Anyway, many thanks for this fascinating story about a truly great American!

Stephen L. Waterhouse
DC '65, Tuck '67
Hanover, N.H.

Colored chalk and rubber aprons

I recently came across the fine essay by third-year DMS student Kirsten Andrews ["Anatomy of a dissection," Summer 2002]. I naturally compared her experience with that which my classmates and I had in the summer of 1942. That was when, with the College on a wartime footing, we began our studies at DMS and were plunged into the rigors of human anatomy.

The locale was what we called the "Old Medical Building," constructed in 1811 as the first purely medical school building in America. The anatomy lab occupied a wing that was actually below ground level and had a glass roof like that of a greenhouse. Our anatomy lectures, by Dr. Frederic Lord, were excellent. He was a renowned master of his subject and an artist with colored chalk. Our textbook was Morris's Human Anatomy. The revered Dr. Rolf Syvertsen was in charge of the dissecting room and was omnipresent—to our great benefit. We were 24 in number and had one cadaver for each two students, a ratio unheard of in most schools.

Our first day we approached our task with trepidation, gloved and garbed in rubber aprons. The room reeked of formaldehyde, as all specimens were kept under drapes soaked in the chemical preservative. Our subjects lay face up and were 90 percent male. Each of us had a dissection manual with directions and pictures. I used Cunningham's Dissector and the renowned Spalteholz Atlas, both given to me by my father, who had used them at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. We made our first tentative incisions on an arm according to orders from Dr. Syvertsen, taking turns with our partners between dissecting and reading the books.

Our Fall 2004 issue contained several features—including the cover story —that come in for comment below.

Our anatomy course lasted for a full academic year, during which we remained with our original specimens, with few exceptions. After several weeks we relaxed a good deal and in some cases discarded the rubber gloves for the increased efficiency of bare hands. Of course even after a thorough post-class washup, we all carried a strong formaldehyde odor and often noticed people moving away from us on those rare occasions when we went to a movie at the Nugget. We ourselves had long before become immune to the smell.

We were young, so there was a certain amount of levity in the dissecting room. However, Dr. Sy saw to it that our specimens were always treated with great regard. He impressed us early on with the fact that what now appeared lifeless had once been living, breathing humans and deserved our thanks and profound respect. Accordingly, after the course was finished, we all joined Dr. Sy at a private interment where all remains were committed to the grave. Appropriate prayers were said and final thanks were expressed.

In those days, DMS was a two-year school and we all transferred to other

medical schools to complete our M.D.'s. Our preparation in the basic sciences was always more than adequate to handle third-year work, but our knowledge of human anatomy was often noticeably superior, thanks to Drs. Lord and Sy.

Charles W. Clarke, M.D.
DC '43, DMS '43
Fair Haven, N.J.

Of chaos and complexity

As a surgery resident at the University of Illinois, I was fascinated by the novel concept described in Dr. Athos Rassias's essay, "Why chaos matters," in your Spring 2003 issue.

Without a doubt, the idea of a reduction in chaos—or, better yet, complexity—as an underlying mechanism in disease is quite interesting. Fetal heart rate, for example, is controlled by overlapping systems that output a variable pattern. However, when these systems become compromised by lack of oxygen, this pattern disappears and is replaced by a nearly fixed configuration.

But if the hallmark of complex behavior is unpredictability, it would seem that many healthy organs and systems are not all that chaotic, as we are able to make fairly accurate predictions regarding them. For example the indicators we use to assess the normal pancreas are quite constant and hence predictable. If a healthy adult with normal levels of amylase and lipase eats a protein-rich meal, his or her pancreatic exocrine output increases. More importantly, if one avoids the known insults to the pancreas, those normal levels will most likely persist.

In contrast, if one overdoses on fine brews and triggers an attack of pancreatitis, I could not venture to predict the individual's lab values, let alone the outcome of the disease, in spite of great efforts to develop prognostic tools for such a scenario.

It would thus seem that in the case of acute pancreatitis there is