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

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was entertaining for a while and provided wads of handouts; new department member Dr. Elbert McCoy did lots of homework for his gastrointestinal series, claiming nothing in the textbooks was at all satisfactory. He also initiated the custom of greeting each new day with a little quiz; attendance was good. Elbert J. McCoy, Ph.D. In physiology laboratory, we experimented mainly on dogs and each other, though frogs and turtles occasionally showed up for the fun. While half the class no longer remembers it clearly, the other, coin flip-losing half will not shortly forget the exquisite discomfort of the infamous cold pressor test. Pulmonary function evaluation swiftly wiped out Hulac, Jacobson, Lund, Jenkins and Marks, suggestion a defect in either one of the spirometers or the mid-portion of our class alphabet. EKG day found Marc Richmond, ordinarily not an extroverted showman, entertaining us with his extra-systoles, which he can induce on command (a normal variation but neat cocktail party trick). Dogs were approached and attacked in teams of six: surgeon, assistant surgeon, technician, Gilson data recorder, and two kibbutzers. We soon learned the standard and familiar techniques for prematurely sending the beasts to their ancestors: slipping bulldog clamps on carotid arteries, sliding decimal places in dosage calculations, and slightly too high voltage on the stimulator. Sometimes no exogenous error was needed-a dog might merely decide to fade, and there you were with the respirator, Ascanio, and potential disaster. The lessons supposedly to be learned from the racked-out doggies were reviewed in post-lab conferences held in the most uncomfortable room in North Philadelphia. There we learned that there are enough reflexes in a dog to justify most any result except frank canicide. On some particularly lengthy afternoons these conferences presented additional demonstrations, such as Dr. Levitt's decorticate cats, whose ears twitch if you touch them (F letch: So is that the cat ear twitch reflex? Correct). Here also Dave Henley—hopefully for the only time in his life-was called on (by Oppie) as the bushy-haired kid in the back row. All these remarkable scientific happenings were analyzed and recorded by each of us in a laboratory notebook, which was submitted, in traditional grade-school style, to be checked and initialed.

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Frank Barrera, M. D.

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Theodore Rodman. M.D. Peter R. Lynch, Ph.D. B-sr