Medicine: The Young Turks

In Atlantic City last week, 168 doctors registered for one of the year's most important medical meetings, and there was not a greybeard in the lot. The American Society for Clinical Investigation (research men only) prides itself on its other, shorter name: The Young Turks. When the time came for the presidential address, the Young Turks (and 1,400 visitors from allied medical groups also meeting in Atlantic City) sat back and listened to Dr. William Barry Wood Jr., 42, professor of medicine at St. Louis' Washington University—and even better known to fame as Harvard's last ('31) All-America backfield man.

Tall (6 ft., 1 in.) and as slim as in undergraduate days, Dr. Wood walked to the dais with an athlete's loose-jointed stride and crisply announced that he would take "as short a time as possible, so that we may proceed to the main program" (27 highly technical papers). He was as good as his word. Into little more than ten minutes, he compressed a sketch of progress in medical research, practice and teaching as it appears to Young Turk Wood.

Who Knows the Score? The professor of 50 years ago, said Wood, was "a versatile soloist of the clinic." His successor today is far different: "No longer a virtuoso, he has become the conductor of an orchestra composed of experts in an ever-increasing number of sub-specialities . . . He displays the talents of his various experts by allowing them in turn to carry the melody . . .

"In some respects his assignment might frighten even Toscanini, for just as an orchestra is trained to perfection, one of its talented, members will suddenly introduce a new instrument—a longer, more versatile catheter, an artificial kidney, a triumph of chemotherapy . . . The professor . . . must . . . integrate it with the rest of the orchestra. Judging from my own brief experience in this exacting role, I wonder if the average professor of medicine today ever really knows the score."

Old Turks at 45. The Society for Clinical Investigation was designed for just such people as Wood. It was founded in 1908* by a group of youngish men who felt that existing organizations were not geared to encourage research effectively. To keep the organization young, they limit membership to men under 45 (the average age at election is 36). When he reaches the upper limit, a member retires to emeritus status and loses rights to vote and present papers, though he may still sponsor papers by aspirants to membership. Current membership: 258 active, 292 emeritus. Current limit on new members who may be elected in any one year: 35.*

Few, if any, of the papers chosen by President Wood for the program which followed his presidential address would lead to changes in next week's bedside practice by U.S. physicians. Rather, they dealt with the kind of basic medical research (see below) which may bear practitioner's fruit five or ten years hence.

A typical program of Young-Turk research has been that of William Barry