On 1 july 1947, one year after most of the veterans had returned from military service, Dr. Walter W. Palmer accepted mandatory retirement at age 65. He was succeeded as the Bard professor and chairman of the department of medicine by the brilliant and dynamic Dr. Robert F. Loeb, who had been standing in the wings for some years and had turned down many offers to go elsewhere. Dr. Loeb was probably the member of our staff most committed to the policy of full time in the clinical chairs. In fact, it was said of him that he believed that the personal practice of medicine was all right so long as there was no payment involved. If any money changed hands, it was prostitution. Loeb was the only one of the original fulltime clinical faculty of 1921 in medicine at P&S who remained on full time when all of the others defected to geographic full time because of the inadequate full-time salaries that were offered. Among those who defected was Dana W. Atchley, a close friend and collaborator of Loeb’s. It was common knowledge at P.H. that Loeb would not let the opportunity pass for ribbing Dana Atchley about his prosperous private practice. On one occasion, on meeting Dr. Atchley in the hall, Loeb is said to have jingled some change in his pocket and said “Dana, how much money did you make today?” Loeb could have some very strong opinions and he had few reservations about expressing them. He did not like surgeons and expressed the view that an important function of an internist was to keep the patient out of the surgeons’ hands. He also did not like to see young attending staff owning luxury automobiles, and did not hesitate to criticize them. He took a fairly dim view of psychiatrists and the highest compliment he could pay a newly appointed head of psychiatry at P&S was to say he “did not look like a psychiatrist.” Loeb was completely committed to Flexnerian full time while Dr. Palmer had taken a middle-of-the-road position, saying in his farewell address of 1947 that he was proud to have brought together a “goodly company of full-time men combined with sympathetic and cooperative men in practice affording wide flexibility in organization.”

My personal belief is that Dr. Loeb should have been awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in Addison's Disease.