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

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Guido Ascanio, M. D.

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What a deep docility we displayed in those days-actually showing up in Room 316 for endless early-morning lectures, hour-after-hour, six days a week! Even the room itself seemed to suggest that we stay home. Though a handsomely constructed hall, 316 possessed hard, brutal chairs with wobbly, dangling writing-arms. Early in the semester, the frigid room well reflected the unwelcome Philadelphia winter outside, except that it was usually colder and at least no snow got in. And if we brought along a cup of coffee-first to warm the hands, then hopefully to keep the head awake—stern signs assured us that this was verboten. The P.A. system never worked right as long as we knew it: for one stretch of several months it accurately and uninterruptedly hummed at 120 hert2. Next it developed the talent of turning itself off at random times, effectively though arbitrarily censoring all comers. And of course, like shoddy P.A. systems everywhere, it knew how to feedback, and apparently enjoyed doing it. Poor old 316 almost died one weekend our sophomore year, when a steampipe ruptured, scorching and soaking the place, as well as sterilizing and bleaching Russell Conwell and the other hosts of forgotten worthies whose portraits occupied the walls. It was finally dismantled late in 1969, the new building having by then been fully “phased in. Sharing the whimsical 316 microphone and the intricate lab schedule with biochemistry was another large army of lecturers, the Physiology Department, a group mainly accomplished in cardiovascular research. The chief—Dr. Morton J. Oppenheimer—is noted for his research efforts with famous Temple luminaries Ernest Spiegel and Temple Fay, for his clarity in teaching, and supposedly for a hyperactive temper. Legend says that attacks of the latter have in the dim past propelled uncooperative dogs and intimidated medical students out the fourth-floor windows, but these may be only apocryphal flights of fancy-at least we never saw examples of these mythical outbursts. In fact, we didn't see much of “Oppie at all, which was too bad, because his few lectures and laboratory demonstrations revealed a learned physiologist with a facile teaching style. That neuromuscular demonstration with the storage oscilloscope and sidekick Tom was extremely well-done lit actually tours, as a kind of travelling road-show, to other area medical schools and colleges). Who did we see a lot of? Dr. Guido Ascanio murdered volume conduction theory, then proceeded to lecture rather vaguely on the CNS, relying (as most of the class did), on the material in Selkurt's paperback. Dr. Jan Levitt, actually a bright and pleasant woman outside the lecture hall, proved uncomfortable and tedious in front of Morton J. Oppenheimer, M. D. Chairman of the Department of Physiology i

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Joan H. Gault, M. D. the large group: she relied more on Ruch Patton than on Selkurt, which would have been admirable had her interpretation been more helpful. Moving on to the cardiovascular system, Dr. Franco Barrera took his turn at murdering volume conduction, in preparation for a nicely-done series on the electrical aspects of the heart. Then Ascanio reappeared and redeemed himself by making the pump's pumping properties fairly clear-Starling's Law apparently accounts for most everything good and bad the heart does. Next (approximately), Dr. Joan Gault took the podium and some kitchenware, for the purpose of elucidating the microcirculation. Dr. Gault had the peculiar and distracting habit of punctuating her narrative with randomly placed chuckles which soon triggered a kind of feedback loop that got us all nowhere. It went something like this: she would make a sober statement about, say, capillary sphincters, then, for no obvious reason, chuckle. The class, finding this juxtaposition of sphincter and chuckle somewhat comic, would in turn itself nervously chuckle. Dr. Gault, her humor now seemingly reinforced, would make a sober statement about, say, arteriolar bifurcations, then chuckle. And so it went. Dr. Mary Wiedeman, of national repute in microcirculation research, presented a truly elegant laboratory demonstration employing her own films and a live bat under-microscope, and-perched on a stool-lectured to us on the eye and later on hormones. Lecture after lecture: we heard from Dr. Barrera again, on the lung (good); Dr. Michie went hopelessly around circles in the renal counter-current multiplier (bad). Dr. Ted Rodman Mary P. Wiedeman. Ph. D.