The education of the physician begins in his childhood and his home, continues in college and medical school, and persists for the rest of his life. For the physician as well as his patient, survival and success depends upon constant renewal and assimilation of new facts and concepts. It is an old saw that fifty percent of what is taught in medical school will be obsolete in five years, the faculty uncertain which half it will be. A phase of the education of the doctor that is seldom addressed in medical school is the role of the patient in his training and development. Again I quote Sir William Osler: “To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”2 “Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom.” 3

The tools of my professional specialty of internal medicine are not surgical instruments, endoscopes, x-ray machines, lasers, and ultrasound, they are the five senses that God has blessed us with, a pair of strong hands, a plain stethoscope, a retentive memory, good health, a wholesome lifestyle, integrity, tenacity, and humility combined with confidence, the courage of my convictions, and something called judgment, wisdom, and common sense. Above all, I have been the advocate for my patients, ready to make any sacrifice to cure some, relieve others, and comfort all. My purpose is to improve or save lives and never to destroy them.

In the sixty-four years since I entered medical school, I have had the great pleasure and privilege of learning much from my illustrious teachers, many of them famous men and women. To them I owe a great debt that I can never repay.

This narrative provides some of the details of their impact upon my life and career. But there is another group of people who have affected my life to a major degree and taught me many wonderful things. They are my patients, some famous, a few infamous, and most somewhere in-between.