From the editor

SECOND OPINION
BY SIDNEY HARRIS

The Yale System, in black and white

Congratulations on the autumn issue of Yale Medicine. The handwritten letters on the front and back covers convey the human quality and the personal and professional benefits of the Yale System like nothing else could.

George S. Goldman, M.D. ’29
McLean, Va.



Thank you so much for the issue on the unique Yale System. I learned much about its origins, development and problems that I never knew before.

For me, the Yale System was also crucial and affected me even before I entered medical school. I suppose as an extension of the system’s philosophy, I was accepted after three years at the University of Michigan, with no degree and no major. I wonder if others were chosen with that background, or if I was a one-time experiment! If there are others like me among our readership, please let me know.

That confidence in me, and my idiosyncratic way of approaching requirements, helped me to later petition out of redundant residency requirements, subjective board certification, and to enter the managed care beast from an academic laboratory perspective. The latter has won me some recognition and respect as an objective assessor of managed care. Without the Yale System, I’m sure I would never have taken these risks.

H. Steven Moffic, M.D. ’71
Milwaukee, Wis.

In praise of Milton Winternitz

I read the article adapted from Dr. Gerard Burrow’s A History of Yale’s School of Medicine: Passing Torches to Others with interest. While I haven’t read his entire book or account of Dean Winternitz’s career at Yale, I take it from this portion [“A Steam Engine in Pants,” Autumn 2002] that he is acknowledging the unique and significant contribution Dean Winternitz made to the school.

While I am greatly relieved to see this, I also wish to add a footnote that I suspect he has omitted in his history.

During my tenure at the School of Medicine from 1984 to 1993, I became aware of the fact that, in spite of Dean Winternitz’s enormously important work on behalf of the school, nothing at Yale is named for him. So, when it was decided to create a special medal to be given to individuals in honor of their contributions to the School of Medicine, I suggested that we create a Winternitz medal.

Burrow was dean then. In vain I argued on behalf of the “Winternitz medal,” because in the end Burrow vetoed this idea, saying that Winternitz was too “controversial.” As a result, the medal now contains the portrait and name of Dr. Peter Parker, an interesting person (and Burrow’s suggestion) but, in my opinion and that of a number of alumni who actually knew Winternitz, not so worthy a person as Winternitz for this recognition.

I have always regretted this oversight, and I continue to hope that one day the Yale School of Medicine will repay the debt it owes Dean Winternitz by naming something of proper stature after him—perhaps, in part, because he dared to be controversial.

Ann Pecora Diamond
New Haven, Conn.

Remembering Gustaf Lindskog

On page 62 of your last issue, a good one, I read of the passing of G.E. Lindskog. As house staff, I scrubbed many times with Dr. Lindskog, who was chairman of surgery with a specialty in thoracic surgery. He taught me a lot and I learned to respect his demands for excellence. During the more than six years that I worked with him, he was very good to me and we became friends.

Frank J. Lepreau, HS ’45
Westport, Mass.



Sadly, the autumn issue stirs memories of my mother’s terminal bout with lung cancer in 1952. With Dr. Lindskog’s passing, I am reminded of the connections between them and with her willingness to be his experimental patient in radioactive colloidal gold treatments. It did help her through the last few months of her life—for that I was grateful.

George M. Isbell
Mount Dora, Fla.

The health of nations, the art of medicine

The article “A World of Difference” [Autumn 2001] caught my attention, though I’ve been slow responding. I have practiced “bush medicine” in Alaska, in rural California, in Lima, Peru, in 1960, etc., and had to rely on eye, ear, nose and palpation, auscultation, etc. The old (Osler) simpler techniques of physical diagnosis should not be forgotten or neglected.

How I would have enjoyed Yale’s International Program!

Keep it going!

Elizabeth F. Elsner, M.D. ’48
Assonet, Mass.

From the Editor:

On the move on moving day

When cardiovascular researcher Jeffrey Bender and hundreds of his colleagues unpack their labs and offices in the Congress Avenue Building later this winter and spring [“The Big Move”], a new chapter in the School of Medicine’s history will begin in earnest. For the first time in a decade, the medical school’s legendary space crunch will ease, at least for a time, and the occasion will mark the completion of a process that began in the late 1980s. The design of the new building has a special purpose behind it, that of knitting together basic biology, physics, chemistry and human health, of making clinical observations relevant at the molecular level (and vice versa) and, ultimately, of alleviating human suffering.

“We have the opportunity now to make an enormous difference in people’s lives,” Dean David Kessler says of the new building. “We have the world’s best scientists and the world’s best labs. This building will move medicine forward.”

A faculty-led committee initially recommended a version of the Congress Avenue Building in the early 1990s. A dozen years, 560,000 bricks and $176 million later, it is a reality. In addition to the 363 laboratory rooms shared by 91 research teams, it also contains state-of-the-art teaching space, an advanced facility for breeding and caring for transgenic mice (a research model invented at Yale in 1980) and a major new center for research employing magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, another field pioneered significantly at Yale.

If you’re curious about the new space and want to see architect Robert Venturi’s sketches or recent photos of the construction, the school has a website full of wonderful detail. You can visit the Congress Avenue Building online at www.med.yale.edu/cab. It’s just a click away, and there are no boxes to unpack.

Michael Fitzsousa
michael.fitzsousa@yale.edu