Make room for sentiment A physician's story. By Theodore E. Woodward, M.D.

Make Room for Sentiment: A Physician's Story chronicles the life of a man, who for many has embodied the academic and philosophical essence of the University of Maryland School of Medicine for over four decades. Few academic institutions are blessed with the good fortune of having a native son rise to such prominence, while devoting his professional life so completely to the betterment of his alma mater.

Each generation is defined by the manner in which it addresses its unique challenges. For Dr. Woodward's generation these challenges included a great depression, the rise of fascism, a world at war, the dawn of anti-microbial therapy, and social integration. The current generation has had to contend with the Vietnam War, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the rise of the corporate ethos in medicine, and a public sense of entitlement to good health at modest cost. Dr. Woodward's life story, as reflected in this warm and sensitive autobiography, contains lessons of great value for all generations of young physicians struggling to deal with such challenges. It speaks to the importance of a concept of leadership that transcends the limits of medical practice to the solution of society's problems, as it does to the singular role of love of, and devotion to, family and friends in the attainment of personal fulfillment. It affirms the lasting value of traditional principles such as loyalty, honor, courage, dependability, generosity, and idealism in the quest for true success. Perhaps most impor-tantly, it justifies inclusion of the role of teacher among the most sacred mandates of the medical profession.

As clearly amplified in the book, Dr. Theodore E. Woodward has been blessed with a happy affectionate family, and an in-herited sense of traditional values with a philanthropic spirit. By any standard, his intellect, his circle of friends, his concept of values, ideals, and willingness to share with others, are enormous. Moreover, he will long be remembered in the minds of physicians, here and abroad, not for what he has received but for what he has contributed.

Dr. Theodore E. Woodward, is the patriarch of one of Maryland's most distinguished medical families, consisting of his wife, Celeste L. Woodward, M.D., his sons, William E. Woodward, M.D. and R. Craig Woodward, M.D., and his daughter, Celeste L. Woodward, M.D. The son of Dr. and Mrs. Lewis K. Woodward, Sr. and grandson of Dr. and Mrs. Lewis Woodward, Dr. Woodward was born in Westminster, Maryland, on March 22, 1914. After his early education at the West End School and the Westminster Elementary and High School, he attended Franklin and Marshall College where he graduated in 1934. He re-ceived his medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1938.

After a two-year rotating internship at the University of Maryland Hospital, he trained in internal medicine and gastro-enterology at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, all in preparation to enter general practice in Carroll County, Maryland.

Dr. Woodward entered the service of the United States Army in January 1941, just prior to the outbreak of World War II. During the ensuing five years, he served in various medical units and with the United States Typhus Fever Commission with as-signments in North Africa, Italy, England, France, New Guinea and offshore islands, and the Philippine Islands.

Following discharge from military ser-vice in June 1946, Dr. Woodward entered private practice. In 1948, he was appointed as a full-time Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. In June 1954, he was appointed to the Chair of Medicine, a posi-tion which he held until 1981, at the time of his retirement.

Life as a teacher of medical students and young physicians, practitioner for patients, and investigator of clinical problems has repaid me much beyond what I have contributed In searching through a depth of memories and experiences, my mind uncovered a number of I.O.U.s to several persons who, by virtue of their stature, professional example, and teachings, unwittingly allowed me to borrow from them.

It is impossible to make full reparation, but there is some solace in realizing that others, too, have borrowed heavily from these special persons whose help and encouragement to me are incalculable.

Top, left to right:
Maurice C. Pincoffs, Marcel Baltazard, Leon A. Fox & Stanhope Bayne-Jones.
Center, left to right:
Joseph E. Smadel, Raymond Lewthwaite, Kenneth Goodner & Cohn M. McLeod. Bottom, left to right:
Thomas Francis, Jr, Karl F Meyer & John H. Dingle.

These men strove for and achieved excellence in their lives and chosen fields. By the conduct of their lives, the examples they set, and their wise counsel, they enhanced our profession and inspired so many. Along with the need for solid foundations in the basic and clinical sciences, the opportunity to associate closely with such informed professionals was an advantage of immeasurable value. It is not possible to adequately express the extent of this indebtedness since they gave me so much advice, help, and friendship.

Often, because of human conflicts, America's physicians have found themselves deposited in foreign countries and confronted by microbial diseases for which they possess but superficial knowledge. In December 1942, as a young medical officer in Morocco, I was forced to become instantly knowledgeable in problems relating to plague, typhus, and relapsing fevers, diseases that were not household disorders in the United States.

My first foreign medical friend was Marcel Baltazard, acting director of the Pasteur Institute in Morocco. He spoke no English and my French was awkward. However, our friendship struck up immediately, and he eagerly let me teach the Pasteur staff the technique of complement fixation, a new diagnostic aid for the rickettsial diseases and a technique which comprised about 50% of my laboratory competence.

Balta gave me much beyond friendship. From him came a comprehension of the need to relate nature's patterns of illness to the type of studies that should be performed in the laboratory. He and his mentor, Georges Blanc, fully understood the phenomenon of microbial persistence. The rickettsiae responsible for both epidemic and murine typhus were shown to remain viable for five years or more in dried louse and flea feces. The same type of persistence held for the soft tick, Ornithodoros moubata, and for the agent of spirochetal relapsing fever.

Balta felt all along that the rat was not the proprietor of plague but perhaps only its administrator. He demonstrated clearly and taught me that, under natural conditions and in laboratory experiments, plague bacilli remained viable in the detritus and soil of deep burrows where rodents had died of plague. This mechanism, which he called "peste endogee," explained how the disease persists in plague foci for prolonged periods. America owes him much, as I do.