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

Page 33 text:

with fact. Lorenzo Rodriguez’ lightning wit and laconic comprehensiveness urbanely balanced M. Noble Bates' cheerfully unending approach. Gail “Lights Out Crouse’s demure manner often camouflaged a ready laugh and easy affability. His colorful lantern slide lectures frequently left more than one freshman in the dark. These, along with those by Herbert Stauffer and his shadowy friends, clearly demonstrated, if nothing else, that complete happiness is somnolent olfactory adaptation. Ostensibly occupied in learning, we devoted much of our time in lab and lectures to studying our classmates and projecting our self-image. Most of the class entered Temple expecting to find the cream of the intellectual crop: The creative, imaginative, well-read scholar that each knew in his heart was the real he. Class discussions convinced each “thinker that, alas, he was an island io a sea of intellectual boobs who. as the Saturday night parties confirmed, were sensual savages and latent alcoholics to boot. Only as we, as individuals, became more sure of our own innate worth were we able to find the goldmine of personal resources in our colleagues. Admittedly, some of those mines never appeared to contain more than fool's gold — but one can’t be sure when the bright glare of his own ego distorts his symbolic vision. The Philadelphia Athletic Club hosted the annual melee (more formal and less delectate than the weekly frat saturnalia) that served as a funereal reminder to sophomores that neophyte ignorance is bliss, and to freshmen that more haggard days were less than a year away. Other peripheral sorties into medical history and public health led by Fred Rogers gave us some of the last chances any group had to hear the fiery John A. Kolmer, ever young beyond his years. With the conclusion of Anatomy passed the relaxed attitudes of Roger “Let’s look that one up together Davidheiser and Daddy's enlightened S-X-U. If opposite poles were ever to attract, it should have happened in the Spring of 1962 when predictable Robert Hamilton and volcanic Morton J. Oppenheimer locked horns in a struggle for any time not preempted by ping-pong and pool balls. Organized men, which some must surely be, have a friend in Robert Houston Hamilton. As he inimitably says, I can understand why you gentlemen are so often late. ... I was late once myself. Along with the Professor’s sincere dedication to comfortable organization, the departmental verve is Bob Baldridge, scintillating if cynical, a man who sees beyond the outline. Was endocrine metabolism ever more lucid before (or since) Joe Boutwell “structured it for us? The versatile Jonathan Cilley 29

Page 32 text:

and in transit provided our first introduction to Arthur Nelson, M.D., the new Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, former military engineer and quasicompanion along the way. The second of the nationally known men we met during the Freshman Year appeared in the person of Raymond C. Truex. Temple was as new to him as it was to us, but he had one distinguishing, all-important ally: A head-spinning knowledge of human neuroanatomy. The student of Truex is the student of a willing and able teacher. The su- and we knew it; just as we knew that his overall, oversimplified General Concepts of Umbilicus were not really all that one had to master before healing the infirmed. Yet, even when his bland verbal unction for our ego decubiti wore monotonously thin (as it did within a few weeks), we had at times to muster up enough self-deceit, having exhausted our cynicism, to believe that perhaps wishing will make it so. Daddy is a title not lightly earned and certainly not lightly worn. We now know that aside from his paternal interests in Freshmen, JFH also enjoys an international reputation in Anatomy and in progressive medical education. In the anatomy lab we met our first (and for most, last) cadaver — face down. The usual crisis of the first lunch eaten in one's grease-sticky apron was soon met and conquered. Freshman happiness is olfactory adaptation. Resignedly, families bowed to the odiferous presence of fledgling medics in the house; even desperate student nurses invested formaldehydic excursions in their marital hope chests. If the lab was an education in the static certainty of origin and insertion, it was also an exercise in the unpredictable dynamics of heterogeneous human interrelationships. Through table to table politicking, we selected one from our ranks to function as the spokesman for his peers in a series of struggles waxing both sublime and ridiculous. Would there or would there not be an honorable Honor System? This highly rhetorical question fruitlessly occupied the group mind for many hours, perb ambidextrous presentations of Robert Troyer (particularly his three-week synopsis of the nine-month maturation of an embryo) will not soon be forgotten by this generation of Temple students. Equally admirable were the frenetic fact-filled hours with Carson Schneck, particularly as he tried to outline the complex anatomy of the hand and ear in impossibly short hours. In Anatomy, it must be said, we had fun mixed 28

Page 34 text:

proved that unimaginative lab demonstrations need not lack a mischievous spontaneity. Aptly qualified for the task. Howard “It don’t do no good” Robinson assembled the data that established the immortality of the white rat (he never dies; he just fades away in malnutrition). The biochemical machine would seem to be destined to run for all time, lesser lights ever at hand to shine where older more brilliant flames once burned. In Chemistry, we knew where we stood. We also knew how to stand higher. With a course systematized as precisely as a chemical molecule, the weakness of Chemistry was its blatant temptation to play a numbers game and therein to miss the forest for the trees, the polymer for the peptides. The Physiologic Struggle, awesome in unscheduled exams and Philip Bard's ponderous text, with vast knowledge to be gained if only the perspective were clearer, overwhelmed the freshman mind — up to this time successfully leashed and curbed by limited concepts. In this area of the basic sciences, where, more than any other, important questions lie incompletely answered. Bard's text, useless by virtue of its inadequate index, failed to do more than make even the questions seem indistinct. In large part, the memory of formal Physiology is ephemeral: Often-vague principles were well enough presented, negligibly tested and totally unclarified through being unable to see one’s mistakes in order to correct them. A competent Physiology staff melds irretrievably in the mind with a flurry of swirling facts and incompletely grounded concepts. From the Chief down, this department glows with talent. Morton Oppenheimer's demonstration of the levels of central nervous system function in variably dener-vated cats should be remembered by all who saw it as a masterful teaching and learning exercise. More likely, most will recall the fear we had of Oppy's legendary TNT temper, furious when provoked. Mary P. Wiedeman is a much-published author always anxious to introduce the student to the intrigues of microcirculation and basic research. Frank Barrera and Guido Ascanio, accomplished cardiologists both clinically and in research, were able only to provide cursory coverage of electrocardiography — an area left inexcusably unexplored for Temple students. Giddy Joan Gault’s chirruping paeans to pulmonary physiology wafted us off on a non-stop, 17-day excursion both above and below the earth's crusty surface. John D. Evan’s (no. not of Evan's Blue fame) sympathetic attitude was welcomely appropriate and complemented by the tremulous careful presentations of E.A. Ohler. Warm Spring afternoons squandered in tedious, stifling Chem or Physio labs gave us the time and the reason to re-examine our values system: What are we doing here? Why are we here? Where are we going? And is it worth getting there? Having traded the fresh air excitement of intramural football, the carefree leisure of college for the magical disappearing act of Bence-Jones protein, one was left feeling that, perhaps like those old Manhattan Indians, he had been taken. Then we again learned that there really were Sophomores: First by joining them for their dance in the late Spring, and then, more forcefully, by realizing that Summer had come, that the intrigues of final examinations were now dim history once more, and that we were indeed the Sophomores at the TUMS ‘fact factory.’ This realization proved to be as good for the tummy as the familiar commercial product — if not a helluva lot better! 30