Chapter 17: Gainesville
Reality then set in and I had to find a job, which I did at the newly founded medical school of the University of Florida in Gainesville. Just the thing after Copenhagen! The Chamber of Commerce had sent us a brochure. Among the restaurants prominently listed was A&W Root Beer. But we enjoyed it, especially because we made very good friends from all over. I found it thrilling to be part of a brand-new faculty and to figure out how to teach medical students and manage a lab by myself.
My first lecture (in 1958) was to medical students and the topic was DNA. I felt privileged to be given the task to talk about this subject, which had only a few years earlier materialized in its modern incarnation. The existence of DNA had been known since 1869, thanks to a young Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher. However, for years its role was relegated to some obscure and not very interesting functions of the cell. It was not until 1944 that Avery, McLeod, and McCarty demonstrated that DNA carries hereditary information. And 9 years later, in 1953, Watson and Crick (based on the work of Rosalind Franklin) told the world that the DNA molecule is a duplex wrapped into the now famous double helix. Soon, this discovery made it possible to envision how DNA is replicated, that is, how a new copy is made every time its cell divides, and how the genetic information it carries is actually “read” by the cell’s machinery. Heady days, those, and lecturing about the “Queen of the molecules” deserved special respect, if not actual veneration. I prepared myself accordingly and spent untold hours making sure that I would rise to the occasion.
In the early and mid 50’s, the US government decided to support basic biological and medical research at a previously unheard-of level. Grant money became available practically for the asking, at least to reasonably qualified researchers. Medical schools took advantage of this bonanza. Even hitherto less prominent ones rapidly transmuted themselves into research institutions. To staff them, they turned mainly to Ph.D.’s, most of whom were pretty clueless in matters of medical education. I suppose that for an august school with experience in educational matters, the transition may have taken place in an orderly fashion. Not so in my world. The University of Florida medical school I first joined as young assistant professor had been recently founded, and although its young faculty included some prominent scientists, we were left pretty much alone in devising a curriculum. Not surprisingly, we turned to what we knew and decided that a hefty amount of science couldn’t possibly hurt budding physicians and might even do some good. This, in moderation and with reasonable awareness of how it fits in medical education, is a worthy goal. But the aim should be for the students to be mindful of the scientific method, not just be subjected to an avalanche of scientific facts, something I wasn’t aware of at the time. “Drinking from a firehose,” it has been called. To illustrate the absurdity of our approach, we gave lectures on topics that had been covered in the biochemistry course the previous year, blissfully ignoring what the overall curriculum was like.
In my limited experience, things got better in the ’60s, a time of social renewal (remember, if you are old enough, Flower Power, the Vietnam War, the Beatles, etc.) that called for accountability by all, faculties of medical schools included. By that time, I had changed schools, although the old attitude was about the same in both my new (Tufts) and my old one (Florida). Now the students held rather loud protest meetings, asking why they were taught what they were taught. Partly because that made sense, perhaps because it was in keeping with the tenor of the times, we listened, more or less reluctantly. A bunch of new curricula emerged all over the map. By and large, they not only answered the students’ immediate concerns, but were based on recognizable general principles. Life in medical schools began to make more sense for students and faculty alike.
To come back to my Florida DNA lecture, I don’t remember the details, but that being the mid ’50s, I probably gave it to ‘em with both barrels. Surely, such an exalted topic deserved special attention. After the lecture I took the elevator, when a student leaped in before the door closed and, somewhat breathlessly said: “Doc, can I ask you a question?” Aha! I said inwardly, I stimulated one student at least. “Go ahead,” I uttered. He said: “Doc, what’s good for dandruff?”
Otherwise, what was life in Gainesville like? This being Northern Florida (“Cracker country”), we were pretty isolated from the local, socially very Southern, community. For example, a neighbor soon stopped by to greet us and soon asked us: “What church do you go to?” And of course, segregation was everywhere, including on campus. After we left four years later, the policy of segregation was broken by my previous boss, Manny Suter, who, on assuming the post of dean of the medical school, accepted the first African American student into the university.
Not surprisingly, we became expats again in Florida, most of the faculty of the medical school being “Yankees” or of foreign origin. Socializing was important because there was not much else to do. Television was relatively new, but we bought a black-and-white set to be able to watch the Nixon-Kennedy debates and take due notice of Nixon’s facial stubble, said to have contributed to his loss in the election. We saw quite
Learning how to do it.
a bit of our friends and had fairly frequent dinner parties. We took advantage of the bird-watching knowledge of one of my colleagues, John Cebra and his wife Ethel, and joined them in bird-watching outings. Florida was a bird-watcher’s paradise, and the Cebras were fabulous guides. I remember with special joy a canoe trip down a river formed from the outpouring of an underground spring. Pristine waters, tropic-like vegetation, birds by the droves, even a few monkeys that had gotten loose somehow.
Judith and me.
Although we were glad to leave for Boston, we were not sorry to have spent those four years in Gainesville. We had many good experiences, not the least being the birth of our daughter Judith, a life-changing, joyful event. It was there that I started up my first lab and learned some of the ins and outs of being a faculty member, guided in good part by Manny Suter, a truly wonderful person and a superb mentor. We had also made good friends, bought our first house, became a stable family. It’s fair to say that both Barbara and I did some comfortable growing up in Gainesville.
Four years in Florida went by and I got an offer from Tufts Medical School, again to a newly established department, this one in an old medical school. Both Barbara and I had visited Boston several times and were enchanted with that city. By that time Judith was almost 2 years old. The decision to move to Boston came very easily. So, I accepted the offer from Tufts, we sold our house, and the three of us headed for Massachusetts and a new chapter in our lives.
A well deserved rest.
My father, Judith, and me.
Chapter 18: Boston
Tufts.
In 1962 Tufts was one of the last medical schools in the US without a separate and distinct microbiology department. Before the department was started in that year, microbiological activities were carried out by two people under the administrative ægis of the pathology department. Since that consisted of just three faculty members, the microbiologists were not exactly eclipsed by the pathologists.
The new micro department was started by recruiting as the chair Ted Park, a distinguished microbiologist renowned for figuring out how penicillin kills bacteria. He asked me to join him, which I did with a millisecond of hesitation. In time, I helped him in the process of gradually recruiting a small faculty. I cherished his management style: he had declared that the department would be run democratically, that is, everyone would have equal say, the chair no more than the rest. This was most
Ted Park, Founding Chairman.
unusual, especially in medical schools, where the chair was king. When I took over the job from Ted after some 8 years, I kept this tradition, as did my two successors. It’s true to this day and is one of the reasons why the department grew to occupy a place of distinction among its kind. One consequence of the extreme collegial atmosphere is that nobody wanted to leave, and faculty turnover has been exceptionally low. Death is an acceptable excuse.
Shortly after I took over the chair in 1971, postwar American science took its first of many cold baths. Money was no longer there for the asking and getting a grant could not be simply assumed. (In my early days at Tufts, grants were so routine that when I received one from the NIH and went down to hall to tell the news to Ted. He listened dutifully but then asked me: “Just why did you come to tell me this?”) In addition, the social changes of the '60s, which really took full force in the early '70s, challenged established notions of teacher-student relationships and the view that teaching science was a good thing, period. The cries for relevance and accountability and the challenges to authority were loud in the air. By and large, we stood by relatively quietly while the medical school became, for a short period, one of the centers of the student movement in Boston. This was unexpected, as medical schools had hardly been hotbeds of social activism.
The faculty of Tufts’ Microbiology department honoring our “media maker,” Alla Korjagin.
I found myself finally caught up in the student movement at the time of the bombing of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State University. The day after Kent State, I was told by the students in forceful terms to join them in a march to Boston City Hall at the head of a column. There, I was given a megaphone and told to say something. I remember saying: “When our country commits murder, we all feel like murderers.” This was my first and only public political speech, but I’m sure that it was dutifully recorded by the FBI.
The changes around us taught us that we had come to the end of an era. The clamor at NIH was for scientists to respond to Nixon’s call for the "War on Cancer." Many of our colleagues at other institutions shifted their interest to cancer, and wholesale conversions of microbiology departments were not uncommon. We at Tufts, however, did not react in a conventional way. We thought (wisely, with hindsight) that this would be a rash move that would not suit our approach to microbiology.
I had a fully satisfying career of 33 years at Tufts. My department was small and consisted of people who got along in a way that would have done justice to the old barracks crowd at Walter Reed. As I said already, we built up a fine department. I had a hand in that, serving as the chair for my last 23 years there. (When my successor was being interviewed, I told her that we had a rotating chairmanship system in the department. The term is 23 years!).
I got some reasonable research done at Tufts and was funded throughout my time there. I supervised and mentored a lot of postdocs, some of whom have done very well. Somehow, I seemed to have had a knack for administration and was quite satisfied to be doing the chair’s job. It must have been easy (“If I can do it, anyone can!”).
Barbara, John, Judith, and I.
I got also involved with my professional society, the American Society for Microbiology and became its president in 1984. Writing became something of a passion, and I have my name on 12 books, some textbooks, some manuals – all but two multiauthored. One of the books I wrote alone is In the Company of Mushrooms, which deals with my hobby of collecting and studying wild mushrooms.
John and I.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…. A son, John, followed Judith. Barbara decided to re-enter social work, and she eventually became the director of the League School, a school for autistic children. It was widely thought to be the best in New England. Alas, in 1988, at the age of 57, she was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid. She had it for about two years and, luckily for us, had a reasonably good quality of life until the end. We had been married for 34 years. When Barbara died the following September. I was devastated.
I include here a Holiday letter that Barbara wrote to family and friends in late 1987, the second year of her cancer. It reveals her character.
Dearest Friends and Family,
I am more or less consumed with guilt to be so late in sending out our holiday greetings this year. I know some of you may be thinking the worst; and I'm truly sorry to have caused you concern. But IF that's so, then our letter will be a happy surprise. It was not possible to write before now, since we were in South America taking the long-awaited trip I wrote about last year. More on that later.
‑
The past year has been a memorable one, by no means all bad but certainly strange by all previous standards. When I wrote you last year, I was just starting radiation therapy; and I continued until early February, receiving close to 7000 rads. By mid-March I started feeling pretty good again and took off on a trip to the west coast, visiting old and very special friends in Fresno, CA and Portland, OR. Elio was simultaneously touring South America. I had hoped to go with him for the first part of that journey when he would be in Quito; but it became clear he was going to be working hard and there really wouldn't be time to do the kinds of things we wanted for my first visit to that country. So we postponed my visit thinking we would go in late summer.
I then had a couple of weeks to finish off the paper I was writing for the 20th Anniversary Symposium of League School. This was a kind of overview of what I had learned about autism based on my 20 years of daily contact with children with "pervasive developmental disorders". Giving the paper was truly a highlight for me. The symposium was very well attended, with speakers and audience from all over the U.S. I felt like what I had to say was exciting and useful (it felt like feverish inspiration when I was toiling over it late at night!); and it was very well received. The rest of the weekend included a banquet and formal "birthday party" for the school, at which I was given a special tribute. About a month later the Board of Directors had a beautiful reception for me where many speeches were made, flowers and gifts bestowed, and I was told that a room at the school will be named for me. That was my formal goodbye from the school.
A CT scan late in May showed some small but possibly ominous changes, so my doctor recommended I get some chemotherapy. Thus, the summer is sort of a blurry memory during which I got three large doses (each about 3 to 4 weeks apart) of Cisplatinum and Adriamycin, and in between treatments took it pretty easy, doing some gardening as my energy would come back; and having lots of visits with friends of all eras and locales. How nice those visits were. I became bald headed from the treatments, and I expect you'll find this hard to understand, and may not even approve of it, but I found the experience sort of awesome. To my amazement there were certain aspects I liked about not having any hair. I liked it better when a little fuzz started growing in; and I just love it now that I have a little soft cap of short hair that covers my head. But life is so easy without having to "worry" about how your hair looks. Swimming is so much fun without a mop of wet hair getting in your eyes. Maybe most important, I felt the "essential me" still existed, and I was vaguely uneasy about that before chemotherapy started...
In September I got very brave and decided I would sign up for a chamber music ensemble at the All Newton Music School. I remember thinking maybe the group wouldn't be so good, but one never knows where such things will lead. My "retirement" plan all along has been to practice the piano a half day and write the other half. But it had been impossible to implement that with the various treatments that had been actively going on since I left work in Dec. Towards the end of October, I started feeling some energy again; and since that time have been steadily and markedly recovering. I began practicing piano regularly, with enthusiasm growing by leaps and bounds. I was placed in a group with violinist, violist and cellist; and at my request (thinking maybe I'd get sick and couldn't participate) our coach was a pianist, who could take my place if necessary. Well, it turned out the string players were pretty bad, but the coach was great; and he gave me some private lessons on the side which lead to my seriously digging in at the piano in a way I hadn't quite planned or anticipated at this point. It is completely exciting and engaging for me.
At some point we began to plan our trip to South America. Realizing if we used Elio's frequent flyer points, we could get two free tickets, we charitably decided to ask our children to go along. On Dec. 14th Elio and I flew (1st class!!) to Quito, Ecuador (where Elio had spent the formative years between 1941 and 1950 when he left to go to K.U.). In Quito, we stayed with Elio's long, long time friend Galo Hidalgo and family; and I had a wonderfully relaxed time getting acquainted with the city and many of Elio's old friends and colleagues. He and I visited museums, spent a night at a beautiful hacienda in the vicinity, enjoyed the hospitality of several lovely parties in our honor. One of the very nicest things for me, however, was simply getting to know Galo and his wife, with whom I felt such a warm and immediate rapport despite language difficulties. A week later, the children arrived (tourist class) and the next morning the four of us flew to the Galapagos Islands. After a week on a 46' sailboat (just our family, the captain, a cook and a guide) making several excursions each day to different islands in different states of development and with different exotic forms of animals and plants, we returned to Quito. We spent New Year's there, and then flew to Lima, Peru. The next morning, we flew to Cuzco, spent several days there before taking a spectacular train ride to the ruins in Machu Picchu; returned to Lima, and flew back to Boston (arriving in a big snow storm).
The trip had its difficulties and in many ways was quite rigorous. We hadn't been on a lengthy trip with both children for years, certainly not since both reached adulthood. I think all four of us had specific and sometimes differing "agendas". But it was a wonderful experience for all of us, and I treasure many spectacular memories of both people and places.
We are about to take off on another trip, this time just Elio and I. Elio has a meeting in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and we are flying there for a 4 day stay. Then we'll fly to Los Angeles, rent a car, and proceed up the West Coast following all the scenic routes, seeing as many friends as possible and staying a couple of weeks in San Francisco and Portland, dropping the car off in Seattle after a brief look at the Olympic Peninsula. Now this may sound like a strange trip, but I have long wanted to get Elio in a car (without little kids) and be a traveler like my parents were. There are so many beautiful places to see; and I'd like to be "cooped up" with Elio without laboratory, TV, and other numerous distractions, to see what kinds of interesting conversations we can generate.
I'm very excited about this trip, which will be a new experience for us. Elio is in the throes of completing the last details (of which there are many) of the textbook he's been hard at work on for well over a year now. He'll be shipping his computer to L.A. and working at various stops along the way, while I do some visiting; but I also have arranged to have the use of some pianos along the way, so I won't have to abandon my practice for six whole weeks.
The last thing I want to write about is the most important. As much as I'm looking forward to the trip, I'm also terribly eager to come home and get into a routine once more; and SURELY, AT LAST, I can begin my "retirement" regime of practicing AND writing. But I can only describe my feelings as those of a person starving to death, and music is food. I spend three to four hours every morning at the piano, usually every day. It is bliss. I can't understand what has happened. When I was a music student, I was virtually unable to practice. I believe I was almost totally involved in trying to grow up and survive as an adult. My piano teacher at K.U. (Paul Snyder) believed I had a lot of talent, and he was disappointed that I could realize so little of it then. In my mid-30's I had some of those problems resolved, and I began studying again. It was then I got the first taste of the rewards of practice; the PROCESS of learning a piece of music well. But I could never practice for really long, consistent stretches of time because of having little children. I had another job I needed and wanted to do. Increasingly I did that job "whole-heartedly"; and by the end of my career at League School, 60 or even 70-hour weeks were not so unusual. I played the piano occasionally, but certainly didn't practice for YEARS. I missed it deeply, and I promised myself that when I retired, that would be my reward.
Then I got cancer; and when I wrote you last year it was certainly not clear to me that I'd have much of a retirement, if any. My tumor is not gone; but it isn't growing, and hasn't been for some months, at least according to CT scans. We don't know what the future holds. But that's true for everyone; and probably not so important. What matters to me is that last winter I was able to do a lot of things around the house that felt crucial to me to get done, that had been neglected during the years of work. And since October, when I have felt entirely healthy and good, I've had the sheer joy of regular practice at the piano. The rewards of such an illness are simple. Every day feels like such an incredible gift to me. The fact that I can spend so many hours at the piano (I'm working on three long and difficult pieces, and THEY ARE WITHIN MY GRASP! I can DO it!). Part of my routine is taking at least a 30-minute walk after I practice. No matter what the day is like, it seems so wonderful to me. I guess when the sun is shining so brightly, like today, and the sky is so blue, it seems even more wonderful. But I am overwhelmed by the goodness of being alive. In fact, I always was; but now it is more intense as I saw so clearly the possibility of losing it. And I like my life better right now - it is a little sweeter because of the pleasure of studying music once again and the time I have to reflect a bit. I hope once we get home in March I can get into the routine that does include writing, because I still would like to write that book. But my priorities feel very clear and comfortable.
It's mysterious to me that I have not lost much of what I knew about the piano. On the contrary, quite remarkably I seem to have been learning even while I wasn't playing/practicing. Maybe being older and wiser, and finally able to practice, I have a little more freedom to express myself. In an odd, odd coincidence my current teacher was a student of Leon Fleischer (Peabody Conservatory), who was a student of Artur Schnabel - just as Paul Snyder was. I love his musical ideas, how he hears a line of music. And it seems somehow like poetic justice, that now, finally, I am able to have the wonderful teacher I couldn't take advantage of at K.U.
There are other odds and ends of news that somehow didn't fit in above. This fall Elio was named the first distinguished professor at Tufts University. There were several celebrations, and in addition to toasts, speeches and certificates, he also got a very nice Tufts chair I am currently sitting on. Both the children are doing well. John is in his 4th year of college, still majoring in history; and expects to take a final semester next fall. Judith isn't getting rich but is acquiring some fame as "one of the most talented young artists in Philadelphia". I am co-editing the papers of the League School's 20th Anniv. Symposium; and before I begin MY book, that has to get finished. I am VERY eager to get it done; but no doubt work will continue at least through April. When I'm done with that, I really will be free and clear to pursue what I whatever I choose.
I started this letter days ago but have had to write on it as time is available. I apologize again for being so late in sending our greetings. And for those of you who so warmly wrote to me last year after my Christmas letter, to those we visited recently in South America, those who sent Christmas greetings - all the messages I have left unanswered, all the thank yous I yearn to write but as yet haven't found time, please know that you are in my thoughts often and will hear from me one of these days. People's concern for me and words of caring meant very, very much.
With love and very best wishes for 1988,
John the Climber.
Judith.
Edith and I.
Fast forward… Some five years later, Edith found me in Boston. Like me, she had grown up as a refugee in Ecuador and we had some youthful dates in Quito. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was it. We commuted between San Diego (where she was living) and Boston. In 1994, we married. I came to San Diego a year later.
Edith and my wedding.
Edith's work: The Towers.
I have had a very good time in San Diego. I became rather involved with teaching, writing another textbook, and hanging out with friends and colleagues. For 17 years, we owned a lovely house in the desert town of Borrego Springs, some 2 hours away from San Diego, and tried to go there every weekend we could. One thing that keeps me occupied is a blog I started in 2006 called Small Things Considered. For those with microbiological interest, have a look at: http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/. I wrote about it in an old letter to a famous Swiss biochemist, Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz, with whom I had an active correspondence until his death in 2015:
You ask me about the blog. I warn you, that’s a dangerous thing to do, as it may unleash a torrent of Biblical flood proportions. But my self-control is legendary (just ask my wife and see what she says), so I will tell you a few things only. First, I work with a fellow blogger named Merry Youle (note her parents’ punnish sense). She is a fabulous editor and writer with whom I have a totally symbiotic relationship. We goad one another into better writing, novel ideas, and, perhaps more important, a sense of ease. Merry entered my life early on in the blog’s history when she wrote asking if I needed help. “Who are you?" I asked. She said that she had a Ph.D. in Biochem from Hopkins but had done a lot of other things in life, such as running an esoteric restaurant, writing technical stuff, and that she was currently living off a lava-strewn plot halfway up a volcano in the Big Island of Hawaii where she grows Peruvian potatoes and the likes. That she was different was revealed in an early email, the complete content of which was: “Have you ever had a colonoscopy?” We have not seen each other in person. We Skype on occasion and email perhaps 4-6 times on a typical day. She gets paid a trifle from the Am Soc Microbiol to take care of the technical aspects of posting, which would be troublesome if I had to do it. She gradually took on more responsibilities and now we share the blog on an equal basis. I consider myself blessed.
I spend perhaps half my time on the blog, some of it looking for bloggable pieces, reading and writing about them. Sometimes a piece merges with dispatch, other seem to take forever. We are picky about the images and they do not always fall into our lap. We seem to have carved out a special niche, dealing mainly with unexpected, sometimes unnoticed topics, at least by the majority of microbiologists. Neither Merry nor I are indifferent to the issue of the blog’s use for teaching or enjoyment, but we get most excited when one of our pieces falls into place and reads well. We feel fulfilled then. Sometimes, this comes from the whole piece, sometimes it’s elicited by stumbling on a bon mot, or even a title that seems particularly apt. Writing is such a reflexive activity, isn't it?”
In 2009, Edith and I moved to a retirement community in La Jolla. It’s a lovely place, where I can act my age. Meanwhile, bones and joints keep getting creakier and creakier. Otherwise, all’s well.
A Few Thoughts on My Life at Work, if I’m Allowed
As Freud apparently said, what count in life are love and work. He should have known. This is just about work.
During my career, my activities were spread out over four general areas: research, teaching, writing, and administration. Narcissistic though this may be, let me think back on it and try to rate my performance in each area.
I listed the areas in the order in which I hold them dear. I think of research as the most worthwhile activity or, should I say, the most intellectually rewarding one, and administration as the least. In fact, nothing I have experienced in my life’s work has been as satisfying as a good result in the lab. I have said that a satisfying result is as good as a good orgasm. On the other hand, administration is something that I have done almost casually and never thought of as a big deal. Only later did I realize that I had spent a lot of energy doing it. I acknowledge that these areas are interconnected, but I will choose to separate them, if artificially.
The paradox is that when I think about my performance in each area, the order becomes reversed. On a totally subjective scale, I think that my administrative activities were the best thing I have done and research the least. This is not to say that my research was insignificant. It was actually pretty good, but certainly not as good as I would have liked it to be. Given the apparent reverse order of “values” and “performance,” how do I feel about it now?
Research
When I look back, it saddens me somewhat that I didn't do better research. This is a long story, having in part to do with my imperfect and insufficient early background, but I don't find that to be a good excuse because I could have worked on improving my quantitative skills, such as math, physics, and chemistry. Academic administration and teaching are based on personal interactions and do not require as much specialized preparation as research. Research is something different. I don't want to belittle the importance here of tenacity, devotion, and hard work, but still, being a good teacher, a good writer, or a good manager are each largely based on who you are, being a good researcher on who you strive to be.
Teaching
"I think that teaching is the highest level of intellectual activity, more than discovery in the lab." Ira Herskowitz (geneticist, 1946-2003)
When it comes to teaching, everyone is an expert, so why not me? Any amount of experience, large or small, guarantees that one holds strong views. I am no exception. In the course of over 60 years, perhaps 20,000 students have had to listen to me, the majority of whom I probably bored, a few whom I may have stimulated. I have no formal training in pedagogy. With these dubious credentials, let me focus on a single point: Lectures are a vital aspect of university teaching.
Why hold such an old-fashioned view when education is being significantly reworked to incorporate so many technological developments? To begin with, learning involves two distinct elements: acquiring information and reaching understanding. The distinction between them has been sharpened in the computer age, which is superbly equipped to provide information but ill-suited for interpreting knowledge. There are good reasons why this is called the Age of Information rather than the Age of Understanding.
How To Teach Microbiology to Medical Students
I mentioned elsewhere in these memoirs that one of my chief duties at work was to teach microbiology to medical students. In time, I became truly unhappy with it, and so did the students. The reason: there are hundreds of “bugs” (bacterial, viruses, fungi, parasites) that affect people. God forgive us if we left any out. The result was a “bug parade” of unconnected facts that pertained mainly to the agents. All the classes were team taught; one day we lectured on the staphylococcus, the next on the streptococcus, then on the gonococcus, and so forth. Boring (except to microbiologists), generally seen as irrelevant, and easy to disremember.
I had an insight: Teach the disease, not the bug. This is what medical students should learn and, predictably, it is what they were interested in. How to do it? Here is one way: start each lecture with a short presentation of a case, real or imagined. Then ask the class: “Now, what do you want to know about it?” The questions that came up were predictable: “How did the patient catch the bug?,” “How did the bug survive the various layers of host defense?,“ “How much damage was caused by the bug and how much by the host (e.g., inflammation)?” Responses like these then guided the rest of each lecture. It worked. Attendance to our lectures shot up from perhaps 30% to about 90% and everybody was happy. We, the faculty, were glad that in the process the students had learned a bit of microbiology, e.g., who is a pathogen and who isn’t, who is gram-positive and who is gram-negative, who is sensitive to which antibiotic, etc.
I wasn’t the only one to have this revelation. A couple of colleagues of like mind and I decided to write a textbook in this vein. It worked well and was adopted by quite a few medical schools. It went through 5 editions; now to succumb to the reality that medical students don’t much use books any more (that’s what the internet is for, right?). But it remains the happy memory of a worthwhile vision.
Enough for now….
Me, thinking.
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