From the President’s Desk: Best-kept secret in medicine

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R. Bruce Williams, MD

June 2019—I wasn’t one of those kids who always knew they wanted to be a doctor. Science was a powerful draw, which might have suggested medical school if my sister hadn’t gotten there first. But she did, so I majored in chemistry at Vanderbilt.

As an undergraduate with little money, I hoped to fast-track, so I found a summer job anesthetizing laboratory rats in the middle of the night and removing their kidneys. The work supported a group studying the renin-angiotensin system. They thought I had a knack for surgery, which prompted a reassessment of my chemistry major and eventually led to an application to medical school. Life makes choices for us sometimes, and I was lucky that way.

R. Bruce Williams, MD

I needed biology courses for my medical school application so I switched to a molecular biology major, which is where I encountered Gisela Mosig, a brilliant scientist who was doing pioneering work with bacteriophage T4. Dr. Mosig was intense, generous, and curious—a born mentor. Once a week she would host a wine and cheese party where we talked about tantalizing possibilities in genetics and molecular biology, a field that was just beginning to take shape. You walked home the long way, thinking about it.

I wanted a summer job in medicine between the second and third years of medical school, but for that I needed clinical experience, and clinical rotations back then didn’t begin until the start of third year. Then someone suggested the pathology department, and I got lucky again. There were real giants in that department—William H. Hartmann, MD, David L. Page, MD, Robert D. Collins, MD, Robert G. Horn, MD. Dr. Hartmann would later edit the AFIP Fascicles and chair the American Board of Pathology; his faculty would do world-renowned work in breast pathology (Dr. Page), hematopathology (Dr. Collins), and renal pathology (Dr. Horn).

When I walked in on the first day, Dr. Page presented me a parotid lesion and told me to let him know when I figured out what it was. After researching the case extensively (this was my first try at a diagnosis), I discovered it was a Warthin tumor. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was right. I was pleased to see that everyone in the department seemed to like what they were doing, and while I was reluctant to interrupt, they always found time to talk to me about it. I was peripheral, of course, but the diagnostic challenges people were working on would keep me up half the night. It was a great summer.

When we began clinical rotations that fall, I found that I really liked taking care of patients. So when we began to apply for residencies, I was torn. Everyone said I was a born internist, which only made it worse. Then a friend said to think about which rotation had made me happiest. That was when I realized that the most fun I’d had was in that summer job in the laboratory.