Yesterday, my brother asked me how I made a decision about the practice of medicine as a career. It was not possible to answer that question with certainty.
I've already mentioned that my interest in medicine was stimulated by a visit to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in 1958. Although I was looking for an urban legend, the supposedly pickled penis of John Dillinger, allegedly removed at autopsy after he was gunned down by Federal agents in Chicago in July 1934, I was unable to find it and stumbled into other realms of medicine, things I had never thought about before.
The myth itself, the huge penis, is postulated to have originated in a death photo of Mr. Dillinger wherein his left arm, in rigor mortis under a sheet, was mistakenly assumed to have been his erect penis. The following image from a Google search should clarify if my explanation has been insufficient:
In high school I applied for Federal summer jobs at the Public Health Service and I was employed by the Division of Public Health Methods and worked under (very far down the ladder) S. David Pomrinse, M.D. and Marcus Goldstein, Ph.D. They were studying the development of group practice in the United States, a relatively rare phenomenon in the 1950s when only a few thousand such groups were known to exist. Now, most physicians practice within such groups.
Of course my contribution was at the lowest level. A survey of practices had been done and the responses came back to our office. My job was to take the completed survey and code each response numerically and enter it onto a master data sheet--what would look like a spreadsheet today. However, the job gave me the opportunity to work around physicians and other professionals. I was always treated respectfully and I shared an office with Dr. Goldstein, an incredibly kind boss whose Wikipedia bio encapsulates an interesting career.
Marcus S. Goldstein (August 22, 1906 – December 1, 1997) was one of the forefathers of dental anthropology and was also a public health analyst. He was an active researcher with a broad interest in the field of anthropology, writing over one hundred scientific publications during his lifetime.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Goldstein received a bachelor's and master's degree in anthropology from George Washington University, and his doctorate from Columbia. His professional career in anthropology began in 1927, when he obtained a position as aide to Ales Hrdlicka in the U.S. National Museum Division of Physical Anthropology. During World War II, he worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and in 1946, joined the U.S. Public Health Service as an analyst.
His government career included posts at the Division of Public Health Methods, National Institutes of Mental Health Administration on Aging, and the Office of Research and Statistics in the Social Security Administration, from which he retired in 1971.
As an active researcher, Goldstein's publications include a number of key works on dental variation and pathology, growth, development, aging, and skeletal pathology in past populations of Israel.
Following his retirement, Goldstein, and his wife, Lea, immigrated to Israel, where he joined Tel Aviv University and played an important role in developing research in the newly-formed Department ofAnatomy and Anthropology. Goldstein was also responsible for founding the "Israel Association of Anthropology", which now has well over 150 members. He brought together scientists from archaeology, biological, and social anthropology — no easy task in a country where the three disciplines are taught in separate faculties. In 1987, he was honored with that Association's Distinguished Service Award.
Goldstein summed up his career in his monograph, "An Odyssey in Anthropology and Public Health" (1995), in which he gave a warm portrayal of the people who had helped him in his works. He died in Jerusalem, Israel, aged 91. The following summer I worked on a Survey of the Health of Individual Americans. Dr. Carl Dauer, an advisor to the Office of Vital Statistics, was the chief consultant on the survey. Once again I did low level work as a clerk but I worked around professionals and was able to see the manner in which they conducted themselves, treated peers and underlings (generally the same), and I was encouraged to ask questions. The survey material included actual patient data and required that I begin to learn medical terms and to find out what they meant.
In college I was not sure of my professional path. Chemistry, Math, and Physics were interesting subjects and were my major area of study. I also enrolled in the necessary biology prerequisites for medical school, in order to keep that option open. Physics was my strongest college subject but I didn't believe that I was talented enough to be capable of doing interesting, original work in the physical sciences. Eventually I became convinced that medicine offered me the best combination of gratifying work, geographical mobility, a collegial work environment, and fewer worries about finances.
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