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The P&S Years of Walker Percy’s Life |
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By Patrick Samway, S.J. |
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| Walker soon settled into a routine. He moved into the 11-story Bard Hall, the P&S residence on Haven Avenue where he lived for four years of medical school. His corner room on the 10th floor had a panoramic view of the Hudson River and the Palisades Amusement Park on the New Jersey side. From one side window he could see all the way south to the Battery at the tip of Manhattan. Walker was one of the fortunate ones to have a suite.1 Bard Hall had a spacious lounge on the ground floor, a dining room directly below the lounge (breakfast and lunch were cafeteria style, dinner was served), four squash courts (where Walker lost some front teeth), a gym (where he would join in pickup games of basketball), a moderate size swimming pool, as well as a social club for P&S students who belonged to the YMCA. Movies were very popular and a screen was installed in the dining room. The neighborhood was a stable one of walk-up brownstones and medium-sized tenement buildings belonging mostly to families of Irish stock and recently arrived German intellectuals seeking political and academic freedom, a number of whom would find employment at P&S. During his four years at P&S, he would invariably park his Ford near Bard Hall; with its out-of-state license plate, the car attracted the notice of the local police and inspired numerous conversations. His car allowed him a certain degree of freedom, most notably to absent himself from the activities of his classmates, but most of the time his classmates noticed that it just sat there.
As Walker became familiar with the layout of the medical complex, he walked through the stem on the eighth and ninth floors of P&S to the back part of the complex. There he encountered Presbyterian Hospital, three wards on each floor that could accommodate up to 12 patients each; each ward also had a smaller four-bed unit and three or four one-bed rooms. In these years, patients throughout the hospital would not have had private health insurance. At the ends of the 12-bed wards were solaria for the patients who were mobile and needed a change of scenery. Students took elevators from internal medicine on the eighth floor up to histology on the ninth floor, anatomy on the 10th floor, bacteriology on the 12th floor, pathology on the 14th floor, and obstetrics/gynecology on the 15th through the 17th floors. Each floor had its own set of laboratories. The operating rooms were on the 18th and 19th floors, and though students did not wander into these rooms, Walker and his classmates spent time there when studying surgery. Walker could have access in a few minutes to lecture rooms, faculty offices, and various hospitals. The faculty that Dean William Darrach began recruiting before his retirement in 1930 had a decided influence on Walker. Their full names still ring strong and loud in the ears of their former students: Samuel Randall Detwiler, author of “Neuroembryology: An Experimental Study,” Philip Edward Smith in anatomy, Hans Thatcher Clarke in biochemistry, Horatio Burt Williams in physiology, and Frederick Parker Gay in bacteriology. Other distinguished professors appointed before Darrach’s tenure as dean included James Wesley Jobling in pathology, John Bentley Squier in urology, and Charles Christian Lieb in pharmacology. New appointees included Walter Walker Palmer in medicine, Allen Oldfather Whipple in surgery, Benjamin Philip Watson in obstetrics, and Haven Emerson in public health. Darrach’s tenure as dean was followed in 1931 by that of Willard Cole Rappleye, who had been professor of hospital administration at Yale. When Walker entered P&S, changes were taking place that seemed fairly standard today, but they were then innovative and had far-reaching effects on the way Walker learned to diagnose the illnesses that he saw and studied. It was expected that the entering class of 1937 would take two years of basic or preclinical science, consisting mostly of lectures and laboratory work, followed by two years of clinical science, which involved progressively greater ward experience and actual contact with patients. In the first year the basic courses would be anatomy, biochemistry, embryology, histology, neuroanatomy, microanatomy, and physiology. In the second year there were courses in pathology, microbiology, and pharmacology, with physical and clinical diagnosis during the last third of the year. In the third year there were four major clerkships, each coordinated by a professor and guided by one or more “attending” physicians: medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and psychiatry, with minor clerkships in ophthalmology, dermatology, orthopedics, neurology, obstetrics, and gynecology. It was not unusual for students to take their ob-gyn clerkship at Sloane Hospital. To a great extent, the fourth year was repetitious of the third, though there were some additional electives taught at a more advanced level. Rotations in the fourth year tended to be shorter than in the third because of these electives. Students in their final year had a greater sense of making a transition as they discussed their patients with their professors and planned procedures for these patients. Also during the fourth year, students worked on what was called the chest service and the general medical service at Bellevue, gaining invaluable experience in one of New York City’s more dynamic hospitals. Unknown to the 113 entering students, the marking system was rigid: The department heads had been requested to distribute the grades as follows: A to approximately 10 percent of the class; B to 50 percent; C to the rest.2 At registration Walker posed for a student ID mug shot, one apparently used during his four years at P&S. It shows a serious young man in a light jacket, with a striped tie, looking up and slightly off-camera. His lips do not betray a smile and there is a hint of intensity in the eyes. Among new classmates, the most visible group was the contingent from Princeton.3 Walker made his own set of friends, particularly with Frederick Dieterlie, Gilbert H. Mudge, Habeen Z. (“Hobby”) Maroon, Robert F. Gehres, Gustave A. Haggstrom, and Frank J. Hardart Jr. As they swapped stories at such local hangouts as Curran’s Armory Bar & Grill on Broadway (popularly known as “A, B & G” and transformed in “The Last Gentleman” into the Washington Heights Bar & Grill), Walker’s classmates admired his laid-back humor. His casual dress reflected his inner spirit and put people at ease. Walker and his classmates could go to the Uptown Theatre on Broadway and West 170th Street for the latest movies, or Loew’s State at 175th, or farther uptown at 181st to the RKO Coliseum. Walker did not look on movies as an escape: “I’d go all the time to movies up at Washington Heights. I think at the movies I was getting to know how people looked at the world, what they thought--just as a doctor does. The movies are not just fantasies; for a lot of people they provide important moments, maybe the only point in the day, or even the week, when someone (a cowboy, a detective, a crook) is heard asking what life is all about, asking what is worth fighting for--or asking if anything is worth fighting for.”4 Medical students dubbed another movie theater in the Audubon Ballroom building at 166th Street the “Armpit.” Walker always found it difficult to share much about himself with new friends; he usually kept a calm and pleasant demeanor, but was not averse to joining in the more spirited give-and-takes. He could always hold his own in any group. Not all the students initially considered themselves part of some inner crowd. George L. Hawkins Jr., given the nickname “Hawkeye,” met a pleasant and determined Walker at registration.5 (Walker soon picked up a new moniker--Rollo--which may have come about from a comic-strip figure, Rollo Rollingstone.) George had never before been east of the Mississippi River and he felt fortunate in having been selected as a P&S student. In George’s view, Walker would have made an excellent physician--or anything else--since he seemed to have the qualities needed for success in any endeavor. Frank Hardart, a native New Yorker, who was slightly older than Walker, lived across the hall from him in Room 1002.6 Frank, a Roman Catholic, had attended the Jesuit-run Loyola School in Manhattan, and transferred to Newman School in New Jersey before he went to Notre Dame for four years to study economics. Frank felt so confident about being accepted at P&S, as he told Walker, that he did not apply to other medical schools. Frank’s father directed the Horn & Hardart restaurants, a self-help chain of “Automats” famous for low prices and a series of windowed slots with food paid for by depositing a number of nickels. The restaurants--and the Hardart family--had been celebrated in the Irving Berlin and Moss Hart musical “Face the Music” and in the 1937 film “Easy Living.” (“The Last Gentleman” mentions the Automat near Carnegie Hall.) Sometimes Frank would take Walker and a few other classmates to the Automat on 181st Street, where they might get a free meal if Frank happened to be recognized. Another student who soon became friends with Walker was Bert Mudge, an Amherst graduate who took a year of premed at Columbia University.7 Bert sat next to Walker in class, especially during their first two years; his meticulously kept notebooks paint a detailed picture of their days at P&S. Walker also met and got on well with Philip Knapp, a native New Yorker and a graduate of Phillips Exeter and Harvard, who came from a long tradition of doctors who specialized in eye medicine.8 Walker felt comfortable with different groups of friends, some of whom did not interact with other groups. In fact, it was one of Walker’s saving graces, because it allowed him to form friendships with individuals who had interests independent from other people he knew. The basic courses were often taught in amphitheaters, with patients sometimes brought in for the purpose of demonstration; these lectures were followed by sessions in classrooms or laboratories. Each of the three amphitheaters looked like a model for Thomas Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic,” with its steep steps and vertiginous sweep. Any note of levity--sometimes provided by Dr. Franklin Hanger--was greatly appreciated by the students as they strained to absorb the demanding lectures. What Walker missed in this new setting was a sense of his own Southern roots, but he knew where to find it. He started visiting Uncle Will’s close friend Huger Wilkinson Jervey, who had an apartment at 1150 Fifth Avenue. A native of Charleston, who had bought Brinkwood9 with Will, he would become during the next few years Walker’s surrogate uncle.10 Walker felt comfortable with the older Jervey not only because of his patrician background and long-standing relationship with Will but also because he was an esteemed professor of law at Columbia University, well versed in the pressures of academic life. He and Will Percy first met at Sewanee. After graduate study at Johns Hopkins, Jervey returned to Sewanee to teach until 1909. He entered Columbia Law School in 1910 and received his law degree in February 1913. His intelligence had not gone unnoticed; he became an editor of the Columbia Law Review in 1911. When admitted to the New York Bar in 1913, he joined the law firm of Satterlee, Canfield & Stone. (In this case, the Stone was Justice-to-be Harlan Fisk Stone, the former dean of Columbia’s Law School.) Like Uncle Will, Jervey served in France during 1917-18, attached to the Judge Advocate General’s Department. He joined the law faculty at Columbia as an associate professor in 1923 and a year later became a full professor and dean of the Law School. In the early 1930s Jervey served as the administrative head of the Parker School of International Affairs at Columbia, and in 1936 he started teaching the first-year course in equity, providing him with a second career that would continue for the next 13 years. Walker profited from the companionship and advice of this seasoned veteran of Columbia; they often enjoyed dinners together and nights at symphony concerts. Classes continued at a relentless pace. In mid-November, Dr. Smith gave four lectures on the structure of the endocrine glands and the female reproductive organs, while Dr. Aura Edward Severinghaus focused on the pituitary gland. Dr. Earl T. Engle complemented Dr. Smith’s lectures by discussing the anatomy of genital systems. As the Christmas holidays approached, Walker sat through lectures by Dr. Magnus I. Gregersen on blood and circulation and Dr. Goodwin Foster on enzyme reactions and hematology. Before Christmas, Walker attended his regular classes, plus three by Byron Stookey on the neuroanatomy of muscle and skin, using case studies as he went along. When Walker finished his first semester, he could enjoy the Christmas respite and see Huger Jervey; he would receive his grade evaluations at the end of the academic year. How could Walker begin to synthesize all this technical knowledge? How could he articulate a context that made good sense to him? He knew that his studies had to go beyond just factual information; Walker was particularly taken by the phrase “mechanism of disease”: Even the dis-order of dis-ease, which one generally takes to be the very disruption of order, could be approached and understood and treated according to scientific principles governing the response of the patient to the causative agents of disease. This response was the disease as the physician sees it! Of course, it was hardly a new idea, but, new or old, it was an exciting discovery for a young man who had always thought of disease as disorder to be set right somehow by the “art” of medicine.11 Walker’s breakthrough occurred in discovering the role the patient had in responding to a disease. As he memorized more and more factual material, he would also look first and foremost at the patient to see what types of responses there were and what they indicated. The patients Walker saw then and afterward became his first literary protagonists. In 1938 he took classes on nerve injuries, brachial plexus disorders, metabolism, and physical diagnosis. Late in January, Kenneth S. Cole continued lecturing on the physiology of nerves and their receptors. For a good bit of February, Henry Alsop Riley took his students through the functions of various parts of the brain. These and similar lectures about the brain caused Walker to think about the relationship of a person to the person’s own actuating center, and eventually led Walker to look at the locus where speech originates, a subject of inquiry that fascinated him throughout his life. He would become one of the few literary writers who approached semiotics with a detailed awareness of the mechanisms of the brain.
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