Rochester Academy of Medicine
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Rochester Academy of Medicine
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Interviewee: Dr. George Corner Interviewer: Dr. Gordon Meade Date: October 14. 1978 Dr. Meade: I am Dr. Gordon Meade, a graduate of the School of Medicine in the class of 1935, and currently I am Executive Secretary of the Alumni Association. I have the privilege this morning of talking with Dr. George Washington Corner, who was the first Professor of Anatomy of the School of Medicine. This interview will be part of a series that we are making on behalf of the Medical Alumni Association under the inspiration and guidance of Dr. Edward Atwater. Dr. Corner, your association with this school goes back a good many years, but I think before we talk specifically about that, I would like to bring out a little of the background of your life, illustrate how it fits in with...the early parts of your life fit in with what you have done in the succeeding years. I understand, that for example in just about two months, you're going to celebrate your 89th birthday. Dr. Corner: That's so. Dr. Meade: On the 12th of December. That's something of a milestone. I'm sure, in that you arc the fourth George Washington Corner, or is it the third? Dr. Corner: The third. Dr. Meade: But there is a fourth. Dr. Corner: Yes. Dr. Meade: And that was your son? Dr. Corner: Yes. Dr. Meade: That is quite a long record of the survival of a specific name, isn't it? And your grandfather, who was also George Washington Corner, he was the first one, was he not? Dr. Corner: Yes. Dr. Meade: He was the... one of the founding trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Corner: Right. Dr. Meade: So that your association with Hopkins and the eminent school institution there goes back a long way. Dr. Corner: Right. Dr. Meade: Well, like so many men who have gone into medicine, it seems to me that your career has followed a similar path, in that as a boy you were one who liked to tinker. You built things, and then when you got into your teens, you became interested in biology, photographing birds' nests and working with a veterinary surgeon. What was it about the experience with the veterinary surgeon that really fired your interest in biology? Dr. Corner: Well, it happened that he had some books, series of volumes of reports of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on his shelf, and one summer day when I had nothing else to do and was sitting, lying in a hammock, I took one of these books outdoors and opened it for casual reading, and came on a paper which immediately fascinated me. It was the story of the discovery of the transmission of Texas cattle fever by tics, written by... the name's gone right out of my head. Dr. Meade: Theobald Smith. Dr. Corner: Theobald Smith. And this was the first piece of biological research that I had ever read. I had biology, first year of biology behind me at the college, and it was perfectly fascinating, and I felt right then and there that I'd like to do that kind of work or something of that type. Dr. Meade: Was the fascination because of the precision and the logic of it? Dr. Corner: Yes, and the interesting manipulations and all the biological background. Dr. Meade: Then I understand later on there came to be another association between yourself and Theobald Smith, not in a direct contact way, but there was another way in which you came in contact with him, wasn't there? Dr. Corner: Well, many, many years later. Dr. Meade: Many years later. Dr. Corner: Many years later when I was writing the history of the Rockefeller Institute, I was in the building in which he had done his work there. I was in New York. He did his work chiefly at Princeton; but the building was named after him. Dr. Meade: You also had contact with the great J.B. Watson, the behavioristic psychologist. I understand. Dr. Corner: He was a young man, he had been called to Johns Hopkins from an instructorship at the University of Chicago at the age of 33, and I was in the first class he taught. He began by insulting us. He said that he had been told that Johns Hopkins undergraduates were a rowdy lot and he didn't want to take time from his graduate students to beat psychology into our heads but he'd do the best he could. Whereupon, he began a series of brilliant lectures... Dr. Meade: His name is of interest to me because as all my friends know, I'm an ardent bird watcher and I think one of his early pieces of work on which he did establish his career was on the behavior of terns. Dr. Corner: Yes, I remember that. Dr. Meade: Down in Florida, I think. Dr. Corner: Yes. Dr. Meade: Well, after you graduated then, from Hopkins, you were invited to stay on as a candidate in zoology, but I understand you decided against that. Dr. Corner: I decided against it partly because the eminent Professor of Biology at Hopkins, Herbert Spencer Jennings, did not take an interest in undergraduates. And I had been one of the top students in biology and never had a chance even to talk with him. One of his younger colleagues wanted me to join them as a Ph.D. candidate. I thought if the head professor under whom I would probably work didn't even know of my existence, it wasn't a very good bet. Dr. Meade: So, what did you do? Dr. Corner: So then I went across town and enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Medical School. In those days there were no fancy tricks about it. One just went in and said I'd like to study here. And if you presented a good college record you were in. Dr. Meade: Uh urn. And you were about the youngest student in the class. Dr. Corner: I was the youngest by but two. The youngest of all was Edgar (Erskin Huhm) who became a major general in the Medical Corps of the Army. Dr. Meade: And while you were there, I think there was the genesis really, of your lifelong interest in the history of medicine, because you undertook... was it a term paper? A theme paper on the vascular structure of the pancreas. Dr. Corner: I asked Professor Mall to let me do some research with him, and he and I had been on a project involving the embryology of the pancreas. And as I worked on the modem theme of the embryology of that organ, I got interested in the early history and in the medical school library, there was a case of old books bound in handsome leather bindings that Sir William Osier had bought when he was a Professor of Medicine from an old dispensary in England. And on the shelves there were the Latin classics of the period in which the first work on the pancreas was done. Dr. Meade: The fact that you went to boys' Latin school in Baltimore was no hindrance to you then, was it? Dr. Corner: I had been a pupil of the master teacher of Latin, Edgar Lucas White, who made little boys like Latin. He didn't make a real Latinist of me, but at least I wasn't afraid of the language. Dr. Meade: And then when you got to Hopkins you found that there was a very flourishing medical history club and you joined into its activities. Dr. Corner: Yes, the oldest medical history club in the country, it's still in existence. In my student days this was regularly attended by the senior professors. Osier had left for England four years before. but Professor Halstead and Howard Kelly, other top men of the great faculty, came regularly to the medical history club, and this was quite an inspiration to the youngsters. Dr. Meade: So the atmosphere was there for you to gender a long interest on your part in that. Then the... and I understand that you spent a summer with Sir Wilfred Granfell, in fact spent two summers with him, and along with your tinkering... perhaps I should not say tinkering, your invention. one of the things you did as a fourth-year student was to devise an improved apparatus or I should say, "an" apparatus for the administration of ether. Dr. Corner: That's right. We were doing tonsillectomies in great numbers in those days and even as far away as Battle Harbor, Labrador, there were tonsillectomies to be done, and the first summer I was there I was anesthetist on quite a number of operations and I got tired of being interrupted... of having to interrupt the surgeon every so often to put the ether mask over the patient's face, take him away from his job, so that I had seen in Baltimore a newfangled apparatus for delivering ether vapor into the neighborhood of the larynx through a tongue depressor with a tube on it. Dr. Meade: Uh, uh. Dr. Corner: And so before I went back to Battle Harbor the second summer, I got a little... we had no electricity there to run a heater to vaporize the ether, so I had to put in... build a thing around the can which stood in a basin of hot water. And the ether dropped into that through one of these mechanical oral cups with an adjustable screw. It was all very crude. I think it cost about $3.00 for the materials and to get a mechanic to solder it. Dr. Meade: I take it, it was never patented or gained you a fortune? Dr. Corner: No, that's right, but it was used with great success. Dr. Meade: Good, good. Then you, at the end of your fourth year, you had to choose between becoming an assistant in Anatomy which had been offered to you or whether you would take an internship in Gynecology. Dr. Corner: That's right. Dr. Meade: Can you tell me something about how you made your choice and what choice you made? Dr. Corner: Yes. I wanted to try both. I wanted to see which I liked better. Dr. Meade: You were greedy! Dr. Corner: I was greedy! The students in the next class thought I was over-greedy. because this cost them one internship and the Medical School very kindly permitted me to postpone my internship for one year. And I took the year with Mall. This was... I was helped very much in this from the political standpoint by Thomas Cullen, who was #2 man in the Department of Gynecology, Howard Kelly's right hand man. He was broadminded enough to see the point and he persuaded Howard Kelly to allow this. The Dean, (which was/Woodreese) Williams, was good-natured about it, so I had what I wanted both ways. Dr. Meade: Back of this, I think, lay your conviction that the future of gynecology really lay in doing basic research on the embryology and the physiology of the reproductive system. Dr. Corner: Yes, I saw this when I was intern. These great men, Kelly and Cullen, were superb surgeons. Kelly was the most adroit surgeon I ever saw, anywhere, before or later. And they knew the pathology, but they were balefully ignorant of the physiology of reproduction... we didn't know then at what time ovulation occurs in the menstrual cycle, and it was as crude as that. Dr. Meade: Uh urn. I think in reading one of your writings, that you even saw a fine surgeon who removed a normal corpus luteum, thinking it was a tumor. Dr. Corner: Yes, he thought it was a tumor. And I ... after my internship I was back visiting the hospital and spent an hour or two in the Operating Room watching my former associates. I had persuaded him to let me have this tumor and drove back home, and had it sectioned, and found it was a normal corpus luteum. Dr. Meade: I suspect you knew more then about these matters than the professors did. Dr. Corner: I believe I did. Dr. Meade: I'm sure you did. So that your choice then was to go into the anatomy laboratory for a year and then go back to your internship in gynecology, and during that year, you began to work with, was it swine? Dr. Corner: During the year I was with Mall as assistant in Anatomy, yes it was a slaughterhouse only three blocks from Johns Hopkins Medical School and this provided unlimited amounts of material. Mall was beginning his great collection of human embryos and he was interested in dating the earliest human embryos. This was all very vague... we didn't know the time of ovulation. He felt that by making a serial study of the corpus luteum which you sometimes get with normal relation to the menstrual cycle that we could date the embryos from the corpus luteum, and I could get both embryos and ovaries at the slaughterhouse, and so I studied all this on the pig, on the sow that way. Dr. Meade: So you worked with the sows out there. Dr. Corner: ...on the sows out there. Dr. Meade: Then you did go on into an internship that you... I think you were even more convinced then that there was this great need to determine what the physiology of reproduction really is. Dr. Corner: Right, right, yes. Dr. Meade:... and also menstruation. And along about this time you began to have some personal doubts, did you not, about your own temperament as to being a physician who would deal with patients? Dr. Corner: Yes, largely because operative surgery, particularly in the pelvis, requires immediate judgments. When you have the patient open you can't afford to wait a week to see what you think about it, you have to do something then and there. And I don't operate that way very well. My best opinion about a question is two or three days after I start to think about it. This, then... I found I was not very much interested, not critically interested, in the human aspects. I don't want to paint myself as a mere cold young scientist. Dr. Meade: Well, none of us look at you in that way. We never felt that way about you, but... Dr. Corner: But it was more fun to work on a problem than on a patient. Dr. Meade: And then, along about that time you had a chance to leave Baltimore and go somewhere else. Dr. Corner: Yes. Herbert (McLean Evans) was the brightest and most apt-minded member of the Anatomy Department under Mall and while I was intern, he was called back to his native state of California to be Professor of Anatomy at Berkeley, and asked me to go with him. I was...he was the youngest full professor on the University of California faculty, I believe, and I think I was the youngest.... Dr. Meade: You were the youngest Assistant Professor. Dr. Corner: Evans offered me an instructorship and I went to Mall about this, and Mall, he really wanted me to stay with him, was nice about it, but pretty cool, and he said that an institution on the Pacific Coast ought to give an assistant professorship to anybody who could get an instructorship in Baltimore. So I told Herbert Evans this and Evans wrote out to Berkeley and got me an assistant professorship, so I began... Dr. Meade: So, you did move out there and then it was there that you first met Stafford Warren who later was here as a Professor of Radiology. Dr. Corner: Yes, he was a very good medical student and truly Californian in his easy friendship. We became lifelong friends while he was a first-year student. Dr. Meade: We who were students here in these early days of the school remember him very well, and all the clutter in his hall of all his bits of apparatus that he built with his assistants. And then along in 1915 I believe you were married and a couple of years later you had a call to come back to your hometown of Baltimore. Dr. Corner: Yes, Mall had died and Lewis Weed who was only two years my senior was surprisingly made Professor of Anatomy, and he had to reorganize the department and I was called back as Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Meade: You say surprisingly, you use this term because he was not really an anatomist, or why? Dr. Corner: Well, no, because he was relatively young. Dr. Meade: I see. I see. Dr. Corner: And then, yes... well I'd be getting in too deep if I tried to think this out. Dr. Meade: Well, yes, certainly, I understand... Dr. Corner: He simply wasn't the type of man you'd expect to become a Professor of Anatomy. Dr. Meade: And then going back to Baltimore which I'm sure is something that pleased you, as your home area. You went on to continue to work with sows but you soon began to feel that you ought to work with a species that was nearer to the human. Dr. Corner: Right, because we had to have an animal that had a menstrual cycle, which only the apes and higher order of monkeys have. So, Weed was very generous and built with the department funds a little monkey outdoor cage. I went to the Philadelphia zoo to learn how to keep...they were breeding Rhesus monkeys then. And they taught me how to keep them outdoors. We built a monkey shack on the veranda of one of the adjacent buildings to the anatomy laboratory, and I installed a dozen female Rhesus monkeys and went to work. Dr. Meade: Well, now we have a pretty clear picture of how your career proceeded up to that point and now we're coming up close to the Rochester era. Dr. Corner: Right, yes. Dr. Meade: Can you tell us what were the circumstances that surrounded your "call" to Rochester, sounds almost ministerial to say call, but... Dr. Corner: Well, that's what it was. Well, I was in Baltimore_ had been in Baltimore four years as Associate Professor, when the news got around that a great medical school was to be started in Rochester with the help of funds from George Eastman and the General Education Board, and Weed tipped me off to the fact that I was on Whipple's list. He'd done an inquiry about rising young anatomists, and I was on Whipple's list, and I had known Whipple in Berkeley. Dr. Meade: You'd known him in Berkeley? Dr. Corner: ...when I was in Berkeley and he was in San Francisco. and I had actually given him a little help in finding young men for his new system of medical student fellowships. Dr. Meade: Oh_ he started that there? Dr. Corner: He started that there. It was highly successful and I found for him in the first-year classes at Berkeley his first two fellows. Elmer Belton and Hyatt B. Smith. Belton later became one of the leading urologists in California. Hyatt Smith wound up at Columbia University as Professor of Pathology. Dr. Meade: Well. you had had contact with George Whipple even before that. Dr. Corner: Even before that, I'd been his pupil in pathology at Johns Hopkins when he was a resident pathologist and assistant, associate, in pathology. So. he knew me and I think I was first on his list and one day Dr. Rush Rhees. President of the University of Rochester and Mr. George Eastman turned up on what you'd call a site visit these days, Rush Rhees had come along to see what a good medical school was like, and brought him to Johns Hopkins and I was rather pointedly brought up and introduced to the two gentleman. So. I knew then that something was going to happen... Dr. Meade: Oh_ you had to interview at that time. Dr. Corner: No interview... just introduced to them. A few weeks later I received an invitation to have dinner with Dr. Whipple and Dr. Rush Rhees at the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore, and this... my wife and I knew this meant business. So she saw to it that I was dressed in my best suit, and she even blacked my shoes, which she'd never let me tell anybody else that before. She wanted me to look as perfectly neat and clean as possible. Dr. Meade: ...as possible. Dr. Corner: So, we had a hotel dinner and adjourned to Dr. Rhees' hotel room and spent the evening talking about what was doing at Rochester, and what a fine opportunity it would be for a young anatomist, and I was then and there offered the post of professor. Dr. Meade: What persuaded you to accept? Dr. Corner: Well, I tried to play a little bit hard to get and said I would give a decision after I visited Rochester, so 1 came up to Rochester and spent a day or two. Dr. Meade: I hope it was a good day and not a typical winter day. Dr. Corner: You know, I forget the weather, I was so interested in what was going on. One of the amusing things that I remember is, Dr. Rhees' surprise when I asked if Rochester had a nice big slaughterhouse. I had to explain to him what I meant. So he promptly took down the phone and called the Rochester Packing Company and asked if they could provide a supply of pigs' ovaries, and whether they would be cooperative, and was able to tell me that that hurdle was over. Dr. Meade: No problem. Dr. Corner: No problem. Dr. Meade: No problem there. Dr. Corner: Well, I was very much impressed. Dr. Rhees was a very impressive man, kindly and generous and obviously a man of force and in short, I could see he would be a good leader. And I could see. I knew George Whipple would be. Dr. Meade: Well, Dr. Rhees as you say, was a small man in stature, as I remember. He was a quiet man. Dr. Corner: Right. Dr. Meade: But at the same time, had great vision and force. Dr. Corner: And knowing that he was having a medical school to deal with, he had done a lot of homework. He obviously had taught himself from reading the background. from talks with Flexner I'm sure. the background of all the problems of medical education in his day, and it was a pleasure to talk with him. Dr. Meade: I think most of our people who will be listening to this tape and know the story of the Flexner Report and how it came to be that a school was decided upon here in Rochester, and how Mr. Eastman would be asked if he would contribute and he offered $1 million_ and Flexner said, "we've got you down for six." Dr. Corner: Well, there was some sort of... something going on there. Dr. Meade: Something like that! Now, who were the other department heads that came to form this new faculty and what would your characterization of them be as men and professional people? Dr. Corner: This might take the rest of the hour... I was the first appointed... the first to accept an appointment after Whipple. The next was Walter Bloor whom Whipple had know in Berkeley, a Canadian from the region of Toronto, a professor of biochemistry. A quiet man, limited I think largely in his interest to biochemistry, but he was the #1 man in the country. I think, on the biochemistry of lipids and fats and similar substances. Very, very faithful, became a very faithful associate of Whipple's as a kind of Assistant Dean, informally the Assistant Dean at first. Now I forget the order in which the others came. I know Bayne-Jones who had been a friend of mine at Hopkins Medical School. He graduated a year later in Medicine, and everyone knows of his great rise to various posts high in medical education and in government medicine. He was the diplomat of the faculty. When there were problems, interpersonal problems to be solved Whipple would often ask BJ to take a hand. Dr. Meade: Oh, I'm interested in that because I'm sure there were problems, as there always are among a group of people. Dr. Corner: Relatively few, but there were problems. Once for example, Bill McCann, a Professor of Medicine hinted, or more than hinted that Dr. Murlin, a Professor of Vital Economics whom we had taken over from the college faculty here, hinted that Murlin's granting Ph.D's on somewhat less than full qualifications. I think this was hardly a fair charge, but McCann made it. And this led to quite a feud for a few weeks between the two men, and Whipple asked Bayne-Jones to do something about that, and he got the two men around to his house one evening, filled them full of cocktails and talked it all over and made peace. Dr. Meade: Well, I had never heard that particular incident, but then there was John Morton. Dr. Corner: John Morton had been my classmate in Baltimore. I think it's worth telling a little incident about his choice. Dr. Rhees sat in with us...as the faculty grew beginning with the first group of Whipple, Bloor and myself, Dr. Rhees sat with us to talk over the qualifications of each successive appointment to the head positions. And when we came to discuss the Chair of Surgery, and Morton's name came up. Dr. Rhees had already known of Morton's availability and he had seen Morton. And he said that he had found Morton so shy and retiring. that he'd doubt if he could succeed in the post as demanding of personal prestige as the Chair of Surgery. Well, so Dr. Rhees...1 saw him play football... in those days medical students could play football with the undergraduates, and he weighed 140 lbs. and he had some college experience at Amherst, he was a right end on the Johns Hopkins football team. And they took the risk of playing against the Carlisle Indians, when Jim Thorpe, the nation's greatest athlete, weighing 40 lbs. more than Morton, was opposite him in the line. Dr. Meade: They were opposed to each other? Dr. Corner: They were opposed to each other. Well, the first time the ball came around their end, Morton plunged into Jim Thorpe and got bowled over, and John told me that when they picked themselves up, Thorpe said, "Doc, I wouldn't try that again, you might get hurt." Dr. Meade: Well, that's a wonderfully.... Dr. Corner: Well, I'll tell this story, and then McCann has to tell his story. He had been to Woodshole on the collecting team that was sent out to get in boats with nets to get specimens for the biologists. And Morton was the captain of the collecting team. And McCann said whenever there was a difficult job, somebody had to go overboard in very cold water or hide under. or crawl under the rocks to get a specimen, Morton was the first man in. And Dr. Rhees said, "Gentleman; you've convinced me." Dr. Meade: Good. Then there was Dr. Clausen. Dr. Corner: Sam Clausen and Karl Wilson, came from Baltimore. Dr. Meade: Wallace Fenn. Dr. Corner: And Wallace Fenn. Dr. Meade: So, in a way there was almost a transplantation of part of Hopkins to Rochester, wasn't there? Dr. Corner: Well, Dr. John Ableman of Baltimore said to me, "You boys are just opening a Hopkins Country Club up there in Rochester." But as a matter of fact, out of the ten of us. counting Faxon, the hospital Director, I think there were five with strong Hopkins connections. Faxon and Fenn came from Harvard, McCann from Cornell Medical School... Dr. Meade: What was the relation.... Dr. Corner: ...and then Hopkins... Dr. Meade: What was the relation between Dr. Whipple as Dean with the faculty? He'd know many of them as students or colleagues, but of course he was in quite a different position as Dean. Dr. Corner: Yes... Dr. Meade: Was it an easy relationship? Were you given your own way to go or was there a firm guiding hand always there'? Dr. Corner: Both of what... both are right. He was older than any of us, except Bloor. He had experience of having been Dean at Berkeley. He was the kind of person that thinks out in advance everything he proposes and he was very secure in his opinions, and he was naturally our leader. He kept a firm hand for a few years, a very firm hand on the finances. He had to see all our requisitions, even for small purchases and checked them over. He even sometimes forbid the purchase of an expensive apparatus that he thought we didn't need. On the other hand, with regard to our teaching, he was completely liberal. We had no instructions and no strength about what we should teach and how we should teach it. And once or twice I had occasion to try something radical. For example I went to him to say when we opened the histology course, I would like to teach histology as a branch of biology useful for medicine, but not necessarily a handmaiden to pathology and internal medicine. I said, "If you let me do this, my students will learn about (end of side #1 on tape) ...diseased human organ." Well, Whipple said, "You forget all this. You teach it from the theoretical standpoint. Teach them about histology and we'll make the applications." Another time, I wanted to try experimenting with having no final examination. Just grade the people on what we had seen of them during several months of work. This was a little bit radical. It didn't work very well, but George said, "It's your business to teach and handle the class any way you want to." He was completely liberal. And with regard to student... questions of student behavior and discipline, he was equally liberal. He wanted us to treat the students as grown men and women, and when disciplinary things arose—very uncommon, fortunately—he dealt with these people as adults. So he was very, very conservative, he was very, very conservative in business administration. And completely liberal in educational policies. You couldn't call him either a liberal or conservative. He was just a sensible man. Dr. Meade: Will you talk something about the faculty that came in relation to Dr. Whipple? Let's go back to your interests and... at what stage had your investigations of reproductive physiology reached when you came to Rochester and how did you go on from there? That may be a long time, too... Dr. Corner: Yes, I could talk a week about this. Well, I had gone on from the corpus lutcum of the sow to the whole reproductive cycle of the sow. This couldn't all be done in the slaughterhouse like the one in Baltimore, but in Berkeley I had great cooperation from a little slaughterhouse where I could watch the sows in the pens for several days before they were taken up to be turned into sausages and bacon. So I sat on the fence of the slaughterhouse with a long pole with a white rag on the end dipped in white paint. And when I saw a sow that was in heat. I'd reach...I didn't want to get down among these milling sows in the muddy yard... I would reach over with my long pole and rub some white paint on the back of the sow's hair and renew this every day. I had to go to the slaughterhouse every day, so that four or five days later when she was killed; I knew I had a corpus luteum of four or five days' age and ova that were probably by this time degenerating, and I found the pig's ova going down the oviduct and found traces of degeneration in the uterus and got a good description of the first part of the sow's cycle. When I got back to Baltimore four years later, after that... four years after I went to Berkeley, I was able to follow the rest of the cycle by making use of a war-time institution piggery farm down the (Pawtukskill) from Baltimore where they kept sows, fed sows, up for the market, feeding them on city garbage. It was an economical measure. The operator of this farm turned out to be friendly to science, and he let me... he gave me help and facilities for following 30 sows through the cycle. Johns Hopkins University bought the sows for me, from the piggery, took them up to Baltimore, to home and slaughterhouse and sold them for enough to pay the cost of the journey and members of the anatomy staff joined me in a busy day as sows were slaughtered one after another one morning and I worked with my colleagues all day pickling the ovaries and so on. In this way, I got the whole cycle of the sow, and then I began with the Rhesus monkey which was a much more difficult story. And by the time I was called to Rochester, I had pretty well established the time of ovulation in relation to menstruation... Dr. Meade: In the monkey... Dr. Corner: ...in the monkey. And this had been... the better gynecologists, particularly in Germany, were getting a hint of what the human cycle was like, but this was I think the first confirmation of the fact that these higher primates ovulate in the middle of the cycle between two menstrual periods. Menstruation was not equivalent to estrus, in the heat in the sows or other domestic animals. It was a different and separate phenomenon. This is what I think I obtained credit for establishing from actual observation of the ovaries and the ova and all that. I couldn't finish it, didn't have time to finish it. I worked on the monkeys there four years and published what I found. When I came to Rochester the monkey colony was part of the deal. So I went on here, and during the first years I was here, I pretty well completed the morphological study of the primate cycle as shown by the monkey. And as I got that pretty well in hand, we had progesterone, I could begin to make experimental studies on relation of the ovary and hormones to the cycle. Dr. Meade: Now for those who are not familiar with the term, what was progesterone? Dr. Corner: Progesterone was a hormone made by the corpus luteum in the cycle of all mammals. The small ovarian follicles, some of the small ovarian follicles begin to develop. Once in each cycle, to make a somewhat oversimplified the statement. In the human, usually one follicle ripens and sheds its egg into the oviduct. In the sow there is ten or more at one time. When the follicle is emptied it is converted into an organ of internal secretion by the growth of its lining, it fills up the emptied cavity, and makes in the human ovary a small mass brightly colored yellow, hence the name, corpus luteum, made up of large cells and capillary blood vessels and nothing else, no ducts. It's an organ of internal secretion. Dr. Meade: So, you were after the active principle. Dr. Corner: I was after the active principle. Dr. Meade: And how did you go about that? Dr. Corner: Well, I had to have help because I was not much of a chemist. I had passed my chemistry in medical school but I wasn't a good chemist. I knew the biology of 13 years of working with the sow's cycle, and then several years of working with the monkey's cycle. Looking back on it, I think I was very rash to choose as my biochemical colleague a first-year medical student named Willard Myron Allen. He was in the second class admitted to the school. Whipple had started this fellowship system here by which a medical student might drop out into the department of his choice and spend a year helping to teach the next class and doing research with some member of the staff. So, I offered Bill Allen, knowing that he had started chemistry at Hobart College, and that he had led Bloor's class in biochemistry, and that he had led my class in histology, and was a very calm and steady-headed young man. I asked him if he would take the fellowship and work with me for a year, and we began to work right away and Bill never made a mistake. His contribution was perfect, and... Dr. Meade: It was Willard then who did the actual chemical isolation. Dr. Corner: He led the chemical isolation with me as pupil and assistant and.... Dr. Meade: I doubt he was your pupil... Dr. Corner: Pupil in biochemistry, then, right? Whereas, I picked out the choice corpora lutea and steered the general mechanics of the working of the operation. I did the surgery, although removing the ovaries is part of the test and so-called Corner-Allen test. Dr. Meade: Was there a specific point where Willard came to you and said, "Here, this is it." Dr. Corner: Yes, after about more than two years of work in which he had done the advanced biochemistry, he did come into my office one morning with a test tube with a few cc of clear solvent in it and a little flocculent mass of white crystals, and said, "This is it." Dr. Meade: This is it... Dr. Corner: I said, "What is it?" He said, `"It's a steroid." I said. "What's a steroid?" "Well. you look in (Conan's) book," he said, "and you'll find out what a steroid is." Dr. Meade: Did you name it Progestin? Dr. Corner: I named it Progestin first... Dr. Meade: Progestin... Dr. Corner: ...that which is in favor of gestation because the corpus luteum is necessary for the implantation of the embryos. Later, four different groups of biochemists—two in this country and two in Germany—were working at the same time on the final structure, on the (kamma kamophormia—could this be something like "chemo... chemoformia"—pertaining to chemical form?—can't find anything close to this word but sounds like that exactly and whatever this word is has something to do with a form/structure), and we all got the result about the same time, and I don't think it would be easy to give specific credit. One of them was Adolf (Huttenought) who after had got the Nobel Prize for chemical work in another field. And it was he who emphasized the fact that this hormone has oxygen... two oxygen molecules in a double bond... two oxygen atoms and that it is therefore a sterone, and he suggested that we change the name to Progesterone. Dr. Meade: I think your relationship with Willard Allen is a very convincing example of the relationship that existed here in Rochester, and we hope to a large degree still exists, of the close relationship between students and faculty. But I think that one of your great satisfactions has been your relationship with students and young scientists like Willard whom we all admire and know, and this informal, close relationship here was rather a sort of a hallmark of the school, was it not? Dr. Corner: Indeed it was. Dr. Meade: How did it come about? Dr. Corner: Well, it came about because we were few in numbers to begin with. We were all young, we were working in a place far removed from a lot of social temptations. We were together a great deal. And we, I must say, we had a pretty good group of professors, and we certainly had a star group of students. It was just kind of a natural companionship. I asked one of the candidates...I was on the Admissions Committee and I would ask, "Why do you want to study medicine at Rochester?" One said, "Well, I hear the professors play softball with the students." I thought that was a pretty good reason for coming to medical school. Dr. Meade: Well, that I'm sure is true because there used to be the ball games out here where this present building is, or just beyond it. Dr. Corner: Yes, just beyond it. Dr. Meade: Dr. Whipple, of course, had a great interest in baseball, because he had actually played professional ball at one time, and I think he told us at one time, at one point in his career he had to make a choice between going into biology or becoming a professional baseball player. I'm sure no matter what he did he would have been a great success. Dr. Corner: Right. Dr. Meade: So, that in addition to this warm relationship, there was also... were there not also special opportunities for research and study for the students here? Dr. Corner: Oh yes, the schedule... we let out the schedule to guarantee two free afternoons a week. And this was definitely intended to let the students work on research problems or special studies of any kind. And then the opportunities were given to work on a special problem. After we got started and one or two of my students had actually published research papers, I put up a showcase in the histology laboratory where we put up reprints so they could see what their predecessors had been doing. And this grew from year to year until the time I left we had a dozen or so reprints there of published papers in good journals done by our students. Dr. Meade: You're speaking of the two free afternoons. I know that a few years ago I obtained from students who were here during Dr. Whipple's deanship...to ask them of recollections, and one of them told me that when he came to school, after he'd been admitted, Dr. Whipple asked him where he was going to live. And he said he hadn't decided yet where it was going to be, and Dr. Whipple said, "Well, what you should do is to get a room over on the other side of the river and that'll give you some exercise going back and forth. He said many times when he came across that Elmwood Avenue bridge in the winter, he wondered how good that advice was because he nearly froze. But I know that Dr. Whipple was very, very firm in his conviction that students should have the opportunity to have some time off, get away from here and forget their studies for awhile, and to have some exercise. Actually, I imagine that we were about the first and only medical school to have a gymnasium built with the school. Dr. Corner: Well, it was built a few years after it was built. After Mr. Eastman died. Dr. Meade: I see. Dr. Corner: Or shortly before. Anyway, Mr. Eastman had made a small extra endowment, as I remember it, had given a special endowment, I don't think it was too big. between the big one they made first and that which he left by bequest. Anyway, there was enough money to do something of importance for the school, and Whipple polled the senior professors what should we do with this money, and I may be exaggerating a little bit, but practically speaking each of us asked for some special thing as his #1 choice. But everybody put down a gymnasium as a second choice, and that was done and the gymnasium was built. Dr. Meade: That still is a feature here with the students. Dr. Corner: Well, in the long Rochester winter it was a godsend. Dr. Meade: And talking about the students, did you have any part in the choosing of students accepted, or how was it done? Dr. Corner: Well, I was made a member of the Admissions Committee at once. Whipple acted as the chairman, and the committee for several years consisted of Whipple, Bloor, McCann and myself. Three preclinical and one clinical man. Applications were received on the usual forms and they stacked up in Bloor's office, and he took the responsibility for checking them over, making preliminary check and sorting. And once a week each year for several months the four of us met in Whipple's office and sat on his famous stools and went over the... he put on his half glasses, and we went over them. We, of course... we all felt...the first criterion was good marks in biology and hopefully good marks in chemistry. Other qualifications interested... one of us or another, according to our own tastes. I sometimes think maybe each of us was looking for people like ourselves who could be the best... Whipple was obviously and frankly interested in athletes. He said anybody who could be captain of a college athletic team had qualifications that would help make him a success in medicine. He was interested in Californians, too. So, it was a common joke around here that the captain of the California football team could be admitted ... Dr. Meade: Practically assured admission... Dr. Corner: ....practically assured admission. This is a slight exaggeration but during the interviews, which each of the four conducted with the incoming students, I've heard many stories of how some boy by accident or perhaps by intuitive intelligence got Whipple talking about fishing or hunting, and got into the medical school probably on the basis of that. Dr. Meade: That is quite true and when I collected letters a few years ago from students and their recollections of their interviews, so many of them speak about Dr. Whipple's interest in their... whether they fished or hunted. And there are some very interesting stories. One chap who is now a member of the faculty came and he expected to see a rather austere individual who would be awesome and he went in, and sat there with Dr. Whipple, and Dr. Whipple had on his lab coat and this gentleman... chap didn't say anything, Dr. Whipple didn't say anything, and after awhile, Dr. Whipple said, "Mr. Saward, Ernie Saward, what do you do best?" Ernie said, "I wracked my brain to find out what it was, and I blurted out, all I could think of was that the best thing I do is kill woodchucks." Well, this amused Dr. Whipple very much, and they spent the half hour discussing how the best methods were to kill woodchucks, and Ernest went out of here feeling he's failed completely, but the next day he got a notice that he was admitted. When you came to Rochester, too, you continued your interest in the history of medicine and you had a good deal to do with the forming of a medical history society here, did you not? Dr. Corner: Yes, when I told Dr. Rhees I was interested in the history of medicine, early in my connection to the school, he encouraged me very much, thought this was a good idea to develop some interest in it. So, I organized a highly informal medical history club along the lines of the one in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins which is the oldest medical history club in the country. Quite informal. We didn't have any named officers. I took the chair at the beginning and later somebody else did. I recruited the papers. I made a special effort to get the hospital residents to take part, because I thought, correctly I believe, that the resident is respected by the students ordinarily, as much as or sometimes even more than the professors. The students are even closer to them. You can't get a resident to spend weeks and months in research, but I'd persuade the residents to talk about some particular case that turned up that reflected the long story of medical history or to present a review of a new book in his own field, and this worked pretty well. And another trick I had was to invite people from the community who had some parallel interest paralleling medicine... Arthur Parker, the head of the zoo... Dr. Meade: Oh yes. Dr. Corner: ...gave us a beautiful paper on the medicine of the local Indians. Dr. Meade: He was a Seneca himself. Dr. Corner: He was a Seneca Indian and he had been through the medicine bundle ceremony as a young man. This was right out of the horse's mouth. Mr. Edward (Bosch) came out and told us about the part he'd had in developing the first rotary microtome. So we had a number of local people. In short, I tried to make it very widespread and very informal, no pressure, and it worked very well. Dr. Meade: Well, does that mean, too, that you were involved in bringing together the books in the history of medicine library. Dr. Corner: Yes. I was made chairman of the library committee, first off. And Bayne-Jones and Wilson who were my colleagues, were also rather bookish people, and the three of us worked quite hard on collecting books in medical history. And you know the story of Dr. Mulligan's gifts? Dr. Meade: No, I don't. Dr. Corner: Well, after we had been running three or four years, Dr. Edward Mulligan, the local... king of the local surgeons, a man of great influence in the city... I was taking him home from a meeting at the country club one winter night, and on the way home. Dr. Mulligan said. "I hope you're getting the translations of all the great medical classics." He said, "I got into medical school from high school and I can't read ancient languages." Well, I had to explain to the good man that the great medical classics have mostly been translated into English. I said, "I know you're very much interested in the career of the great French 16th Century surgeon. Ambroise Pare." I said. "Pare was translated into English, his complete works, but these books are antiques now," and I mentioned a large sum... "I think it might cost us $100 to get one." And I said, "The budget for the library is generous but limited, and we have to get books for practical use first." This was all of that conversation, but at Christmas that year—this was a little before. I got a letter from Dr. Mulligan... I got a call from Dr. Rhees, saying Dr. Mulligan had sent him a check for $5000 to be expended by Dr. Corner for books on the history of medicine. Dr. Meade: That's the way it all started. Dr. Corner: That's the way it started. Then the next year he did it again, and he did it the third year, and I heard that he was going to make it a total of $20.000 by the 4th gift, but he died before that could be implemented. But we had $15,000 which my colleagues and I spent. according to Dr. Mulligan's wish, we got together as many translations of the great early works as could be found. And altogether... we tried to get together a representative example of the development of medicine as shown by literature. Dr. Meade: Well, Dr. Corner, you've contributed yourself to the history of medicine by the things that you have written about the institutions, about the prominent medical people and people who were not so well known. Let me ask you first... how did you come to write the book, George Hoyt Whipple and His Friends? Dr. Corner: Well, I was invited to do that by the alumni. Dr. Meade: I see. Dr. Corner: This was a commission, so to speak. They had secured a gift, what was it... $6,000, or something like that from Eli Lilly and Co. It was more than sufficient to pay my expenses. This was on my part a labor of love. I didn't receive any direct compensation, but I was given a generous budget to come up here several times and to do some... Dr. Meade: That was after you had left here? Dr. Corner: Oh yes, I had gone back to Baltimore by that time. Dr. Meade: And then, I know you have been interested in writing recently a book about Dr. Kane. Dr. Corner: Yes, I got interested in Dr. Kane because my grandfather, G.W. Corner #1, was almost an exact contemporary of Dr. Kane, born in about the same year and my grandfather was interested in shipping...he was a shipping merchant, and interested in travel, and he bought a copy of Dr. Kane's beautiful book, the greatest classic of Arctic exploration we have I think. Dr. Meade: Dr. Kane was an Arctic explorer, then. Dr. Corner: Arctic explorer, a young... Dr. Meade: Was he also a physician? Dr. Corner: A Philadelphia doctor, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and he just had a wild zest for foreign travel and exploration, and so my grandfather had the first volume of the two volumes of his first beautiful book, on his shelves, and as a little boy on Sundays, we were good Methodists, we couldn't romp and play noisily, but we could look over picture books. So I knew about Dr. Kane before I could read. Dr. Meade: I see. Dr. Corner: Well, when I grew up I was surprised to find that he was a member of my own profession and had lived in the next city to ours, and my other grandfather had actually sold him supplies for his Arctic expedition, and I set out to write his biography. I gathered notes and reminiscences and references for 20 years or so, and finally began quite recently to write his life. Dr. Meade: Eventually, you left Rochester... Dr. Corner: Yes. Dr. Meade:... to our regret and loss, but how did that happen? Dr. Corner: Well, the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, had been founded some years before by Franklin Mall with whom I did my first research, the Professor of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins. After his death, he was succeeded as Director by George (Streeter), a very good medical-trained embryologist, and this institution became the 41 center for the study of human embryology in the world. When (Streeter) retired I was offered the post of Director. I was happy here and was expecting to stay on. It was a terrible, terrible burden of choice for me. I went through agony. So did my wife. My wife thought it would put me on a larger scale in the world of scientific institutions. I don't know whether it would or not, but this is a good deal bigger place now than it was then, and if I'd stayed on... Whipple said that if I would stay he would vacate the deanship for me. I don't think this has ever been recorded before. But I didn't want to be Dean, and who would want to be Dean with Whipple staving on, watching? Dr. Meade: Especially Dean nowadays when there are so many problems. Dr. Corner: That's right. So I was so upset over this, that after visiting Baltimore again secretly, we didn't tell my relatives there that I was coming to look over to see what Baltimore was like, and after consultation with my wife and a few choice close friends, I finally wrote two letters—one accepting and one declining the invitation to Baltimore, and put them on my desk and waited until the next day, grabbed one and ran out and mailed it. And for months... for years, I continued to have regrets for leaving Rochester, and as you can see, still enjoy coming back and often wondering what... I don't think it would have grown to the size it has if I had been Dean. Dr. Meade: And then you had a career there at the Carnegie Institute for 17 years... Dr. Corner: For 17 years... Dr. Meade:... and following that you moved onto another position. Dr. Corner: Yes. I was invited to the Rockefeller Institute as historian. Ted (Bronk), the president asked me to come, and bring along a colleague for laboratory work, so I was able to continue research through the aid of a younger man, Dr. (Berley), but I spent most of my five years there compiling the history of the Rockefeller Institute which they published very handsomely. Dr. Meade: And following that, you wrote the history of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Corner: Yes, after I finished up at the Rockefeller, when I got the book done. the job was over, and I wondered what I would do next, and then Henry (Moh) of the (Guggenheimer) Foundation, who was President of the Philosophical Society, asked me to come there as the Executive Officer. Dr. Meade: So, how many years were you there at the American Philosophical Society? Dr. Corner: Well, I went there in 1960, I'm still there. I was Executive Officer for more than 17 years. I retired from the Executive Office last year and am now staying on as Editor of the Society's publications. Dr. Meade: Well, now, we've had a view of your whole career, and a very fruitful career it's been, of great benefit to many people and to science. We are coming to the end of our time in this interview. I should say that for purposes of record, the date today is the 14th of October, 1978. And you now will be going back to, after a pleasant stay here in Rochester doing some research, what... to sum this up, this research you've been doing here this past few days is connected with your next endeavor, and that will be what? Dr. Corner: That will be an autobiography, which my Philadelphia friends have been teasing me about for several years. I finally gave in and started it, and I've actually written the first half in rough draft and have come up to the time when I came to Rochester. So. I thought I'd like to come up and look over the old catalog. By the way, I drafted the first catalog, with some revisions by Dr. Rhees and by Dr. Whipple. Look over the old catalog and refresh my memory about the dates of arrival of my associates and assistants. Dr. Meade: Well, we look forward, Dr. Corner, to reading that autobiography, before too long. Dr. Corner: Well, if I succeed in finishing it, then you should have it in a couple of years if all goes well. Dr. Meade: We've... I've certainly enjoyed this interview and I'm sure those who see it later on will, and I thank you indeed for being with us. Dr. Corner: It's been a great pleasure. Dr. Meade: Thank you. |