The ontogenesis of one physiologist.

Abstract

The circumstances that determine the choice of a career form a fascinat­ ing subject for speculation in the realm of human psychology. Few generals have duplicated George S. Patton's almost neonatally developed ambition to become a soldier (my father appointed him to West Point), and I have en­ countered only one physician or surgeon who cannot recall the time when he did not expect to be a doctor. During long service on committees charged with the selection of medical students, I have interviewed hundreds of young people who had decided to study medicine. After a coupl e of years of this duty I concluded that little was to be gained by asking the trite and obvious question: Why do you want to be a doctor? Many, including not a few who went on to successful careers in scientific medicine, were unable to give any very definite answer. I learned to regard this as a better omen than a flowery profession of a desire to help mankind. When I put the same question to a number of senior clinical colleagues I usually got an answer which indi­ cated that some rather trivial incident had directed their attention to the idea of studying medicine. Thereafter some ill-defined inner urge sufficed to po­ tentiate the original slightly supraliminal stimulus. That is surely an effective form of motivation. Joseph Erlanger (5) has told us that the idea of medicine as an occupa­ tion came to him from an older sister who, in my youth, had nicknamed me Doc because of my interest in lower forms of life. A noted clinical micro­ biologist told me that he went to medical school because of the impact of an incident related in a book for children he had read at the age of eight: the recovery of a child from a severe head injury without any specific treatment! Sometimes discouragement encountered in attempting another metier serves to lower the threshold for an excitatory suggestion that medicine may be a way out. Such was the case of Claude Bernard, whose literary activities dur­ ing his apprenticeship to an apothecary in Lyon caused his employer to re­ quest that the young man be restored to his parents. The story has been beau­ tifully told by Olmsted (7). Although disenchanted with the rolling of pills and preparing certain compounds-includ