Doctor's Son

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.