Before I get into the story of my final travail in Medical school, I should relate some facts. All of the hospitals in Indianapolis were segregated. Methodist hospital put Black patients in the basement and General and St Vincent’s had a special floor. On the clinical services, some of the patients didn’t want the Black students to examine them and many of the attending did not insist. This diluted our exposure to certain diseases they may have had. The white students could get clerkships at the private hospitals where they were paid to extern, we could not. There was and still is a lot of bitterness I harbor to this day about IU School of Medicine. Those of us who graduated only owe them the opportunity to be doctors but as far as encouragement and help (i.e. Drs. Drew, Test, Meeks and a few others ) there was little from others. I have never received any inquiry as to what any of us eventually became and many became outstanding in their contributions to medicine.
Dr Frank Lloyd, who became my mentor in OB/Gyn was not permitted to work at Coleman Maternity Hospital because they had a closed staff, even though he was board certified and most of their attendings were not but fortunately he was given special permission to deliver the daughter of a fellow Black student’s wife. As I look back, medical school was tough and was sometime unfair and cruel for everyone but the discrimination affected our perspective and added unnecessary anxiety to our lives. And I cannot forgive them for that!
The final year was one of electives and my first rotation was psychiatry at the VA. This was a great service and a new Chairman, Dr Nurenberger gave the students a lot of clinical freedom. But after the incident I’m going to relate he had to rethink that. A student interviewed a patient and not being experienced left the patient agitated. A little later a staff psychiatrist came by to see the patient, who was hiding behind the door and struck him in the head with a chair causing a skull fracture. You can imagine after that the staff was very cautious.
Also we were given the responsibility as duty officer while on call, allowing us to admit patients at night. It can be awful scary to be called to a locked unit and walk down a row of cell like rooms with deranged vets staring out to give a sedative to a combative patient with only an orderly present.
The most bizarre thing that I had happen was when I was in charge of a group that was being evaluated for discharge. The physical therapist and I had taken them to the YMCA for interaction and sports by playing some volleyball. On our return, I had to write a summary as to how one of my patient did so he could be released. I had gone to a desk off in a corner of the unit to write that the patient was interacting socially and indeed I felt the patient could be dismissed. When suddenly there was a commotion on the terrace next to the unit. My patient had climbed the barrier and jumped 8 floors to his death.
I immediately tore up my report and stated in rounds the next day that I hadn’t had a chance to write anything before he jumped. That incident ended any thought of my considering psychiatry as a specialty.
My next rotation was on OB and it was at the Coleman the university service. Practically all of the patients were white and the few Blacks in labor didn’t want me taking care of them. Unlike General Hospital you didn’t get to do anything, basically not even watch a delivery, since you were essentially violating a white women’s privacy. I learned a lot about how not to take care of a patient. Fortunately, the final exam was not bias and I scored 100. I think that convinced me to lean toward OB as a career. I also had considered general surgery but felt that in OB I could know as much as anyone in the world but in surgery the field was so vast I would never be able to master it. And later I was right, because years later surgery became fragmented into many subspecialties. I had not made up my mind about where I would intern and went home to Evansville one week. My dad had privileges to do certain minor operations and he had an emergency appendectomy one night that he took me with him to scrub on. He let me do the operation and was really impressed with my skill. Later he suggested that I apply at St. Mary’s Hospital for one of the 2 intern spots. Now he had been a respected physician there for 20 years even served as a committee chairman. They indicated that I would indeed be considered so I planned on going home to serve my internship. As it turned out at the last minute they reneged on their offer. And that was probably the best thing that could have happened. My dad called Dr. William Sinkler, Director of Homer G. Phillips Hospital St. Louis, one of his classmates and he immediately accepted me with the recrimination that I went to the “white folks” and I needed him now but I didn’t care I was gladly ready to bail on the white medical world.
A personal event happened that left an indelible imprint on how I would treat fellow doctors and students in the future. My wife got pregnant early in the 4th year and was going to Dr Lloyd, she ended up having a miscarriage which I hadn’t diagnosed and needed a D& C. Dr Lloyd never taught by telling you an answer he would make you deductively figure it out, something I adopted in my teaching over the years. Any way when the insurance check came ( $50) and I took it to him for payment, he signed it and handed it back saying you need this more than I do. I never forgot that act of largesse for me as a student and I have never charged a student or a fellow physician for my services until the government made it insurance fraud to give free service to a select group.
One last thing happened in the 3rd quarter, I was still working in the Neuropsychiatic Institute and a group foreign physicians were touring. Their host and guide was Dr S from my pathology days.
He greeted me warmly and put his arm around me and described me as one his best students and how he was proud of how I had put together this lab and what an important study I was doing. (Such bull! )
All that I had left was to pass the finals and get out of Indianapolis
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There was an senior tradition that when the finals were posted with the “all clear” the whole class marched down Michigan St. to the Gaiety Burlesque Theater for the matinee in our white lab coats and drank at the adjoining bar until the show started. We than took up the first rows of the theater displacing the (perverts ) and awaited the star “La Rose la Rose” a nationally known stripper. At the finale’ of her act the class president had the honor of presenting her with a bouquet of roses burying his head in her ample breast amid our hoots and hollers. This we did with great gusto and later I heard that the Dean forbade future classes from this yearly rite of passage.
The only thing left was graduation which took place on the Bloomington campus and included undergraduate and graduate schools. The ceremony was to be held outdoors in the football stadium and if it rained it would be in the field house and 4 tickets would be allotted. To my never ending disappointment all my family couldn’t witness the ceremony.
When the ceremony was over I left with my tassel and diploma (with all the rights and privileges there to apportaining ) and never looked back with any fondness for IU. Finis!
