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FLASHBACKS SAMUEL STEARNS* I did not know the art so well nor yearn for wealth or power, but I had heard men talk and tell about a wondrous hour when they had once prevented death or gentled life a bit, or eased a patient's final breath and comforted through it. A student cannot learn in haste; the basics are a bore, and only later seem no waste but stairways to a door. And now that I have done it all, I think of odd ideas, small bits of whimsical recall, and memories that please. In the Anatomy Lab They are not Nefertiti or Apollo Belvedere, those lumps beneath the dirty oilcloth sheets. Their stench of formalin flows down the stairs to greet us as we climb to where they lie on cold stone slabs. Mil Perkins Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130. D 1979 by The University of Chicago. 003 1-5982/79/2204-0099$01.00 494 Samuel Stearns ¦ Flashbacks Gray faced and still, they suffer our inspection, imperturbably submitting to our impudence. Bit by bit, they waste beneath the scalpel, probe, and osteotome, dwindling to offal—scraps and shreds— and a single prize dissection tagged with an arrowed question mark. These comprise our hour's test, semester's end. The diener pounds his table once a minute as we squint and scribble, then move on. In the Physiology Lab In physiology we learn that explanations sometimes turn on what suggests propriety with minimal dubiety, though some of us, more skeptical, make our teachers apoplectical by the comment dialectical, "Given a phenomenon, convenient theory anon." But while we fiddle with a frog (or mangle an unconscious dog), the realization starts to grow we gain in knowledge even so, and if a theory won't fit, we have the means to better it. Experiment makes feasible exchange of doubt for probable— or even solid proof of fact which science had until then lacked. The baractrachian and I unite in answering the "Why?" Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ¦ Summer 1979 | 495 Autopsy Initially the Y-shaped slash, anterior rib cage cut away, a segment of calvarium removed—and there before us lie inert and lifeless all the parts which not so long before, that day, performed the functions of the quick! Shave the tissues miera thin, stain with multicolored hues, examine sections magnified, ponder on the ways he died! And still we cannot satisfy our wish to learn the ultimate, no more than Tantalus could slake his thirst, or Sisyphus propel his boulder to the mountain top. Life's secrets lie within a box within a box within a box, and so on to infinity; and we who open boxes so— like children eager for a gift— will fail for all eternity. Bacteriology How marvelous the wines of France which, ailing, gave Pasteur his chance and made it possible to boot for him to found the Institute! Then Koch outgrew his villagery, Erlich guessed the lock and key, Lister learned to sterilize— we, too, became as skilled and wise. We learned to sterilize our glass for broth or agarjello; we fingered stains of every class except, perhaps, bright yellow. 496 Samuel Stearns ¦ Flashbach We learned the use of the candle jar, bile salts and other mixtures; microscopy for many an hour taught us to draw neat pictures. We learned of antibodies, too, such things as Chemotaxis; we learned to kill a mouse or two by egg-white anaphylaxis. The organs of that animal showed changes quite congestive. That quantities so minimal could kill was most suggestive. In our long white coats we were erudite as we flamed our loops in fire. For now we felt like men in white— young doctors to admire. Biochemistry When membrane first surrounded sea, it needed biochemistry to keep milieu intérieur in balance with extérieur. How wonderful the tiny cell that met environment so well! Its clever molecules soon learned advantages that could be earned by changes subtle, gross or deft, by turning to the right or left, by adding here or dropping there, by twisting much orjust a hair, by starving surplus, feeding lack, by moving H+ across and back, and sundry other...

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