: Dr. W. Emory Burnett. Professor of Surgery ... hr founded I lie Club. Right: The front row palpated herniae ... the back row worked crossword puzzles. 27