Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted by Gerald Imber Md

Author:Gerald Imber Md [Imber, Gerald Md]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Medical, Surgery, General
ISBN: 9781607146278
Google: kdUhAQAAMAAJ
Amazon: 1607148587
Publisher: Kaplan Publishing
Published: 2010-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Teaching without Teaching

THE SECOND-YEAR CLASS WAS 40 strong, including eight women. What they shared with the inaugural class was dissatisfaction with the instruction they were receiving, or weren’t receiving. From the first day there was a running battle with Mall, who not only had not procured cadavers for dissection, but didn’t know how to properly embalm and store them when supply became plentiful. What sharp contrast this was from the P&S anatomy instructor, William S. Halsted, who was ever present in the dissecting room and provided excellent examples of proper dissections for the students to study. Mall offered no instruction. He expected medical students had no need for spoon-feeding of so basic a subject; that’s what books were for. Nor did he bother with formal lectures. He was, however, available to the few who were interested in experimental projects. The medical students didn’t simply dislike Mall, they detested him. He, in turn, wasn’t going to be bothered with students unwilling to educate themselves. When a student complained about having nothing to do, Mall handed him a broom. He simply refused to teach “shoemaker anatomy for the pill doctors.” He did pay enough attention to one of the female first-year students to marry her. However, marriage disqualified students, and the new Mrs. Mall dropped out.

The students complained to the dean. Welch tried to mediate, but the students soon found that he, too, was among the missing when it came to teaching. Simon Flexner, who had come to him as a graduate student in 1890, was his assistant when the medical school opened. Welch had regularly scheduled lectures for the class, which he rarely attended, sending Flexner, who was a fine researcher but a less than dynamic speaker, in his stead. Welch and Mall shared the philosophy that American medical students were taught too much, and not allowed to learn. The students thought they were simply lazy. Their colleagues, particularly Osler, believed both Mall and Welch were lazy and derelict in their duties to the medical students.

John J. Abel, the third laboratory scientist whose fame was meant to attract the best student population, was another teaching dud. Having spent seven years in Europe after earning his PhD at Michigan, he returned home with an MD degree but very little desire to practice medicine. In the laboratory he was among the first to isolate epinephrine, did important research on insulin, and was respected as a biochemist and physiologist. But as well-meaning as he was, Abel was a boring lecturer, not at all interested in teaching, and impossibly inept at laboratory demonstrations.

The biggest problem, however, was Halsted. In the fall of 1895, the students were beginning their exposure to clinical subjects. As the moment marking the transition from student of basic science to fledgling physician, it was much anticipated and meant a great deal to the already disgruntled students. Halsted had been scheduled to lecture on wound healing the previous spring, but the course never materialized. The Professor was nowhere to be found;

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