Friday, Jul. 09, 1965
No. 1 at No. 1
In most of the 84 U.S. medical schools, one of the least sought-after jobs is the post of dean. Although deans are usually M.D.s, they have no chance to practice and are usually dismissed by their colleagues as "doctors who don't know enough to be professors." Even at Harvard, where the dean of the faculty of medicine heads both the medical and dental schools and is a recognized leader in his profession, the then president, James Bryant Conant, 16 years ago had to convince the man of his choice that "Harvard furnishes an excellent vantage point from which to make a contribution to medical education."
The man Conant convinced was George Packer Berry (A.B., Princeton, '21; M.D., Johns Hopkins, '25) who had almost as much experience as a patient as he had as a physician. A microbiologist, Berry had suffered a miserable, lingering attack of psittacosis ("parrot fever") and another of hepatitis while studying viral infections.
More Than Doubled. Lured to Boston from the University of Rochester, where he was serving as associate dean, Dr. Berry proved a master medical diplomat in his dealings with the high-ranking physicians and surgeons who had won for Harvard almost unanimous acclaim as the world's No. 1 medical school. Equally important was Dr. Berry's talent for raising money. He more than doubled the medical school's endowment, but perhaps his most notable achievement was to persuade his two schools and seven Boston hospitals, many of which had been openly jealous of one another, to join in an unprecedented combine: the Harvard Medical Center, with more than 2,500 doctors and 3,000 hospital beds.
On the academic side, Dr. Berry insisted that no teacher, however good, can actually educate a student; the best he can do is teach the student how to learn, and the worst he can do is concentrate on training. "Training," said Dr. Berry, "is something that we can do to seals, to dogs, and--alas!--to medical students. Training is the acquisition of factual knowledge and techniques, which blots out education. It is better to send medical students into the world knowing less, but understanding better how to learn."
No "Routine" Cases. To the charge that modern U.S. medicine is so fascinated by research that it is losing sight of the patient, Dr. Berry responded: "Good research is really the pathway to a better understanding of the patient. One cannot understand disease until one understands the deranged biochemical behavior that is disease. Then every patient becomes a research opportunity, and there are no more 'routine' cases."
Last week, at 66, Dr. Berry retired from the deanship. Said James Conant: "This appointment was the best job I ever did while president of Harvard." To succeed Dr. Berry, President Nathan M. Pusey has recruited Dr. Robert Higgins Ebert, 50, from the determinedly progressive medical faculty of Western Reserve. Son of a physician and brother of another, Minneapolis-born Dean Ebert (A.B., Chicago, '36; Rhodes scholar and D. Phil., Oxford, '39; M.D., Chicago, '42) now has one of the most difficult assignments a medical man can have: being No. 1 at No. 1.
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