Doctor's Son

About the Book

This book explores the role of fate in attaining a goal, as the author's original intent was to become a doctor, like his father, a well-respected, small-town physician. In preparation, he witnessed operations by a prominent Boston surgeon, and worked weekends as an orderly at Massachusetts General Hospital. After college graduation, he attended medical school for a year, and then entered the Navy. Settling on a career in academia, he earned masters and doctorate degrees in physiology at Purdue University. Rising through the professorial ranks of Temple University, he lectured in the pharmacy and dental schools and studied the relationships between tobacco and cancer, the effects of biological aging on drug actions, and the prevention of birth defects by drugs.

About the Author

The only child of New England parents, the author was born in a Tennessee TB sanatorium where his mother served as a nurse and his father as director. In his youth, he sailed annually to the Caribbean on the great ships of the day. Majoring in biology at Harvard set the stage for medical school, which he found disillusioning. Following a stint in the Navy, he studied at Purdue and joined the faculty of Temple University in 1950 where he taught physiology and pharmacology for thirty-seven years. Also in 1950, he married Mary Jarvis, a Scottish lassie, on their third date. The marriage lasted fifty-one years and ended with her death from mycobacterium avium, a bacterial disease, similar to that caused by the tubercular bacillus, which also destroys the lung tissue. Sadly, it was acquired while she was indulging in her favorite hobby – gardening. She left a lonely husband, three children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.