Alumni Reminiscences

Isador Harris Kass (M.D. 1929):
An alum’s son remembers his physician father — and medicine in a former era

Barbara Carnahan Smith Fry (M.D. 1948):
My Journey toward Medicine

Isador Harris Kass (M.D. 1929):
An alum’s son remembers his physician father — and medicine in a former era

My father’s story is one of determination and moxie, opportunity and service, all rooted in the amazing Michigan tradition he pursued and lived.

Born in 1906 to a Russian father and a German mother who immigrated to the United States, Dad entered the University of Toledo in 1923 and enrolled in a premedical curriculum. One of his professors was H.H.M. Bowman, a noted botanist who always wore a rose in his lapel. At the time, botany was a required premedical course. Bowman was highly regarded as a botanist and educator by the University of Michigan Medical School. A strong recommendation from Bowman was a big plus for any aspiring medical student from the University of Toledo.

Toward the end of his second year, Dad applied to the U-M Medical School. He was shocked and dismayed when he received a letter of rejection. Refusing to accept defeat, he asked for a second interview and was given an appointment to see Rollo McCotter, professor of anatomy. Dad purchased a round-trip ticket from Toledo to Ann Arbor on the Ann Arbor Railway and, with some trepidation, went to McCotter’s office to plead his case. He was 19 years old.

McCotter welcomed my father into his office and asked why he came. “I came because I want to become a doctor,” Dad said. “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to be, and I have my heart set on going to the University of Michigan Medical School. I don’t want to go anywhere else.” McCotter smiled and said that the Admissions Committee would reconsider. Within a week Dad received his letter of acceptance.

My father moved to Ann Arbor in September 1925 to begin his first year at Michigan. He lived in Mrs. Spear’s rooming house on Observatory Street, about three blocks from the then-new University Hospital that came to be known as Old Main.

Medical students at that time had a highly structured curriculum, particularly in the first two years. Gross anatomy was taught by McCotter, bacteriology by Fredrick Novy, physiology by Walter Lombard. Pathology then was very different from what it is now. It was the queen of medical disciplines, with only a few qualified and greatly respected pathologists throughout the world. At Johns Hopkins, there was William Welch. In Chicago, there was Ludvig Hektoen. In Ann Arbor, there was Aldred Scott Warthin.

Dad remembered Warthin very well, one of those legendary professors whom students never forget. He was exacting, intimidating, uncompromising, and an authority on nearly everything in pathology in an era where there were few if any textbooks of pathology. He devised the Warthin-Starry stain, and described Warthin’s tumor of the salivary gland, papillary cystadenoma lymphomatosum. He was chairman of the pathology department at Michigan for 30 years, editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine, and a founder of the American College of Physicians. In pathology, Warthin was, so to speak, the last word.

A man of medium height, Warthin was a giant to his students. Dad remembered that Warthin started to lecture as he was walking down the hall into the lecture room. Heaven help the students who were not in their seats with pen in hand, ready to transcribe the words of the master. Dad recalled that Warthin had a small goatee, was a trained organist, and that he personally built a long stone wall around his home in Ann Arbor.

Despite his austere manner in the lecture hall and laboratory, Warthin had a gentle side, and could often be encouraging. The medical students joked that Warthin had a spirochete engraved on the eyepiece of his microscope. Warthin believed in the concept of the “anlage,” or primordium of primitive embryonic cells from which body parts developed, and that a person’s fate was determined at the moment of conception. He also developed the theory that certain types of cancers could be inherited. In so many ways, Warthin was ahead of his time.

Dad graduated in the upper third of his class, an achievement for anyone, let alone a first generation American Jew. After internship and residency, he completed a two-year fellowship in pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic. While at Mayo, he wrote several papers. One of them, published in 1933, was the first description of urinary bladder involvement by neurofibromatosis in a child. Amazingly, 76 years later, the opening paragraphs of that paper can be found on a Google search.

Dad opened a private pediatrics practice in Toledo in 1933. He was the second pediatrician in Toledo. It was the time of the Great Depression, and for several years, few patients came. Office visits were $3, and house calls were $5. Eventually, his practice began to flourish.

Until the late 1930s, a doctor’s therapeutic armamentarium was very sparse. Except for a few items, it was for the most part for relief of symptoms. There was salvarsan for syphilis, ventriculin for pernicious anemia, aspirin, camphorated tincture of opium for diarrhea, tincture of opium for pain, tincture of belladonna for stomach distress, digitalis for heart failure, Sippy powders for heartburn, Blaud’s iron pills for anemia — and little else. Antibiotics did not become available until the late 1930s when sulfonamides came on the market. Many times, Dad sat at the bedside of a sick child with the parents, watching and hoping that the child would improve. Some did. Some didn’t.

I shadowed him in his office in 1962, when he saw 35 patients in a typical afternoon. He performed complete physical examinations on every child, and still had time to talk with parents. In all, he practiced medicine and treated patients for 64 years. Dad remained in private practice until 1973 when he retired. Until 1993, he continued as the physician to the Juvenile Court in Toledo, where he had founded a clinic in 1936.

On December 10, 1994, Dad died at age 87 ½ of renal failure. I believe that of the many things he did in his life, the achievement that brought him the greatest pride was to have graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School.

His original diploma burned in a house fire shortly after his graduation in 1929. He always yearned for it, because it was the only visible manifestation of his achievement as a medical student. In 1979, at my request, the Diploma Office at the University of Michigan located the original template of his 1929 diploma and, with an auto pen, affixed the signatures of all his professors, and his name in Latin, as on the original. The only time I recall my father shedding a tear was when my wife, Sara, and I presented it to him.

Thanks to Rollo McCotter who gave him the opportunity, Dad pursued his heart’s desire — to study at and graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School.

Submitted by:
Lawrence Kass, M.D.
Professor of Pathology and Medicine
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Cleveland, Ohio  44109
lkass@metrohealth.org

Barbara Carnahan Smith Fry (M.D. 1948):
My Journey toward Medicine

I have a few old photographs, the origin of which I cannot say. They are small, black and white, and not of the best quality; in fact, they are a bit faded and blurred, reflecting my mind and memory as I gaze upon them. They were taken many years ago (several lifetimes, really), somewhere between 1944 and 1948 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are all that is left to represent my years — those exciting, challenging years — as a medical student. The women who look out at me from these photos are, for the most part, strangers; yet from our expressions we were apparently friendly and enjoying this special time in which we found ourselves.

How did it all come about? How did we all find ourselves together for that long ago moment in time? We look young — we look eager, excited — we look relaxed, enjoying each other. In only one picture are we serious; we are listening to Dr. Rollo McCotter, our anatomy professor, explaining something to us in the cozy confines of our living room in our Alpha Epsilon Iota house. Most of us are white; yet, I see a couple of Asian women, one African-American, and one from the Philippines. There are 18 of us all gathered together for what looks to be a celebratory occasion, as we are “dressed up,” a few of us sporting corsages. Is this my class of ’48? Who are these strangers?

As I continue to gaze at these pictures, a multitude of feelings come to the surface: sadness that I do not remember most of these women; chagrin that I have no knowledge as to how their lives were lived after our time together. We spent four years in an intensive adventure of learning and living in pursuit of a goal. We had so much in common for four years; then a scattering, a dispersion, a vanishing into separate pursuits of medicine wherever our journey took us. Even the hospital in which we lived out those four incredible years is gone, leveled in the 1980s in the name of progress. These pictures and my dim, fading memories remain.

There are many twists and turns in life, many circumstances which determine the course our lives take. As a depression-age high schooler, I started in the Commercial Study program — preordained, as it were, to become a secretary. However there was within me a deep feeling which directed me elsewhere; I felt determined to go to college. Therefore, I switched to the pre-college program. Along the way, I met a person who influenced my life in many ways; she had enrolled at the University of Michigan and urged me to do likewise. Thus, in 1940, I arrived in Ann Arbor as a physical education student. It didn’t take me long before I switched my major. I had discovered zoology and the natural sciences!

The second semester of my year at Michigan revealed much to me of what my future held. Ensconced happily in my second major, I began to consider what one did in this field as a career. In the basement of the Natural Sciences Building were rooms for the graduate students on the doors of which were the studies they were engaged upon. To my consternation I could not even pronounce, let alone recognize, the themes of their endeavors. They seemed to me inconsequential to life.

In the spring of 1941, I saw a notice that the Medical School was holding a convocation at Rackham Hall. What exactly a convocation was, I hadn’t the least idea, but it did not matter. I went. There was a parade of faculty down the aisles, replete in their gorgeous robes and cowls of many colors. It was all very impressive and inspiring; I was swept away with the grandeur! That decided me! Later during that summer’s vacation, I announced to my family: “I am going to be a doctor!” That fall I switched again, this time to pre-med. My needle was set; there was to be no more switching!

That fall, I began in earnest to fulfill the requirements necessary to meet my goal and be admitted to medical school. The one class I’ll always remember is that of comparative anatomy in which I and another young woman were the only females. As far as I can remember, we experienced no teasing or other discriminating gestures or comments. Michigan had the reputation of diversity long before it became fashionable. Everyone was accepted as long as one wanted to learn and acquire an education. However, something happened then which emphasized that gender did indeed make a difference: Sunday, the 7th of December — Pearl Harbor. Monday the 8th found me and the other woman alone at our desks in the comparative anatomy classroom. The male students were absent; they were responding to the emotion of the day and flocking to the recruiting office to sign up!

World War II had a great influence on the Medical School. The classes underway in the school were accelerated; the enrollments included quotas from all the governmental services which, of course, affected the number of civilians accepted. The numbers in each class were enlarged. When it came time for me to apply for entrance into the Medical School, I merely walked across campus from the Natural Science Building to the Medical School. I cannot recall what else I had to do (interviews, tests or identity checks) besides filling out that application. Michigan was the only school to which I applied! There were 175 in our freshman class, 22 of whom were women; upon graduation in 1948 we had 133 in our class, 21 of whom were women!

For the most part we women experienced very little discrimination; we were called “hen medics” quite frequently. We were sometimes told that we were taking the place better filled by a male who would be more productive in the practice of medicine, as we women would, no doubt, marry and forsake that practice. We refused to feel guilty. We were in school because of an inner drive, an inner spirit, which all 22 possessed; we wanted to learn and to serve. It did not matter what anyone else thought!

It seems a long time ago — the coming together of these 18 women in one photo. We represent and exemplify the will and the determination to seek higher ground for women, no matter the cost or the influence of old cultural roles which would curtail our progress. I am proud of these women who are strangers to me 61 years later. I am glad to witness the increase and acceptance of women in medicine. I am grateful for the way in which women have combined career and family in today’s broader view of a fulfilling life. I am proud of my alma mater which has always been in the forefront of education and diversity. These photos, these relics have served their purpose — to bring back a time of struggle, satisfaction and success for the women in the Michigan medical class of 1948. GO BLUE!

Submitted by:
Barbara Carnahan Smith Fry (M.D. 1948)
Friday Harbor, Washington

The views, opinions and facts presented are those of the authors.