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

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was of no importance; for the moment he was obviously the very best in his field. Dr. Sclye would be proud of most Freshmen on Day One — the old adrenal squeeze being in full swing. Witness the fact that when ‘Daddy' Huber finished his welcome by saying he would meet us in fifteen minutes on the sixth floor of the Medical School, a good third of the class ran up the six floors rather than wait for the elevators! {Something very few would ever do again except when the cantankerous lifts, like Calvin Coolidge, did not choose to run.) The eager students from Temple undergraduate school were prepared with books and short white jackets, as were the few ‘faculty brats’ among us, but the rest — a majority of the class — were lost somewhere along the line. ‘Daddy’ Huber, Temple’s answer to Lord Calvert, did much to pick up the loose ends and establish order amid chaos. His was, and is, the unpleasant task of introducing the new physician to his new and exacting profession; as Head of the Anatomy Department, he is the first to get his clutches on the students. This he did in such a cordial, painstaking manner, with such contagious pleasantness and good will, that in a few days most adrenals were percolating back at near-normal levels. Later in the semester, this worthy gentleman’s penchant for pendantry and compulsion for repetitious detail would become tiresome to most, but on Day One he was beyond reproach, and performed his task with obvious practice and dispatch. So it was through the major adjustments of the first semester, including the emotional trauma of human dissection ‘The Probe' was always there to point the way. It wasn’t until alter such introductions had become old hat that his soft-sell approach became tedious. The Anatomy Department did not live by ‘Daddy' Huber alone, however. There was Noble Bates, Temple’s infernal talking machine, who delivered his shortest lecture of the year on the first day, a half-hour, illustrated dissertation on how not to cross Broad Street; ‘Hoot’ Walker, a lanky red-haired Texan who seemed always on the verge of falling asleep; Norman Ricck, an angry young neuroanatomist with no apparent cause; Bob Trover, a friendly and competent person who needed to go on a diet, and did — becoming a mere embryo of his former self; Jack Hartman, an eminently qualified physician who could make the dullest subject captivating; and an import from Mysore. India, Dr. Rajagopal, an authority on fetal elephants who always looked as if he were stifling an enormous belch. These were our mentors for the initial five months, and the association was basically pleasant, often humorous, and generally informative Concomittant with Anatomy, a few one-hour-a-week classes met on such subjects as First-Aid, Public Health, and Psychiatry. The best of these courses was the History of Medicine with Fred Rogers, for it brought the light of humanism into dreary scientific halls. Although a professional institution, and therefore theoretically above such activities, our Medical School has chapters of several national medical fraternities on the ‘Campus.’ (‘Campus’ belongs in quotes at Temple, where alma mater resides in a collection of Victorian row-houses nestled around the Medical Center, a jungle-clearing valiantly resisting reclamation by the local creeping vegetation of social necrosis). Rushing began the first night with a tour of the various houses, an endless blur of faces, hundreds of handshakes. For the next two weeks, those of us who were interested were wined, dined and courted by the fraternities; which was fun because it presented free meals and beer, and a chance to sublimate the accumulated anxieties of the day with men who had filled our shoes before us. As far as making

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HISTORY OF THE CLASS OF 1962 JOHN CLARK Van PELT HISTORIAN “The time hai come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, Of cabbages and kings; And why the sea is boiling hot. And whether pigs hare wings.” —Lewis Carroll On the morning of 6 September 1958, the time had indeed come for 135 would-be physicians, entering their Freshman year at Temple University School of Medicine, to talk of many things — things as unrelated as cabbages and kings, as improbable as flying pigs, as foreign as boiling seas — homely things, mysterious things, comic things, tragic things. Medicine is an old and noble profession, and is, as such, endowed, for better or for worse, with many old and noble traditions. Not the least of these, although there are more admirable examples, is that the study and comprehension of this science is reputed by the laity to be almost impossible. It is safe to say that the average medical student, fresh out of college, arrives for his first class equipped with a vague conglomeration of opinions, resolves, half-truths and misinformation unparalleled by the novitiates of any other profession. Our class was no different from any other in this respect. A battery of department heads were on hand to welcome us briefly, presided over by the ubiquitous, mysterious and acerb personage of ‘Doctor Temple’ himself, ‘Parky,’ a red-faced, white-haired seer supported by the lecturn in Erny Amphitheatre. To most of us, the parading Olympians were physician-ideals, somewhat god-like characters of enormous attainment and competence. The entering Freshman is a complex of idealism and fear: fear of the unknown and fear of personal inadequacy Whether Dr. X could speak publicly or not. or whether he was known outside North Philadelphia

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an intelligent choice of a fraternity is concerned, it couldn't be done, because most of us didn't know each other, let alone the several hundred eager upper-classmen. But somehow the choice was made, and in passing, most of the participants felt that fraternities served a useful function at Temple — a social outlet for many, a home away from home for a few. and a place where companionship and escape from the common grind could be found. The fraternities are probably doomed in the not-too-distant future, as the Center moves to construct resident dormitories for its students. Certainly the delapidated relics they now occupy soon will go. either by sheer decay or by shun clearance, whichever comes first. With them will pass from the Temple scene an institution much to be mourned by those who knew it. Gradually, life took on form, substance and habit and with this passed much of the irrational fear of the unknown. But for a couple of confused souls who dropped out after a few days, we settled into a tontine grind of lectures and dissection, study and weekend dissipation. Those of us not already encumbered by ‘obligations’ elsewhere soon discovered the Nursing School and the various local bistros; all of which, (by way of a backhanded invitation I. we had been cautioned to avoid by Parky.’ Everyone soon discovered that unless you wanted to engage in a bull session for an hour or so. you didn't ask Dr. Bates any questions. It is said of Noble that if you asked him the time of day he would spend an hour explaining how a watch functions. Despite amusing remarks made about this professor's ebullience, there is no doubt that he has an amazing fund of knowledge at his fingertips, with powers of recall and association which arc truly incredible. (He also has a fine eye for art in photography). When a coffee break was needed, you took the stairs to the fifth floor and then the elevator, as this eliminated walking past ‘Daddy’ Huber’s office, and coffee breaks were not advisable at the College Inn at three o’clock, as The Probe’ came in then for his afternoon coke. Dr. Stauffer's X-Ray lectures were for sleeping, and several of us became the world’s champions at this luxury'. Freshmen could lx identified anywhere in the building by their characteristic odor, and the Anatomy Lab was a great place to petrify your date. Guest lectures on Wednesday afternoons were compulsory for Freshmen, both attendance and attention, until the first Victor Robinson lecture when even Dean Bucher went to sleep in the front row. after which attendance 21