A student recalls Sir Charles Sherrington, O.M. (1857 1952)

Abstract

> ‘Experience is not to be measured by time served, but by the use which a man makes of his opportunities.’ > > (Sir William Osler) The ‘Great Depression’ following the crash in 1929 of world stock markets ended my intended studies in banking and commerce at the youthful University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Adding a crushing load of courses in histology, chemistry, genetics and embryology, I proceeded instead to a Bachelor of Science degree achieving sufficient grades to enter McGill Medical School, Montreal, in autumn 1933. There, the freshmen class was amazed at the renowned professors gathered by McGill—such as the anatomist, Dr Samuel Whitnall, an Oxford graduate who lectured to his class wearing a beautiful black silk gown and a monocle which he adeptly expelled from his orbit, catching it in one hand. He instructed the attendant Mr Murphy to display various parts of the human body specially dissected for the purpose. The lecture on the human intestinal tract required only 3 min, as Murphy was commanded to pull-up the entire human digestive tract by a rope and pulley attached to the ceiling, whilst the immaculately dressed professor declared, as he left the classroom—‘Gentleman, the Guts’. Understandably, the Dean of Medicine—himself a first class clinician–sought to modify the 5-year MD course, replacing it with the standard American 4-year requirement, and introducing some new and less-flamboyant professors. On learning of this impending change, I applied to Dr Wilder Penfield whose new Montreal Neurological Institute was about to open, in order to fit in a Master of Science degree year. This was enthusiastically arranged by Dr Penfield and my work began in this sparkling new tower financed by prominent Montreal families and by the Rockefeller Foundation of New York. My task was to demonstrate, in large numbers, the all-important boutons terminaux by which …