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

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THIS YEARBOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE FACULTY OF THE TEMPLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE WHOSE DIVERSITY WAS A FORCE IN SHAPING OUR CAREERS.

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 The students, stated the Medical School catalog we all received, spend all of the first semester of the freshman year in the department of anatomy. This was no careless exaggeration: following the tedious ceremonies of orientation week we all moved into Room 603 for a long and sober stay, making daily field trips either down the hall or one flight down the stairs. The task was to learn a new and necessary geography: we had moved suddenly into a strange and extensive city and had to acquaint ourselves completely with not only every major street, park, pipe and monument, but even with the detailed structure and furnishings of every house and factory! A frequently satisfying but always frustrating challenge, acquiring anatomy was an ordeal made more than tolerable by several considerations. Firstly, we would all have been oddly disappointed had that first semester not been a struggle—we expected an absurdly impossible workload, endless hours, and devastating odors. These would somehow ally us with all who had already gone through it and who now (we romantically conjectured) put in the absurd hours in truly medical efforts — all-night interns and seven a.m. surgeons. But the primary factor which made anatomy not only sufferable but fun was that uniquely colorful, accomplished, and most genial faculty. Freshmen were always welcome at their coffee-break table (which was actually maintained, in shifts, continuously from breakfast until Dr. Schneck bolted for his train), where the conversation ranged from football to fibroblasts,-a variety surely never equalled by the Algonquin Roundtable! Dr. Huber - chief of the department if not of its coffee-break table - greeted us the first day, seriously discussed the traditions and implications of his science, then paternally pointed out for us the external occipital protruberance — and made the first slice. It was all downhill from there . .. Daddy reappeared periodically to introduce the regions as we slowly probed and scraped our way caudally, and also described for us the larynx and Huber lung in Large Group Presentations based on his distinguished research in these areas. He also contributed an encouraging word at critical points, and generously permitted us some laughs at his own expense, secure in his awareness of our genuine respect and regard. Dr. Schneck based his lucid lectures on fundamentals of anatomy and mechanics, but their clinical orientation pleased and honored us. He proved even more effective a teacher in small groups: a heap of forty-seven or so classmates climbing over each other's ears in the gross lab meant that somewhere in the midst of that throng Dr. Schneck was dressing a cadaver in gems. In the alternate realm of histo and neuro, Dr. Troyer with his random collection of hardware and debris levitated us through ventricles ( . . .chroia plexus hanging down, O.K., now we crawl around.. . ) and most of embryology. In a department rich in friendly raconteurs. Dr. Troyer was outstanding as a wit and consistent nice guy. Deceptively waggish in his own right was Dr. Rodriguez, though his favorite one-liner wearied on too many hearings: iHyou are deesecting now weeth the dynamite? The Peruvian's chromatic interpretation of the Trigeminal Nerve remains for many the singly most memorable and perplexing happening in 603-no question, the Rod had style! So did Dr. Ray Truex. in his personality if not in the pages of his often redundant and forbidding textbook. But the widespread use of this book and its author's election as President of the American Association of Anatomists confirmed our awed appreciation of the mastery this scientist owns of the byzantine pathways of our nervous system.