A CHANGE OF PACE

Today it is time for a change of pace.It is with a few exceptions in the future time to leave the University of Virginia, but for today I have some anecdotes of a doctor in training.

First year medical school was a great deal more work than college had ever been.The study of the body both didactic from the text and practical on the cadaver was time consuming along with the other courses and laboratories in the first year. It was make or break time.

The anatomy laboratory was on the second floor of the Medical school. We worked as teams of four students. I knew I was a klutz and was goinging to save the world iwth my brain! Not the other three on our team who all thought that they were surgeons and would fight for disecting time. One of these three was George Psimas who lived with his brother Gus, also a medical student, in the Cracker Box. He married a classmate of my wife. He became an Orthopedist and served in the Navy. A correspondence friendship with them lasted until his death in the late 90s.

Among those working in our dissecting room, which was the smaller of the two, were the class’s three women students. They and a male student were dissecting a male cadaver that was heavily endowed. These girls were well accepted as fellow students, thus some of the class jokers decided to insert a thin knitting needle down the penis, tying it down with dark thread. One day when hard at work on their cadaver, the thread was released and much to the girls surprise, right before their eyes, their cadaver suddenly had an erection. As you can imagine there was turmoil in that laboratory for a few minutes.

I had become serious about a young graduate nurse which increased the attraction to spend the second half of my second year vacation time in Charlottesville doing a “clerkship” in the medical clinic. I would exam new patients, order what little labatory tests we had, and make a diagnosis.The Resident in charge would confirm my diagnosis-or correct it- and institute treatment. During that summer, I had to rent a room near the hospital because my “Home on the Range” was occupied by a summer student.

As third-year students, we spent two weeks in Norfolk at the King’s Daughters’ Clinic that provided a home Obstetrical delivery program. The medical student was accompanied by a nurse, often into a home without electricity, and delivered the baby either by candlelight or kerosene lamp.

This was truly natural chidbirth. Because of the lamps or candles ether could not be used. The nurse would administer a small amount of chloroform when and if she felt it was needed.

We knew to depend for advice, and coaching, upon the nurse, whose knowledge and experience base was extensive. If we were getting into trouble she called for an ambulance to take the patient to a hospital.

The near dozen deliveries were a great experience and for the first time we felt like we were “real doctors”.

The surgical rotation was a most difficult one. The student was the third assistant at an operation and if lucky just held a retractor. If it was a pulmonary case, he often was under the drapes holding up a shoulder sometimes for hours.

In Southern hospitals of that era, the patient wards were segregated not only by sex but also by race. The wards were large and open and contained at least 20 beds. The male and female black wards were in the basement. “F Ward” was the male “black” ward. My girlfriend who was still a student often had the 11 to 7 shift for that ward as the only nurse there. There was a rocking chair in the middle of the ward floor which one night began to rock all by itself; nobody was in it! You can imagine the consternation among the patients of F Ward. She too was reluctant to have duty there but had little choice.

Under close supervision of the residents, the Third and Fourth year medical students also staffed the outpatient clinics. Of course I had already done that during the previous summer. It was this hands on training that made us good doctors.

After Pearl Harbor, the medical school program accelerated with the elimination of the summer vacation and we graduated in March of 1943. Next was a shortened 9 months rotating internship in Syracuse, followed by 2 years of Army of which the last 1-1/2 years were spent in Europe.