Transcript: Tape 4 Side B

DATE: March 10, 1998/ March 12, 1998
TAPE: Tape 4
INTERVIEWEE: Thomas Scully, M.D.
INTERVIEWER: Eileen Barker
PLACE: Dr. Scully's home, 1400 Ferris Lane in Reno
TRANSCRIPTIONIST: Teresa Garrison (Revised 2016, Haley Kovac)

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Thomas Scully: Medicine is a specialty and it's a three-year residency like anything else, pediatrics and medicine. But in those days, many people would have a one-year internship and go on, but I recall there was clearly the message from faculty at the medical school, the full-time people; clearly the message there was, 'Times are changing, the scientific base of medicine is expanding, research is expanding, specialization and sub-specialization is moving.' Up to that time, sure there were specialists, there were surgeons and ophthalmologists and orthopedic surgeons; but it was now more and more people were going to go into specialties and pediatrics and internal medicine and OB were going to expand. So, the message I always got was 'Get training now, don't go into practice.' But I have to say some of my classmates went into practice in the Albany area after one-year internship, are very successful and I assume have provided good care to their patients; but that, of course, has changed dramatically. That was the academic environment; the school itself was up a mile or so from the area around the capital and the capital was an old building as I recall.

Eileen Barker: I remember the hospital being not too far from the train station, is this the one?

TS: No, that's another one. There is a hospital downtown; I'll think about it in a minute, it eventually did obstetrics.

EB: What was the name of the hospital that you were involved in?

TS: It was called Albany Medical Center. And right across the street, of course the bigger hospital, where we did a lot of our training was the Albany Veterans Administration; which was a fairly new, big hospital built, as you know, after the Second World War. The VA built big hospitals all over the country, but many of them were put on the campus or next door to the medical schools and back in the early '50s the VA made a decision to put its hospitals near medical schools and to have their physicians teach and supervise, crossover, it was thought at the time, as a way of improving the quality of medical care for the veteran. Up 'til the Second World War, the few places, as I understand it, that the Veterans Administration ran were old homes for soldiers out in the middle of nowhere. They were in Nowheresville. Well, the VA in Reno started that way.

EB: If they had anything serious that to be done, they would contract to send them somewhere else or contract with a local hospital.

TS: Right. But not the Albany VA, the Albany VA was very modern, built right after the war; and so when I got there, it had only been open a few years and we spent a lot of our time over there. I learned how to do physical exams and all that. But the old college, which was still there, and I haven't been back in years so I don't know what it's like now; gosh, I remember on top of an old rickety third or fourth floor was where the anatomy lab was and we'd go up back stairs and up a rickety elevator to an old cadaver room with windows. So, starting at medical school…

EB: Quite antediluvian.

TS: Yeah, that's what it was like. And a whole bunch of us lived very close to the medical school in a whole bunch of rooming houses. Several of which had been bought and owned by physicians in town, and they would just keep rotating them. The one I was in, I've forgotten probably, 10 or 12 medical students; usually two to a room, a tiny room like this and we'd share a bathroom and there'd be six or seven or eight medical students trying to get to school at eight in the morning we're all using one or two toilets and one sink to shave in. I recall the name of the street was Quail Street and there were a number of these rooming houses all next to each other which had been old Victorian homes, bought up by physicians and rented out to medical students; and the nice part about it, you just walked across a big park and a parking lot and you'd be at school and you could run to school in three or four minutes. But the school, itself, did not have any dormitories or rooming facilities, you got around town and I lived in several of those.

EB: Like the University of Nevada, you're on your own for housing.

TS: I had never smoked a cigarette in my life, never.

EB: I'll bet you I know what it was.

TS: And it started in… [Together: Anatomy lab.] Dr. Jack Wolf was his name, was the professor and chairman of the Department of Anatomy, he was a chain smoker and in those days, few of the cadavers were actually embalmed, most of them were in vats of formaldehyde and the stench got to you. So he smoked all the time and he said 'Anybody who wants to smoke in the lab' so we started smoking, mostly to blow smoke around the cadaver we were dissecting and of course it got to be a habit and I did smoked then for another eight or nine years and eventually gave it up. I can tell you later the date I gave it up.

EB: What was the date, might as well tell me now.

TS: Well, December 5^th, 1963, I was in Spain. I had just taken my board examinations; that's why I remember the date, because it's on my board certification thing. I had taken my board examinations at Children's Hospital in Washington D.C. and got on a plane, the Air Force sent me back 'cause I was in an Air Force hospital, sent be back through, I guess, Wiesbaden. So, I left Andrew's Air Force base, I guess and flew to Wiesbaden and I picked up the flu; I had been studying hard for my exams and I got the flu and I was sick as a dog all the way across the Atlantic, I thought I was going to die and then it was stormed in so they put us down in an air base in France where I sat in a cold place for a day. Finally, after about two and a half days after leaving Washington D.C., I got home to Madrid; I was sicker than a dog, went to bed. Spent about a week, 10 days Celia nursing me and during that period of time, of course, the last thing I wanted to see or look at was a cigarette. That was it, I just stopped. I went back to work, after I got over the flu, whatever it was, and never had a cigarette since; so I went cold turkey.

EB: Boy, my experience in Spain, I have probably never seen so much smoking, except when we were in Tokyo. Did you notice that too? The heavy emphasis on smoking at all age levels?

TS: That was not so much the case when we lived there, but it has certainly become the case since as a part of women's liberation. We didn't see that, Spanish women would never smoke in public years ago.

EB: Oh really?

TS: No, no; wouldn't ever in public. The men used to smoke these terrible cigarettes, where they got their tobacco from, I don't know; but then later in the '70s and early '80s, our friends told us it started. Now, of course, you go to any bar for Tapas or any nightclub or any hotel and the women are smoking even more than the men. It's the same in Dublin, it's the same in London; it's sad to see these beautiful Irish girls smoking cigarettes and beautiful Spanish girls. So that wasn't the case in the '60s, but it certainly is the case now; but I smoked then in the first week I got into the anatomy lab in 1954 and I gave it up in 1963. I regret now that I exposed my wife and my children to cigarette smoke in the house those years, probably couple of our kids had some allergies and respiratory troubles and now that we know about second-hand smoke, I probably contributed to that. Anyway, I stopped and never had a cigarette since.

EB: So anatomy, was it a set up similar to what I'm familiar with now here at this medical school?

TS: Yeah, four people on a cadaver.

EB: The same cadaver?

TS: Yeah. I think we had gross anatomy almost the entire year; we dissected that cadaver all year long. Every single sinew, nerve, bone, et cetera and then, of course, we had neuro-anatomy, which was mostly microscopic and then we had bio-chemistry, which was nowhere as tough as it is today, although it was tough.

EB: This is all in the first year?

TS: All in the first year.

EB: Physiology?

TS: Some physiology, yeah, we had physiology. Dean Wiggers, who I mentioned, and a couple of his younger assistants did a lot of that. It wasn't a very big class, we had, I'll have to look it up, around 50 or 60 freshman, we were all in the same classroom. Big enormous anatomy, so four people to a table; maybe 12-15 tables, it was one floor on top of this building.

EB: Did you have any autopsies?

TS: That would come in the second year.

EB: Just as it is here.

TS: With pathology and microbiology and pharmacology. So, it was a very, very standard curriculum, it was the classic Post-Flexnerian, it had been going on 30 or 40 years; everybody was lock-step, everybody took the freshman courses in anatomy and bio-chemistry and physiology. In the sophomore classes, they took pathology, microbiology and pharmacology and then in the spring, the last few months of the second year is when you take a physical diagnosis course or an introduction to clinical medicine. We'd get rid of the lab stuff and put on a shirt and a tie and a jacket, or a little white jacket; and usually go across to the VA or right around the corner across into the hospital at Albany and start learning how to do histories and physicals.

EB: So this was really your first contact with patients starting around then.

TS: The end of the second year, yeah. As a matter of fact, I've often thought about that, freshman year for me is a blur; I have very little recollection of it.

EB: Were you happy?

TS: No, I don't know if I was happy, or sad or depressed.

EB: Or just in shock.

TS: Or shock, like many students, because we would go back and forth. We went to school on Saturday.

EB: Oh you did?

TS: Yes, went to school Saturday to almost one or two in the afternoon. We were exhausted, it was the traditional thing, you dissected that stuff and you memorized it all. They had no college cafeteria; they let us eat in the hospital cafeteria where the nurses would eat. So, and the freshman were always ostracized, they'd walk into the lunch room or the dinner room and everyone knew you were a freshman because you smelled of formaldehyde; and they'd say 'You're a freshman, would you please sit over there.' and the food was fairly inexpensive. Very few people could eat out in restaurants; although, we all used to go on Saturday nights to Joe's Delicatessen over on, forgotten what that street was. Anyway, not very far from the school and that would be always filled with medical students because you could get soup and big sandwiches, filled with all sorts of stuff, very inexpensively and a big stein of beer or something; although, I don't remember many people doing a lot of drinking. But freshman, for me it was a blur, because we probably were sleep deprived, I don't know; stayed up late hours studying and going to school in the morning, be there all day long, come home take a nap if you could or try to study or get something to eat. I don't recall in that time that exercise was a big thing, like it is today; we'd occasionally go out in the side yard and throw a football around, I remember that, we'd have some softball games occasionally.

EB: You wouldn't have had much time.

TS: There wasn't much time. I don't recall people getting on bikes and riding, and running, jogging was not in; none of that stuff.

EB: Well, you were right in the city, though.

TS: Yes. So, I just recall freshman year was one exam after another, studying and my only joy was occasionally when Celia would come up for the weekend or I'd go down to New York 'cause we were out of college the same year and she was working at the Rockefeller in New York, I told you earlier, but living at home with her parents. So, she'd occasionally borrow their car and drive up and we'd have a weekend together.

EB: You didn't have a car?

TS: No, I never had a car until I was out of medical school. Never owned a car in my life until I was an intern, couldn't afford it.

EB: You didn't work; you didn't have a job did you?

TS: I got a job in the spring, working in the blood bank. They taught me how to draw blood and taught me how to cross match; the only summer off I had, of course, was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. I did get a job driving a Pepsi-Cola truck, because I had driven trucks in Alaska, the guy was willing to trust me, but also the wife of the owner of the local Pepsi-Cola plant had been a classmate of my older sister. So, my older sister said 'Oh, I'll call' I've forgotten his name, 'I'll call him and ask him if he's got a job.' Well, Albany sits south of Lake George and Saranac Lake and that whole area; it's a big summer resort. So, it's closed down in the winter, filled with snow, but in the summer, all these little towns and little places would open up; and New Yorkers would stream in for their summer vacations. Well, opened up would be little roadside stands that needed Pepsi-Cola and hotdog stands and restaurants that would be closed, even hotels, most of them would be closed all winter long. So, he needed extra help so I got one of the routes that would take me up to Lake George. So, I'd get up at, who-knows-when, five o'clock in the morning or six and go to work and drive these trucks and unload crates, but I also worked inside, I learned how to run a bottling plant thing. I got through my freshman year because, and I wanted to say this for the record, my older sister and older brother gave me the tuition; they said 'We'll give you the tuition for the first year, 'cause we know it's important that you don't worry about eating and don't worry about the tuition and that you can do as well as you could.'

EB: There were no scholarships?

TS: No, and I don't think the medical school gave scholarships, I mean you paid tuition. I don't think there were, not at this point.

EB: Student loans, that kind of thing that our students survive on; there was no such thing then, unless you were a veteran.

TS: No. Well, there might have been. You could have probably gotten them as a veteran, maybe you could have gotten them from a local bank where your parents did business or something, but it wasn't a big deal like it is now. I frankly don't know how many people paid for it; I know that my sister, the older one who's a school teacher had a good job and at that time, I think she was overseas in Indonesia or Iran, one of those places, she gave me my tuition that year and my brother, one of my older brothers, would send me money so that I could have money to eat and buy some clothes.

EB: What's your older sister's name?

TS: Evangeline.

EB: That was Evangeline.

TS: Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about her later in my life; she was very helpful and then both of my older brothers would send me some money.

EB: What was the tuition then?

TS: I don't have the slightest idea, I can look it up 'cause I've got it written down. I have it in my history, I can't tell you what it was, I have no idea what the tuition was.

EB: This was open to anyone; I mean you didn't have to be a state resident.

TS: No, no, Albany is a private school.

EB: Oh, this is private.

TS: Albany is not a state school. No, it's not part of the state system, it's a private school. As a matter of fact, it's still a private school; and the tuition is very heavy like many other private schools. It's not a state supported school, never has been. Although, it's in the state capital where Syracuse and Long Island University, Buffalo those are state schools.

EB: And Union College.

TS: That's private. It's Union University and Albany is its medical school, but they also had, across the street from the medical school was the pharmacy school and they had the state laboratories and the VA. So, it was all a medical complex, but the parent university was over in Schenectady, but that was private; and many of the schools in New York state were private, Columbia, Cornell, Flower in New York, those were private schools, Mount Sinai now.

EB: I gather that you did well in grades in the first year.

TS: I did okay, I struggled. I was probably in the lower third of the class. Remember though, when you get to medical school the curve changes, it shifts to the right and now you're competing with all top students from college. So, the competition was considerably more, we've seen that repeatedly even in our own school. I mean, it's well known that a lot of students come into medical school who have been very good students in college and all of a sudden they're put into a whole different competitive field, and all of a sudden they've gotten their first 'C' or their first 'D' or maybe flunked the course and had to repeat a course.

EB: Did you have any C's or D's?

TS: I did in my second year. I'll tell you that story in a minute. The first year I think I got all C's and B's, I'm not even sure, I'd have to look that up, but I was an average student; probably in the lower half or lower third of the class and there were some very, very bright people.

EB: You were always in a competitive situation, because you had to take an exam to get into high school.

TS: Yes, there was an entrance exam.

EB: So, you were competing with kids on your own level.

TS: I competed for scholarships to Colgate. Sure, then you had to take the MCAT's, sure it was always competitive.

EB: So, this must have been more of the same, but with brighter kids perhaps.

TS: Yeah, but as I recall, I don't remember how many, there were several in my class who were repeating from the previous year and at the end of my freshman year there were several who had to repeat, oh sure. It was competitive, but there was no assumption that you were going to pass automatically. You didn't make the grade or you flunked a course, you repeated the year, you didn't repeat the course; there was no such thing as taking a make-up course, you repeated the year and I can think of several, two or three, who came with us, repeated the year and graduated a year behind.

EB: That's so tough.

TS: And one of my friends repeated his freshman year with us; he had been there a year before. So, it was usually two or three a year, I don't know exactly how many, who would have to repeat. Often they'd get dumped from biochemistry or they'd flunk the neuro-anatomy course which was very, very tough as I recall; gross anatomy was just a matter of grinding it out, you could memorize 250 bones and muscles and all that stuff.

EB: All those pneumonic …

TS: Yeah, there wasn't much conceptual stuff. So, I got through my freshman year, average as I say, got a job working for Pepsi-Cola. So, the next question is, how am I going to pay for my second year? There was a professor of English at one of the local colleges who was paraplegic, he had multiple sclerosis, he had been in a wheelchair for a number of years and he lived in a local hotel and every year he would hire a medical student to come and live with him and be his companion. It would always be a sophomore because you didn't know about it as a freshman and besides, no freshman dared tried to work. I mean, if you flunked your freshman year you were in a lot of trouble. So, I remember talking to the fellow, quite by accident, in the spring of that year, a sophomore, in the cafeteria; and he said 'I'm taking care of Mr. So-and-so' and I won't put his name on the record 'and I'm leaving, starting my third year' of course you couldn't do that in your third year; you had to be available on the wards 'would you like a job, I know you need work.' So, I said 'Yes' and I went down and interviewed with him; and halfway through the summer this fellow started his third year, I had passed my freshman year and was going to start my second year. I already had the job at Pepsi-Cola, so I moved in, took that job around the first of August and lived in the Wellington Hotel, right down the street from the capital building. He had on the top floor a two room suite and he provided me with room and board for the year. I lived there seven days a week; I would get him up in the morning, dress him, get him in his wheelchair and then get myself dressed. I'd head off to school, well in August I head off to drive in the Pepsi-Cola truck, but when school started in September I'd go to school, get on the bus; it was a bus ride, it was a long walk, but usually I was late so I'd take the bus. The bellhop from the hotel would come and get him, take him down to the hotel dining room, he'd eat his breakfast, he'd be taken down for his lunch; often if I was late in the evening, the bellhop would take him down to dinner. But during the day he would tutor; students would come to his apartment, he had a little apartment on top of this hotel, would come to the apartment and he would tutor high school kids, maybe some college, but mostly high school kids in English and they would pay him. So, he had that plus he probably had some disability, he had been married but his wife lived in New York and I think he had two grown children, he was a man probably in his 60's then. But I was his companion until the next spring and lived there, took care of him, got him up every morning, seven days a week, and would put him to bed at night and I would shave him and bathe him. Essentially I was his caregiver. It was an important experience.

EB: Why?

TS: Well, I'm not sure I know all the details of the diagnosis, but he had multiple sclerosis, but how that progressed I'm not really sure; but when I first met him, he had very poor upper body strength. He could use his hands and that, but he basically was paralyzed from the waist down. So, that was my first…

EB: Could it have been polio?

TS: No, no. No, it wasn't polio. It wouldn't act that way, anyway.

EB: How long had he been like that?

TS: Probably had been that way 10 years, as I recall about 10 years. It came on as an adult.

EB: So, he was able to get through college.

TS: Oh gosh, and he was a professor. Sure, he was a professor.

EB: Before this set in.

TS: Oh gosh yes, this set in his late 40's, early 50's as I recall. So, that was my first experience actually taking care of anybody and it was a mixture of lifting him in and out of bed, on and off the toilet or in and out of the shower.

EB: Pretty confining for you.

TS: Yeah, and then when I get him to bed; he would usually read for a while. I had the front room which was a pull-out couch, so I'd pull out the couch and I would try to study. Well, for my studies, that was a disaster, I almost flunked out of medical school, but I made enough money with the Pepsi-Cola company to pay my tuition, then he paid me room and board.

EB: Was that the first summer you didn't go to your mother's?

TS: I didn't go home at all, no.

EB: After that? You didn't go home after you started medical school.

TS: Not really, no; for a visit for a weekend.

EB: So, you were off…

TS: And the next year Celia and I were married.

EB: You were off from June to September?

TS: September the first year. But I worked for Pepsi-Cola and I started taking care of this man and I did that until the next spring then. By somewhere around March, it was very apparent to me that I was going to flunk out.

EB: This was your first year now you're talking about.

TS: No, second year.

EB: Oh, now we're into second year.

TS: Second year, I'm taking care of this man; and I'm trying to get my homework and read and falling asleep and then getting up in the morning. I'd have to get up at six to get him up, so I could get to school, class at eight o'clock. So, it was apparent to me by about March, that I was going to flunk; 'cause a couple of the exams, I just barely passed. I was doing very bad in pharmacology, so I went to him and I said 'I appreciate this job and it's allowed me to stay in medical school, but and I'm not blaming you, but I'm going to flunk out if I don't.' So, he understood; I got another medical student, who was doing quite well, who said he would come in and take care of him until we could get somebody new in, I think it was a freshman at the time. So, we found another student, I left, and went back to a rooming house; another rooming house near the school, moved in with a classmate and it turned out that I did fail pharmacology. I took the final exam, I remember very well, there were whole areas that I just didn't know a thing about. So, the professor called me in and several others, I wasn't the only one. In the second year in medical school at Albany at the time, pharmacology was considered the toughest course; the professors were the toughest, the concepts were the most difficult, pathology was sort of fun, but pharmacology was very difficult.

EB: That's the first time I heard that.

TS: Yeah, it was very difficult for us.

EB: I meant that pathology was fun.

TS: Yeah, it was.

EB: I never thought that.

TS: Well, the way that it was taught, he was a very good person, he made it meaningful and 'these are the diseases you got to know.'

EB: Did you have didactic type lectures?

TS: Oh tons of them, tons of them, tons of them.

EB: Through the whole three years, right?

TS: But you still had to go back and look on the microscope. So, I quit that job, I left him. Then, in fact, I failed pharmacology, the professor called me in; there were three of them there and there were three of us in the hallway, each one had to go in and they gave us an oral exam to see if we had frozen or had panicked or whatever, did we know the pharmacology, but didn't understand the questions but whatever. And I did okay, but they said to me, I remember the words very well, Dr. Ferguson was the professor of pharmacology, I've forgotten the other two fellows who were sitting there. They said, 'Well, you are not very well versed, you better study' but since the school had accepted the National Boards Part One as a condition to going on to the third year and Part Two was a condition of graduating in the fourth year. They said, 'We will reserve judgment, we won't fail you or pass you; but you're going on to the third year and getting a C is dependent on how you do on the National Boards.' Well, Celia and I already decided to get married the end of June; this is the middle of May. The National Boards was given around the 15^th of June, so I had about four weeks to prepare for the National Boards; but it wasn't simply pharmacology, it was pathology, and anatomy, and all the rest. So, to his credit and I'll always be grateful, my roommate Steve Sullivan, who actually went into practice in the Albany area; he and I, and another fellow, essentially quizzed each other day and night on all of the courses, but particularly pharmacology. He was a pretty average student like myself; we studied day and night for those next four or five weeks after school got out, for the National Boards. 'Cause it was critical, first of all they would have made me repeat the second year, and I probably couldn't afford it, I'd probably drop out, but it was also essential that I pass. In fact, I did very well on the National Boards, so did Steve, we worked literally we would get up in the morning, we'd have breakfast, we'd quiz each other, have lunch quiz each other, dinner, quiz each other 'til we fell asleep. We did that day in and day out and of course Celia and I already decided to get married and I kept having these terrible nightmares that if I flunk out of school, what am I going to do? I have no idea what I'm going to do, I guess we would have postponed the wedding or who knows what would happen, but turned out I did very well on the National Boards, I did okay in pharmacology, enough to satisfy the faculty in pharmacology that I knew enough to pass. So, lo and behold, I got my grades, forgotten when it was, not more than a day or two before we got married, which made my honeymoon very nice; and I called up there and Dean Wiggers he said 'Yes, we got your grades, we're going to pass you. I've talked to Dr. Ferguson you will get a…' and I think my record probably shows a 'D'. Although I don't know, I could look it up; maybe it shows a 'C'. It was another kick in the ass that I guess I needed and got; not unlike, and it was déjà vu all over again, according to Yogi Berra, like the German experience in college.

EB: Right.

TS: And it was critical. I somehow rose to the occasion; I wasn't dumb, but I certainly was distracted, I was exhausted.

EB: But there again, is an understanding, helpful guy who could have easily just flunked you and said 'You're going to repeat this year.'

TS: Oh yes, yeah. That's right and I never talked to him after that; he's now dead. I did talk to the dean after I graduated several years later and they said 'Oh yeah, well, we figured you'd make it; we'd expect you to be a good physician.' So what went on behind closed doors, and what they perceived in me and several other classmates who were in the same boat. The dean, I think, knew where I was working; 'cause the dean's office would frequently try to get someone to work for this paraplegic. And he may have known what was going on in my life; the pharmacology people didn't, they just knew I wasn't doing the work, and I wasn't. But, it was the same old story and I've seen it in other students in my life; where you know they're struggling to try to make it.

EB: I've seen Dr. Sohn do that and Dr. Malin, where you understood the student had such tremendous potential, but there were other aspects.

TS: Stress, pressure.

EB: The student whose parent died during that year or they got married or their wife had a baby. A lot of these kids had great potential.

TS: Sure, and not knowing what was went on in those discussions among the faculty, I think that's probably what happened, but they put the monkey on my back and they said 'You do well on National Boards, show that you know the stuff and we'll let you go on.'

EB: How did the class do on National Boards overall?

TS: Oh, I'm sure I was down near the bottom of it.

EB: No, but the class as a whole.

TS: I think there were one or two that failed the National Boards and they had to sit out and retake them in the fall, like many. As far as I know, the only people who had to repeat were the ones after the freshman year; I think everybody who got through the second year got through the boards went on. First of all, I got married on June the 30^th, Celia and I got married, went off on our honeymoon and came back; my junior year started the 15^th of July. So, we were gone six days.

EB: Oh, then you started in July.

TS: No, no, no. No summer, went right into junior year.

EB: So, the only time you had a fairly long break between your first and second year.

TS: Between first and second year, right. Second year you had a break from the middle of May to National Boards to study, but no one went anywhere, you studied. And then I had two weeks off after the National Boards like from the 15^th to the 30^th; Celia and I got married, had a nice wedding, we had a honeymoon for a week. Went to Bermuda as a matter of fact, her father gave us the honeymoon, it was very generous of him. Then we came back, went up to Albany, moved into an apartment that I had previously rented, put down a down payment, cleaned it up, moved into an apartment. And Celia went to work within a couple of weeks, had already gotten the job; went to work as the secretary for the Dean of Nursing. Like many universities, medical schools, and colleges there's always a turnover of secretarial jobs; usually ever summer because they're usually taken up, at that time, they were wives and their husband would then leave, go on with their husband. So, she got that job and I had also applied for the Air Force Medical Student Program, which had just begun; the Army had one for a couple of years, the Navy had one for a couple of years. In 1956 the Air Force decided as a recruiting mechanism, they would take on a few junior and senior medical students as the Army and Navy had, pay them as active duty officers. The student would have a commitment for extra years 'cause at that time, there was a draft, there was the Barry Plan and almost every doctor knew he was going to go into the service for at least two years. What I was going to do was obligate myself to five or six years in order to get an education. So, I signed up in August of that year, I passed the National Boards, I knew I was home free as far as that was concerned and I was going from having only two nickels to knock together to and working to get through the first two years essentially; to now, having a full lieutenant's salary every month in the mail and my wife working, making a good salary. And all of a sudden we had some money so we could go out to dinner, we could buy some things.

EB: You could have a life.

TS: Of course, Celia was very good; she was wonderful. She's always been good to me, but she had worked hard and saved her money so when we moved into this apartment, she had already bought a bed, a little sofa, a dining room set, a small, little kitchen dining room set, had bought most of the accoutrements that we would need. She had to have it in her basement in New Rochelle to move up to Albany after we got married; maybe while we were in our honeymoon, the movers came and they started to take the piano out of the living room and her father said 'Where are you going with my piano?' and I think it was Celia's mother or maybe Celia who was there at the time said 'Well, you bought that piano for me. I'm the only one that plays it, when I took my lessons back in the fifth grade or sixth grade.' So, we took that piano and it still sits in that living room. It's the piano in that living room. We took it to Spain with us, we took it every place we went and Celia has played if for 40 or 50 years.

EB: They must have paid for the shipping of your things over to Spain, huh?

TS: Well, that was later, that was much later. This was just taking stuff up to Albany at the end of our second year. So, we moved into a nice two-bedroom apartment in an old Victorian house; we had the second-floor and there were some people living above us and below us. A closet had been made into a little Pullman kitchen, I guess, and there was a bathroom and a master bedroom, which we used as a living room/dining thing; and then there was another little room off of that that we used for our bedroom. But, all of a sudden, we had some money in the bank and two checks coming in every month and I really did blossom; I went from an average to lower part of the class to being really one of the better students in the third and fourth year.

EB: Well, now you're out of that humdrum memorization period and you're getting into your clinicals.

TS: Right away.

EB: Was the curriculum similar to what it is now, today?

TS: No, it wasn't. Well, in that sense, but I'm sure thinking back, part of my interest in changing or altering and getting involved in the curriculum here and others like it around the country in the '70s was to get clinical experience early and to put our students in with doctors the very first year, which we did, to have patients right off the bat. And that, to me, was not only what was going on nationally, it wasn't unique to me; this was the trend going on nationally. But also, my own experience of the first two years being so difficult, but the only patient I ever saw was the man that I was taking care of, but I mean we didn't see patients. Although, we were connected to the hospital, the most we saw of the hospital was going into the dining room, the cafeteria; and it was late in the second year that we began to do histories and physicals and all that often we examined ourselves, not patients, although we did examine VA patients. So, when I got out here 25 some years later, I was determined to push for, and it was successful, a push for early patient introduction; not to put down or denigrate the basic sciences or minimize them, but frankly to show that the basic sciences are essential to good patient care. But, you got to see the two side-by-side, yeah, you got to see them side-by-side. So anyway, I did extremely well in my third and fourth year, now that was more or less what we have now; you'd spend eight or 10 weeks in medicine and surgery and pediatrics and OB, there was no rotation in family medicine, there was no such thing then and psychiatry, but even psychiatry was mostly in the state hospital.

EB: You had that at the state hospital?

TS: Oh sure.

EB: Where was the state hospital?

TS: State hospital was down about 30 miles south.

EB: That's not Matteawan is it by any chance?

TS: That might have been the name of it. It's south of Albany on the east side of the Hudson, north of Poughkeepsie; somewhere in there, there is an enormous, big state hospital which now is probably empty.

EB: The name Matteawan comes to mind.

TS: I don't know. So, we'd go there and then we would do psychiatry; they had a local closed ward. So, third and fourth year was fairly standard, fourth year there was a fair amount of elective and I spent some elective time in physician's offices; but I was very good at that, I enjoyed it, I was happily married, Celia and I were no longer separated, we had money in the bank so we could go to dinner.

EB: You weren't starving to death.

TS: We could go to movies, sure. Our first son came along, Peter; at that time of course, Celia stopped working, but we were seniors by then. I was one of the runner-ups for a prize in medicine, but I did win the prize as the outstanding student in pediatrics and got very good grades.

EB: So, it was starting to form already, where you were going.

TS: Yes.

EB: In pediatrics.

TS: Yes.

EB: When did that start?

TS: Well, it started in the third year and as I suggested earlier Mary Voorhees, talking about some women. Mary Voorhees was the resident in pediatrics at the time I was assigned pediatrics and in those days, the third year medical students followed behind the residents like little puppy dogs and you did whatever the resident told you and you didn't take anything independent; and she was just terrific, she let me do things, I think she taught me how to do spinal taps, she was very encouraging of me and let me do things. And like lots of other things, I think personally, I respond to better to honey than to vinegar, I guess. So, when I get positive feedback and when I got positive feedback as a student that just encouraged me more and I worked harder; and I don't believe in putting students down, occasionally a student has to slapped behind the ear I guess, figuratively speaking. But she was very, very good and she was the one that encouraged me and so when I left Albany, after two years I did a lot of electives.

EB: Where did you go after Albany?

TS: Well, we left Albany in the spring of '58.

EB: Which was the end of your senior year.

TS: End of my senior year. I entered in '54 and graduated in '58, that's when I got my degree, but I had been in the Air Force junior and senior medical student program, getting a check every month. So, I owed the Air Force time, also at that time, you had to get a special exemption not to do your internship in a military hospital. It was assumed and you'd agreed you'd do your internship in a military hospital; so when the match came out, in those days was not a residency match it was an intern match, just one year. After one year, it was a free-for-all, but you did match for internship, that started a few years earlier; so the match came out and all I knew is that I was going to be matched to the Air Force and they would assign me to one of their teaching hospitals. Well, the Air Force had no teaching hospitals in 1958; they didn't open Lackland 'til '60. So, those of us who were in the Air Force program were assigned either to a Navy or an Army hospital. So, I opened the envelope and it said….

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