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

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Having almost recovered from the trauma of the sophomore year and the added insult of National Boards through an all-too-short summer vacation, the class of ’52 straggled hack to its home away from home at Broad and Ontario, only to find that we were to he dispersed throughout the city for our clinical clerkships. So, on a bright September morn we jammed stethoscopes in our pockets, clutched our Merck manuals in our hands, and embarked upon the first of our clinical years in medicine. It was not without some trepidation that we approached our respective hospitals, be it Jewish, Episcopal, St. Christopher's, or P. G. H. Perhaps nine-tenths of us were to be face to face with a patient for the first time, and be asked to somehow come up with something resembling a diagnosis; and all this without the benefit of the safety in numbers that we were accustomed to when we were first struggling through the mysteries of physical diagnosis. We took a deep breath, prayed to Dr. Mark to be with us, and for better or worse we entered those immortal portals which will play such a demanding part in our future lives. After that first bewildering day when we wandered around strange halls, the days began to merge into an ever-changing panorama of patients, conferences, questions, answers, mistakes, and proper diagnoses. Nine to twelve, Monday through Friday, the • days whirled by leaving no more than a few highlights to be retained in our overfilled minds. Who at Jewish will forget the not-too-overpublieized Doan conferences, or the nights in the accident dispensary and delivery rooms? We all had to stop and remember that quietly-spoken phrase “Children are not little people when puzzled by the “little monsters at St. Chris. Who was more flustered, you or the patient, on that first pelvic in the prenatal clinic, when Dr. Emich asked the week of gestation? Yi ere those nights as male nurses in the delivery room really necessary? The stench of the neurology ward, the cheerful “Good morning, gentlemen” as wc rode the elevator to the Men's Medical wards, and the miles of stairways we walked to check the books on surgery will long be remembered of P. G. H. A few of us can even remember getting to the weekly psychiatry and ncurologv conferences at P. G. H. So it went throughout the mornings while wc struggled to review and perfect our technique at both history-taking and doing physicals, not to mention the physical exercise of writing up said H. and P. These mornings which at first seemed an eternity became, toward the end of the year, all too short, as we realized more ami more our inadequacies in both technique and knowledge. As time went on it also become clear that though we all thirsted for experience in at least the more fundamental of the ward proccedures, the student could count himself lucky who could boast of more than one venipuncture to his credit when the year came to a close. This lack of clinical instruction was only the first of the disappointments wc were to continue to experience in our senior year, and remains the one glaring defect in our instruction by the Temple system. When we first gazed at the long list of subjects which were to occupy our afternoons in the either too hot or too cold environs of Erny Amphitheater wc wonder that so much could have escaped being covered during the bewildering maze of our sophomore year. Wc were soon to discover that most of our work lay ahead. It began with “Beauregard Roseinond as he introduced us to signs, symptoms, and 29

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Junior Year

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She doesn’t know it, hut I’m sterile. Dr. Howard Baker, hospital administrator. ‘‘The chlorides were what? treatment of acute appendicitis. Then came the soft tones and dry wit of Dr. Burnett as he guided us through the surgical diseases of the chest, liver, and peritoneum. Although his soothing voice would in a lesser man have put most of us immediately to sleep, the invariably humorous remark and the entertaining method of delivery kept us awake and interested in spite of the somnolent nature of that postciha hour. Dr. Taylor Caswell of the long and lean frame successfully guided us through diseases of the extremities, neck and face, leaving us with the feeling that at last we had envisioned the lay impression of the typical surgeon. About this time we were deluged with midterms so that the rest of the surgical course remains informative but vague, except for the remarkable improvement noted in the teaching abilities of Dr. Joan Long, and for “sharp newcomer Dr. Robert Bucher's fine lectures on p.v.d., spleen, and burns. On Wednesdays, Dr. Willson took up where he left off in the sophomore year except that wc had the added help of having already read over our mimeographed sheets. Thus we could sit back and relax as the wonders of the female-pregnant type—and all the intricacies of extricating her from her numerous problems were unfolded in a manner unparalleled in medical teaching. The hour again was against alert attention, but one could hardly help absorbing the didactic material presented. Answering the exams which were major masterpieces of composition posed yet another problem which provided us with several interesting but exhausting afternoons. Thursday and Friday afternoons brought us to the medical department and were started off appropriately by Dr. Thomas Durant, who will live in all of our memories as the perfect physician and gentleman. The diseases of the heart, as unfolded to us by Dr. Durant, were as simple as an EKG is confusing, and he made all of us disciples