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

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covered would seem meaningless to us at that point, their extreme relevance would become increasingly more apparent as we matured in our careers. Some of the fascinating topics etched in our very craniums which are already proving their invaluability are those such as: 1) The sexual cycle of Wucheria bancrofti 2) Peculiarities of stool factories and the effects of tetracycline there on 3) If we'd ever see peptidoglycan in a cell wall we'll know how to treat it. One important question raised by star-student Pointdexter Biff Atheras was, Hey, what's the story with corn?!?? Pathology was no picnic either. This department, led by Tony Award Winner Broadway Sid Arden (star of the hit the book was a point of contention for the longest time; while Dr. Seuss wanted to call it One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Dead Fish, Dr. Whincman favored Green Eggs and Radiodermatitis. Memorable things did occur in this class that we's like to record for posterity: We all recall a certain Friday morning when one of our colleagues was literally wheeled into class, bottle of rum still firmly attached to his right hand, with the visible battle scars of the previous night's bachelor party etched onto his face and body. And let's not forget those poor souls from Becker who dared to turn on the lights in the projection room during a slide presentation. The wrath of Whineman sent them scurrying down the hall with their tails between their legs, wishing they'd never been born. Oh yes, and just remember those immortal words of wisdom, When voting for the Teacher of the Year, be advised it is not a popularity contest! And if Dr. Whineman thought he was perfect, Dr. Jacob knew that he was. Giving credit where it is due however, our resident schlarp aneschlezheolozghischt gave us some of our best lectures of second year. Not to build him up too much, it was kind of a jzhlerclk phizhlishin's move to punish us for poor attendence by forcing us to read the handout on cancer chemotherapy. This manuver was in lieu of a lecture that he couldn't give anyway because of a prior commitment . Luckily for us whenever a question on cancer popped up, methotrexate was always the answer of show, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?), consisted of an array of faculty the likes of which even James Watt would be proud: a Korean, a Philippino, two Jews and a Scotsman. Broadway's scintillating lectures forced us to take the full compliment of cuts lest our brains become maximally pronated and locked. And speaking of cuts, thanks to Bev Poulson each of us managed to enjoy our full allotment of them---some of the more enterpris- ing even managed to purchase a few extra from the more financially destitute members of the class. Pathomechanics opened our eyes and our minds: taught by King H. D. (Howdy Doody) Schoenhaus, we learned that the Root of all evil was not greed, but uncontrollable pronation. If we could invert the sub-talar joints of prominent heads of state we'd change the course of history. You see, in severe pronation, it's not only that the sub-talar joint is out of control, the abnormal forces are actually transmitted clear up to the sphenoid bone at the floor of the brain. This produces a pathological action upon the precentral sulcus causing personality shifts hence the well known clinical entity: The Pronatory Personality. (Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were both severe pronators.) Dr. Stephen Whineman (the man that Saturday Night Live used as their role model for the character of Steve and Wendy Whiner) was our host for Roentgenology. We looked for forward to this course with sincere anticipation of learning how to interpret radiographs of the foot. Disappointed, we discovered that the only soft tissue or bony pathology that could possibly occur is... pronation. On the bright side, each Friday morning we did review a bit of arithmatic... Dr. Whineman's forte seemed to be counting to twenty-five. We probably shouldn't be too hard on him as he was under a good deal of pressure at the time. You see, he and Dr. Seuss were co-authoring a comprehensive reference that was to revolutionize Podiatry. The title of choice. Speaking of questions, many a fingernail was chewed to the proximal IPJ upon reading 500 pages of notes and knowing the test would consist of a whooping fifteen questions! Orthopedics with Dr. Whitney was like visiting the dark side of the moon. With lectures brought to us directly from deep inside the subtalar joint we learned that pronation was not the only pathology of the foot. We also found that if Merton Root was obsessed with the frontal plane and Jim Ganley was obsessed with the transverse plane that Dr. Whitney's heart and soul were definately in the astral plane. Combining our vivid imaginations with his Triplane Taxonomy we could come up with many problems just screaming

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lent artist when he attempted a drawing on the midterm... half the class maintained that it was a sketch of the tibia while the other half recognized it as the third metatarsal. Regardless of the correct answer, there was no denying that his drawing was one of... a shaft. For everything south of the patella Dr. DiPrimio was flown in direct from the heart of South Philly. Each time he stood in front of the class in his dark pin-striped suit and gently lifted his collection of ragged bones from his violin case, he brought new meaning to the phrase, Yo, Falconio! Drs. Fenton and Burke were the First Class Act of the first year. They were both well prepared, both had offices on the fifth floor, and they both had different last names! Oh my Gosh! Coincidence? I think not! ... for we saw far too many coincidences in this course. For a moment, picture if you will... an amino acid... alone, yet not alone... swirling endlessly in the never-ending tempestual sea of metabolism. . . a veritable jungle of activity, yet retaining inherent stability. . . synthesizing, catabolizing, metamorphosizing, from one compound to another. There in a strange, mysterious world, neither in daylight or darkness... teetering on the very brink of reality. Yes, these and countless other paradoxes were a commonplace occurance, and wedged precariously in some dark corner of our memories still lies the terrifying realm of.....Biochemistry Zone And what of Dr. Burns? In just twelve short weeks we learned two entire pages of biomechanics definitions!. . without him ever cracking a smile! Oh!, and let's not forget that this time was also shared with Marvin Jacoby... (he's almost for real; just saddle him up with spurs on your heels.) After our time spent with Dr. Jacoby (the 1981 Poster Child for Congcntial Hip Dysplasia,) most of us were very thankful we weren't enrolled in the six-year stint for the DPM-PhD in Biomechanics! As the first year wound to a close, we had mixed emotions. . . deliriously happy to be Vi of the way toward our goal (DPM), but terrified of the years that lay ahead (thanks to horror stories told by upper classmen.) In retrospect, we made some friends and had some good times: our Holiday Party at Society Hill Club was a huge success!. . . and our end-of-the-year picnic at Cooper River Park gave the animals amongst us a chance to shine: brutally rending the garments from the back of R. Pierce and turning his ever- present nametag into a worthless ball of molten plastic. By the end of the first year we had lost a few more students: some to med school, some to other podiatry schools and still others. . . just lost!! ACT II, SCENE I •Warning! This section may be confusing, even for the R.Ph. Our chests puffed with pride (and some with kleenex) at the idea of almost being a doctor, we met to begin our second year in Room 319. Old 319 , as we fondly called it, was the think-tank on the third floor for those well versed in anatomy, biochemistry and phys... physio... kwashiork. physiology ... whew!! We began second year thrilled at the prospect of finally learning something applicable . Our lives were filled with spoon-shaped nails and we found ourselves dodging bullet-like spores from the many types of perfect fungi. Hearing tales told by those who had trod this path before, we were somewhat apprehensive at the thought of facing another nine months of cutting classes to snooze, ordering pizzas at midnight, and watching our liver enzymes skyrocket thanks to local clubs. . . could we take another year of the good life ? In retrospect, the workload was greater than the first year's had been, but we were appreciative (usually) of the seemingly more relevant nature of the Beast . ACT II, SCENE II Dr. Krausz made certain we could all spell Saracoptes scabei just in case we intended to teach Classical Greek Podiatry in the future. King Harold showed us nude babies while insulting Paul Good... and we had quizzes to determine whether we would post in varus, post in valgus, or post no bills. And speaking of posting, the test grades were no longer a secret... it soon became a spectator sport after grades were posted watching a student with a 25% act as if he she had aced the test. The Sixth Floor finally caught on and decided to restore anonymity by using our names instead of our numbers. Micro taught us that Staph was resitant. .. but we were susceptible. . . to dim lights and long lectures. Many of us ended class with our notes firmly imprinted on our foreheads ... if not our brains. Dr. Dziarski proved to be the class of this show. Though at times he was difficult to understand because of his heavy Irish accent, his lectures were of the highest quality. Dr. Axler kept us on the edge of our seats with tales of capsids and RNA viruses that reproduced like lustful heathens! Dr. Abramson used insight and compassion in his approach: when we were nearly down for the count, our highlighters bruised and battered, massive hematomas shrouding our once proud facies, he steered our recovery in Merril-Lynch fashion through all of the bull. We were fortunate to have lectures on cell structures and microbial genetics from the only gram positive coccus ever to hold a teaching position in all of Podiatry.....Bohdan Terleckyj. We soon learned that caffeine was the drug of choice for this chronic pest. We began to fear fecal fallout more than nuclear fallout and learned that somehwere out there ... indiginous to society . . . lurk more microbes than R. has hockey shorts! We were assured that although some of the material

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for us to treat. The latter part of the year saw us finally getting some pertinent clinical courses: Physical Diagnosis, Introduction to Podiatric Surgery, and Introduction to (real) Surgery. The last course mentioned couldn't have been easier to pass even if they'd given us a copy of the final before the actual exam. Hey! Wait a minute... they did! Wouldn't you know it. . . . there always has to be one in the crowd: One guy, whose name won't be mentioned (but his initials are Ed. Fremer.) really screwed up. He knew the FBI had just installed new TV monitors in room 319... this didn't seem to matter as ol' Ed still carried in his cheat sheats. For those of us who chose to catch up on our sleep during Clinical Observation, our first day of treating patients in summer clinic produced quite the sympathetic discharge. . . more than one student, upon being handed that first chart froze in their own puddle of urine and pleaded, ''What do I do Now?” National Boards was quite another surprise. We had the pleasure of abusing Dr. Whincman, for he was under the belief that ”B” was the answer for the test. Lucky for him, he just barely passed. .. his good fortune was owed to the fact that for many of the questions, the answer was ”B' ACT III The third year was an interesting potpourri of clinic rotations, allied facilities, long afternoons in class, and the advent of. . . that's right!. . . patellar orthotics, for those industrious students trying to get ahead in the residency game. Thrilled at the prospect of being through with the basic sciences, but horrified at the stories of the coming year, we waited in silent anticipation at our Welcome back coffee and donuts”, semi-prepared to be turned loose in the nail farm. This year, we were destined to spend our grueling mornings healing the thousands of indigents literally beating down the fifty-cent shower curtains attempting to experience our mystical mending powers. This energy seemed to flow as we'd engage in The Laying On Of The Goniometers ... and of course, we didn't do this alone: we have THE BOYS to thank for their guidance. . . The Clinic Boys, that is: Karpo, Mags and Kwas. In clinic, in our comprehensive history taking, we became aware of the existance of many new and exciting disorders from which our patients claimed to have suffered. . . Fleabites, Fireballs of the Eucharist, The Grouch, and Two Buckets of Locusts were several of the more interesting diseases encountered. Thanks to the vast surgical experience most of us had during this year, we became artists of the pre-op workup: from shuffling patients form the insurance office to the phlebotomy lab; to explaining why they needed CAT scans, rectal exams, and adrenal function tests for a simple P and A (after all, we wouldn't want to give a phone booth to an Addison). Each afternoon following clinic we'd don our straight jackets and file into the dimly-lit room 236 (that well-padded cell on the sec- ond floor in which each of us had earned a rightful spot.) It could have been the effects of too much time being spent in our windowless padded cell but, as a group, we really started to weird out: arguing about a vote to determine whether or not we needed to hold a lottery to see who would get to participate in the lottery is a prime example. Our attitudes changed concerning grades: from the timid students we were first and second years trying our best for a good grade and hoping that they didn't try to flunk us. . . to the cocky third years shooting for the Almighty ”P” and daring them to even try and flunk us (this attitude reached its zenith at the end of the year and can be summed up in just one word: ''Unity''!) Even our attitudes towards our fellow students took a turn for the worse... In a situation where a premium should be placed on learning and intelligent inquisitivness, we had the audacity to limit the number of stupid questions to two per student per lecture. Some people were so embarrassed by our sudden shift to the left, they changed their names hoping that they could dissociate from this beast (the Class of 84); but hiding behind names like Phil” and Berkley didn't fool anyone. .. we still knew who they were. And, in an effort to broaden our scope, we instituted an exchange program with the other Podiatry schools and made our first one to one trade with California... Lee Techner for Bart Edwards. It's still too early to judge the degree of success of the swap. Our classes during third year covered a wide range of topics. Some were well taught, while others were... well... you get the idea. Truly spanning this spectrum were the dreaded dynamic duo of third year... Derm and Neuro... to be discussed separately of course. Derm was presented as a somewhat less than fascinating array of macules, vasculitities, purpuric marmorato, Hen-och-Schoenlein livido reticulares... and whatever else you can possibly imagine that is red and or bumpy. Also, we were lucky enough to be presented with Dermatogly-phics, the almost forgotten language of the skin specialists of Ancient Egypt. Imagine our delight! Yes, Dermatology did provide us with a great deal of useful. . .. zzzzzzz. .. Oh! So Sorry, just dozed off! Dr. Witkowski, while reading at Vi the speed of light, strove to make the course second to none by giving us every dermatological disease known to man. .. and quite a few extra he surely fabricated from his imagination. . . come on now, from where did he pull this one? Toasted Skin Syndrome.... what did he take us for, idiots?!?? Ah yes, and what about the 14,000 slides he so expertly blended into one two-trimester long, third-rate motion picture, the monotonic drone of which just seemed to sedate us into a nice nap? His best line of the year came early on, Who's the note-taker for this lecture today. . . that Terrell babe again? On the other side of the coin-shaped lesion (or nummular, for you purists) was Dr. (Vampire) Bhatt. With his haunting stare and superb visual aids, his manner of instruction captured our consciousness the moment we entered the room. The most difficult time our class had with Dr. Bhatt was trying to coax him into giving us only 8 points on the midterm instead of the 12 he had originally intended. (We had hoped to sell the extra 4 points to Howard Nuss who had recently secured a position with the APA as the Council of Teaching Hospital's official Test Point Broker . Mr. Nuss would in turn, sell the points to those of us who 17