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

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JOHN LANSBURV. M l)., C M.. M.S.(Med), F.A.C.P. DEDICATION OF THE 1962 SKULL TO JOHN LANSBURY, M.D. 4

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A DOCTOR’S HANDS The selection of Tin Doctor Hands as the theme of the 1962 Skull was made after searching for that one pari or characteristic of the physician which depicts him best to his patients, his students, and his fellow physicians. We have attempted to capture these hands performing as mam services as are imaginatively possible. It is out purpose that the reader better appreciate and remember the facility with which they perform, the comfort they can convey, and the skill the) must possess. franklin I). McDonald and Fred I). Ban He Id Co-Editors Melvin Monroe Business Manager Tod II. Mikuriya Photograph) Editor 3

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Teacher, clinician, investigator, friend these are the roles which Professor John Lansbury has filled in our medical school career. YVe first formally met this gentleman during our Sophomore course in Physical Diagnosis. As we now know, history-taking is probably the most important step in arriving at the proper diagnosis in any patient, and it was l)r. Lansbury who, at that time, instilled in us the basic concept of accurate detective work in eliciting histories. In these few hours we were impressed by the man and looked forward to future associations with him. Our anticipation was rewarded in out Junior seat when Dr. Lansbury gave a series of lectures in rheumatology which we found most informative: we only wished that he had more time to expound on other topics. Finally, as Seniors, we worked at his side in the care of patients, profiting from the personal contact and interchange of ideas not obtainable in the lecture amphitheatre. Here we could fully appreciate Dr. Lansbuiy's dedicated and tireless professional attitude. That these capital qualities had been present throughout his life was amply demonstrated to us when we had the pleasure of sitting down with this man one evening to find out more about him. Horn in Cheddar, Somersetshire, England in 1897, John, the son of the Reverend Wallace George and Mrs. (Mary Gadd Lansbury, obtained his early formal education there before emigrating with his family to Toronto, Canada in 1911. Financial necessity precluded further schooling at this time and the next font years saw our future physician employ his time successively with a stock brokerage firm, as a newspaper cartoonist, and even as a vaudevillean. The outbreak of the Great W ar in 1911 further post- poned his academic career. He volunteered for Army-Service and spent several years in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, two of which were passed on the battlefields in France as a member of the field artillery. With the coming of the Armistice, this voung inan of twenty-two returned to Canada, desirous of pursuing a course in medicine but thwarted by the fact that he had taken no formal education after the age of fourteen. He undertook an ambitious program of self-education. enrolling in a high school, where he managed to condense a four-year course into ten months. After graduating cum laude, he entered Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, where he enrolled for the combined six-year course of undergraduate and medical school training. From the Queen’s Faculty of Medicine he received his M.D., C.M. degrees in 192b, and was awarded a gold medal at graduation for excellence in medicine. His internship year at the Montreal General Hospital was followed by a medical fellowship at the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Circumstances again forced our future professor to lay aside his academic ambitions for two years. After a trial of working in psychiatry at a mental institution, he entered private medical practice in Toronto and was later able to return to Rochester to complete |x st-graduate training. This he did in 1933, being awarded in that year an M.S. in Medicine degree from the University of Minnesota. He subsequently became a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine. In 1934, Dr. Lansbury came to Philadelphia where, under a former preceptor from the Mayo Clinic, he worked at the Philadelphia Institute for Medical Rc- 5