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

Page 8 text:

Elizabeth V. Lautsch, M.D., Ph.D. She moves around the rostrum, lecturing with great enthusiasm and intensity. In the laboratory she works with extraordinary endurance, appreciative of small gains in research. In private conversation she displays the outspokenness of a teenage girl; one is surprised realizing this is an august Professor of Pathology.

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Library Temple University Health Sciences Center CONTENTS Dedications Elizabeth Lautsch M.D., Ph.D. H. Taylor Caswell M.D. History of the Health Sciences Center Clinics and Community Medicine Faculty and Administration Senior Class Social Events Underclassmen Patrons and Advertisements

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More than fifteen years ago, Elizabeth Lautsch went directly from an internship to a local practice in a small industrial town near Winnipeg. In time the practice grew so large she was “collecting symptoms” and giving what she hoped was “appropriate therapy only. She had little knowledge of the disease process; she had few ways of checking her methodology. She felt “inadequate,” thinking she was failing to advance her understanding. She decided to become a student again. Despite the loss of patient contact, which she treasured, she chose Pathology. Her loss became the students’ gain. Her students became her “patients” —sick in ignorance, “cured” by regular, insidious doses of knowledge. The reward is mutual. Dr. Lautsch believes in the power of the science of Pathology to show the “errors and possibilities of medicine. The autopsy, in her eyes, is a learning opportunity for all physicians and students: a chance to witness the disease process, to reveal the enemy. But the revelation comes at some cost. The “little unpleasantness” of the autopsy room, the cost of seeing the hideous.” the “tragic. is an admitted liability but is no barrier to knowledge. She has never performed an autopsy without compassion and sorrow.” This woman who can speak of the “celestial joy of childbearing, who made sure to put her daughters to bed every evening before returning to the hospital, loves teaching. Her students, like her children, are her “social life” and they too grow by learning. She always gets “spastic” while preparing a lecture, not sure of herself unless she has combed the latest sources. She is chronically dissatisfied with her lecture presentations and she gave herself three years to improve her teaching, or leave the very year the students singled her out for excellence. She is always a little bit dissatisfied.” She reveals some Prussian blood, a hard sense of duty. She must have the German Romantic in her too. enjoying the aspiring quality of her research, the anticipation. She is genuine. If we ever forget the realities of life and death. that we figure in the patient's destiny.” we shall see those grey eyes flash as if to say. “perhaps you were stupid, or careless, or did your best, but it is the patient who pays in the end. And we finally grow up. realizing that responsibility: but always we remain her students.