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

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ttr i We all got “SY “It’s obvious . . .” we all learned what it took to sublimate and harness our ids; numbers of wives arrived for these sessions, and several of us were moved to start planning for old age. With our schedule already bulging with chemistry, anatomy, fraternity parties, and dances, the Powers added Physiology at the second semester. With inadequately filled pens, we awaited Dr. Esther Grcisheimer on the first day; her greeting was, “Now, children, we shall discuss the physiology of the nervous system. We looked around and started to write. More muscles became hypertrophied. Correlation was achieved with anatomic facts, and the race had hit a new pace. We were given some practical information on the special senses, and some information on the cardiovascular system, some of which was good, some had, and some useful. And, suddenly, spring was in the air; the last series of lectures—on renal physiology—was before us. Given by Dr. Morton Oppenheimer, they were probably among the best we heard that (or any other) year. Organized well, and brilliantly explained, these lectures inevitably covered the material beyond our immediate scope. We were basking in this when the low blow struck— an unannounced exam, the day of the last scheduled lecture. Yes, to be counted—an important part of the now considerably lowered final grades. If we were academically asleep, this should have wakened us. If we were alert, we should have realized the portent this incident had in our future dealings with the department next year. If we had stopped and thought, we might have ‘You got the wrong end of the box!”

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was lhe name attached to a course in spelling, punctuation, neatness, the art of cramming, separating egg yolks, and other fine points. Dr. Robert II. Hamilton's useful information, usually well presented, was studded with interesting pronunciations; his allegorical use of ‘ OUTO-MO'BILE ” for instance, startled us hack to attention. Basic information. mimeographed and distributed several days before each monthly quiz, discouraged us from any interval study. The seatless lab hours developed and made us acutely aware of our leg and detrusor muscles. Additional stimulation was given the first cranial nerve. Acid-base, Henderson, Hnsselbalch, Dr. Robinson, and shifting chloride ions got all hopelessly jumbled together, and it was to take the combined efforts of Gamble, Long and Oppenheimer to untwist and unshift them. Much of the time we didn't know what we were doing, most of the time we had no inkling of why, but we faithfully took volumes of notes on the subject, and by the time National Boards came around we were very glad that we had. Certainly the text was no help. No one was calling us “Doctors yet; no one was using that malignant inflection that was to become so familiar. “What do you think. Doctor? , hut we felt a little more like future physicians in those 8 to 9 Medical Correlation clinics with Dr. John A. Kolmcr. This was real medicine practiced, and we got an enjoyable lift from watching it. Points that seemed obvious at the time were reemphasized, hut information and approach gained here were to he gratefully recalled in future years. Dr. 0. Spurgeon English impressed us with his approach to psychiatric problems, ami for once in our lives at least, made us feel that the gobbledegook concerning supratentorial goings-on was really common sense;

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“You’ve got me” realized that the quiz—short or long, announced or unannounced, written or oral—is an integral part of a philosophy of pedagogy here at Temple, seen in all departments in all four years; it is a way to keep all hut the most lethargic students in a perpetual state of hyperchlorhydria, tachycardia, and hv-peradrenalism—ignoring the teachings of Sclye. Had we the wisdom of professors and deans, we should have realized also that our protoplasm is inherently lazy, and our mettle never adequately tested; we should then have realized that this business of learning to he a physician was not a job of mean dimension, to he trusted all to our lazy selves. We didn't realize or even care: spring soothed our abraded psyches; only finals separated us from the sophomore year.