30               The Editor Visits the Medical Library

to be erected on the site of the P. & S. parking lot at i68th Street
and Fort Washington Avenue. It would cost more than
$1,500,000, but it would be the first modem library specifically
designed to meet the requirements of a great medical center. It
was an exciting idea, and when we recalled the sums which were
being given for medical research, it seemed altogether possible that
someday an imaginative philanthropist would kindle at the
thought of creating such a library. Without a library to preserve
the record of scientific discoveries, and to stimulate the discoveries
of the future, the work of the laboratories would be as ephemeral
as the fumes from their retorts.

By this time, thoughts of the ever-increasing avalanche of
medical hterature and of the hectic pace of modem research had
given us a slight headache. For relaxation, we asked to see some of
the historical items in the collection, and were shown a manu¬
script, donated by Dr. Dana Atchley, in the hand of a P. & S.
medical student of the Eighteen Twenties. It contained notes on
the lectures of David Hosack M.D., "Professor of the Practice of
Physic." We looked with amazement at the leisurely handwriting
and pohshed sentences, studded with the Professor's anecdotes
and with the student's sly comments. Tliere were no abbreviations.
It was the perfect antithesis of the hurry and bustle of modern
medicine. We thought of our own sketchy notes of fifteen years
ago. The student of 1952 probably uses shorthand!

The telephone rang, and we heard Mr. Fleming talking as if he
were somehow involved in the arrangements for a beauty contest.
"That's the lighter side of my job," he laughed. "The Editor of
Mademoiselle wants me to find a photogenic Medical Librarian
whom they can feature in a forthcoming article." We left him
with this problem—and the problem of where to put his next
100,000 volumes—unsolved.