Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Early Days
- Chapter 2 Washington Heights
- Chapter 3 Speyer School for Gifted Children
- Chapter 4 New York University at University Heights
- Chapter 5 To Each His Farthest Star–A Medical Student at Rochester: 1929–1934
- Chapter 6 Duke University Hospital and Its Medical School, 1934–1935
- Chapter 7 Yale Medical School, 1935–1936
- Chapter 8 Return to Duke, 1936-1937
- Chapter 9 You Can Go Home Again
- Chapter 10 My One and Only Wife
- Chapter 11 The Bronx Is the Graveyard for Specialists, 1937
- Chapter 12 The Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, 1937 — The First of Its Kind
- Chapter 13 Pearl Harbor and World War II
- Chapter 14 Valley Forge General Hospital, 1942–1945
- Chapter 15 Tinian, 1945
- Chapter 16 Saipan, 1945–1946
- Chapter 17 Return to Columbia-Presbyterian, 1946
- Chapter 18 The Changing of the Guard at the Medical Center
- Chapter 19 An Internist-Diagnostician Rebuilds His Practice
- Chapter 20 The Upjohn Grand Rounds
- Chapter 21 The Iceman Cometh to Park Avenue
- Chapter 22 Songs My Patients Taught Me
- Chapter 23 Mr. J. Peter Grace, Chairman of W. R. Grace and Company
- Chapter 24 Birth of the Upjohn Gastrointestinal Service
- Chapter 25 Roosevelt Hospital, 1962–1965
- Chapter 26 Consultant and Physician to President Herbert C. Hoover
- Chapter 27 Problems at Roosevelt Hospital: The Bête Noir of Full Time
- Chapter 28 Internal Medicine as a Vocation (1897)
- Chapter 29 The Upjohn Service Moves to St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Chapter 30 Helicobacter Pylori and Peptic Ulcer: A Revolution in Gastroenterology
- Chapter 31 Plasmapheresis for Hepatic Coma at St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Epilogue
- Endmatter
Chapter 6 - Duke University Hospital and Its Medical School, 1934–1935
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Early Days
- Chapter 2 Washington Heights
- Chapter 3 Speyer School for Gifted Children
- Chapter 4 New York University at University Heights
- Chapter 5 To Each His Farthest Star–A Medical Student at Rochester: 1929–1934
- Chapter 6 Duke University Hospital and Its Medical School, 1934–1935
- Chapter 7 Yale Medical School, 1935–1936
- Chapter 8 Return to Duke, 1936-1937
- Chapter 9 You Can Go Home Again
- Chapter 10 My One and Only Wife
- Chapter 11 The Bronx Is the Graveyard for Specialists, 1937
- Chapter 12 The Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, 1937 — The First of Its Kind
- Chapter 13 Pearl Harbor and World War II
- Chapter 14 Valley Forge General Hospital, 1942–1945
- Chapter 15 Tinian, 1945
- Chapter 16 Saipan, 1945–1946
- Chapter 17 Return to Columbia-Presbyterian, 1946
- Chapter 18 The Changing of the Guard at the Medical Center
- Chapter 19 An Internist-Diagnostician Rebuilds His Practice
- Chapter 20 The Upjohn Grand Rounds
- Chapter 21 The Iceman Cometh to Park Avenue
- Chapter 22 Songs My Patients Taught Me
- Chapter 23 Mr. J. Peter Grace, Chairman of W. R. Grace and Company
- Chapter 24 Birth of the Upjohn Gastrointestinal Service
- Chapter 25 Roosevelt Hospital, 1962–1965
- Chapter 26 Consultant and Physician to President Herbert C. Hoover
- Chapter 27 Problems at Roosevelt Hospital: The Bête Noir of Full Time
- Chapter 28 Internal Medicine as a Vocation (1897)
- Chapter 29 The Upjohn Service Moves to St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Chapter 30 Helicobacter Pylori and Peptic Ulcer: A Revolution in Gastroenterology
- Chapter 31 Plasmapheresis for Hepatic Coma at St. Vincent’s Hospital
- Epilogue
- Endmatter
Summary
For a young man who had never been below the Mason-Dixon Line, my first intimation of what was to come was when I woke up in my Pullman upper berth 30 June 1934 and felt as if I were in a hot shower. But it was only Baltimore in late June with its usual sweltering and oppressive heat in an era before there was any air conditioning. By the time we reached Durham, North Carolina, I began to wonder whether I could take the climate or whether it would take me. I thought back to my Southern Italian ancestry and was comforted by my belief that I must have some genetic protection against the heat. I was mighty glad to get off that train to head for Duke Hospital. That year, I was the only “northerner” or “Yankee” on the medical house staff; in fact I was the only non-Duke graduate. Clearly I was a marked man right from the start. The house staff already on the scene had appropriated the best rooms and I was treated to a hot-box facing an inner courtyard that was virtually without air circulation, resounding, especially in the early morning hours, with bedlam in the kitchens and laundries as well as the roistering of the almost entirely black staff of employees. To top it off, Howland Ward, the appropriately named pediatric unit, abutted the courtyard and was filled to the rafters with howling noisy infants and children whose clatter was enhanced by bouncing off the walls of the courtyard. Clearly, my friends-to-be on the house staff had done a job on the new man from Rochester. It took me a while to adjust to these conditions and it was not easy. Years later, Dean Davison said “our worst error [in the construction of Duke Hospital] was in having interior courtyards, which in Durham summers before air conditioning were a foretaste of Hades.” The heavy demands of my new job soon took my mind off the climate. My first assignment was one month on the laboratory service. I believe they thought this was the best way to introduce a stranger, a “Yankee” no less, to a different world. I also learned that the assignment was tough and demanding and one that was not too popular with the house staff—“too much scut work,” they said.
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- Information
- The Life of the ClinicianThe Autobiography of Michael Lepore, pp. 79 - 100Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2002