USC School of Medicine - Asklepiad Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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we are a composite . . . with personality

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In Redbeard Kurasawa presents a masterpiece study of the elements in the physician ' s character which ennoble his profession above all others. Redbeard is a stalwart Robin Hood, grotesque, cunning, hirsute and the chief doctor of a poorhouse clinic. Central to Redbeord ' s character is o firm conviction that the body and the soul are inextricable in health and in sickness. The clinic itself appears as a horrendous vision of Hell stuffed with Dantesque forms, human ghosts writhing each in the pain of some unforgivable sin, some invisible emotional agony. Inscrutable fate compels a rebellious young intern to enter the clinic services. This intern possesses a modern Dutch Medical education of which the gist is ironically contained in four thin notebooks. Redbeard digests the notebooks in two days, alienating the intern who intended to use the private knowl- edge to become wealthy. The plot of the film romanticizes the emotional reunion between the young and the old doctor. The young disciple learns in short order that the truly effectual physician is not the selfish technician. Redbeard is terse, but behaves as if the physician is essentially a humanitarian who must harness the skills of the magician, the cunning politician, the teacher, the scientist, and the Father in his practice. All the mechanical manipulations ultimately fail since they do not destroy the effective cause of disease; The will to die. Kurosawa conceives the will to death as abreoction to stress, to emotional tragedy which dissipates the patient ' s own resources of defense. Too often Redbeard and the disciple find themselves powerless recorders, able to temporize with disease, scarecrow it over a fence, but inexorably death conquers the patients of the contagious words, one by one. Five or six depth studies of the history of physical afflictions are related in the film, related with such a priestly tenderness. sympathy, and understanding of human passion and foible that the young intern begins to respect the Angel of death. Death is dignified, grumbles Redbeard to his disciple, and you must watch this old man die, you and he alone in his chamber. The disciple recoils in horror, the old man coughs away, his life cut short by a cancer that seems to derive from the grief of losing his family. Again and again the intern witnesses the dignity of dying, and wide eyes narrow with wisdom. He feels himself shrink and dwindle into a hum- bleness that saps his pride and defiance, and thereby falls seriously ill himself. Not drugs nor all the knowledge in his four notebooks restore him, but the compassionate care of a previous patient. Through this episode the intern becomes resolved to devote his life to Redbeord ' s theory of medicine and to abandon a wealthy practice. Behind every illness is some overwhelming grief or misfor- tune counsels Redbeard; and the physician ' s responsibility is to understand the nature of the emotional stress preceding the clinical signs. In this respect, Kurosawa recalls to mind Plato who banished from his Republic all physicians save those with illnesses themselves. An intriguing set of commentaries from our film directors! In one cose the archetypic isolation of the intellectual, in another i the danger of the enthusiastic but untalented, and in the third j place the nobleness of the physician who seeks along with his ! i technical skills the wisdom of life ' s stubborn riddles. The j observations are no less pertinent to the theatre public than to j us in our introduction to medical careers, and as our stage | i resolves itself into the simple question of how much we are to behave as if Medical Training is a trade school or a true University experience — on experience penetrating and ques- tioning all for the precious little truth the gods, masters of j disguise, afford us. by Jason Berger v 46

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sophomores . the class of 15 r J % Rarely will there ever be a year of such adjustment, anxiety or plain hard work, yet one culminating in such pride of accomplishment. Self-reliance, application of knowledge and the doctor-patient relationship are the style of the year. Perhaps the most stressful period of our lives was the review before finals. Life in those times was simple: study, eat and sleep, often eliminating the latter. The amount of material to be mastered in the eight, or so, courses of the second semester was more than any of us had met in a full year of undergrad. In looking back, it seems remarkable that we could study as much as we did over such a seemingly endless time. David Abrams, president