It’s hard to believe that I started at Albright College 40 years ago. Since that time I have thought about a specific individual who made a significant impression on my life, as well as those of many other pre-med students. Dr. Marcus H. Green orchestrated the Albright pre-med program in association with his biology and chemistry contemporaries.

For students it was like a prisoner running a gauntlet of Huron and Mohawk clubs and axes. Many did not make it!

His expressions were designed to intimidate you. He did this to prepare students for the shock they would face in medical school. But beneath this very hard exterior was a man of warm heart and concern for the public good. Many students accepted his hard-knocks philosophy of preparing students for the health professions, but many did not. They either dropped the course, or failed.

Dr. Green commanded respect through mountains of lab work overseen and supervised by another faculty member, Professor Janet Gehres, now retired. The lab itself deserved to be a three-credit course. Green’s lectures included many drawings on window shades. He would let them hang in the lab, and say "Now learn this." These remained hanging for a short time and then were taken down, NEVER to be hung again. His philosophy was that students should get to class and copy the drawings right away.

He used words like "Don’t forget this, boys and girls: the antrum of Highmore is the maxillary sinus!" His words were used for centuries by previous doctors. I believe if Dr. Green could oversee the training of doctors there would be less of a need for a Board of Medical Examiners.

He decimated my pre-med class like a surgeon dissecting a lipoma, but he was the piper and we danced to his tune.

I can hear his voice as if I was sitting in his class just yesterday:

• "Don’t come crying to me if you can’t handle the workload. My job
  is to cut the wheat from the chaff."
  
• "If you didn’t get an 80 in the first exam, you don’t belong here. Go
  see Dr. Bell (pre-medical advisor) and change your major."
  
• "Pearson boy, I see you have a reservation at Klein’s Motel. Plan to
  be shacked up with your girlfriend for Spring Weekend? (At this
  time I turned beet-red and kept my mouth shut.) "I’m talking to all of
  you, not just Pearson. You people better decide whether you want
  to be playboys or playgirls or doctors. I think I’ll give you the big
  midterm exam the day after Spring Weekend."
  
• "You’re too stupid to be here, son. I’ll get you a job stuffing bologna
  in Lebanon. Son, you don’t have it."

Others remember Dr. Green’s zero tolerance policy too:

• Garry G. Ruch ’63 remembers when Dr. Green told someone in his
  Natural Science Fundamentals class (for non-science majors) that
  he had the ability to be president of the bologna factory.
• George Kleiber, D.O. ’64 said Dr. Green told him he’d be sweeping
  floors if he didn’t shape up. He’s now president of a group of 28
  cardiologists.
  
• John R. "Ace" Bailey ’63 remembers Dr. Green saying to him: "Have
  you heard of the academic graveyard of pre-meds? Your name is on
  one of the stones. Bailey, I know smarter people than you working in
  the Lebanon bologna factory."
  
  

But graduates like Stephen B. Leapman, M.D. ’64, a natural science major, say they owe their life to Dr. Green. Leapman was advised by Dr. Green to switch to pre-med. He liked animal drawings but he also liked Dr. Green. No wonder Leapman is now a transplant surgeon in Indianapolis.

Dr. Green was not without a sense of humor either. In 1964, he made students identify bones with a blindfold on. One day someone put a lit cigarette into the jaws of a human skull attached to the skeleton used in lectures. Dr. Green walked into the room and calmly said, "This is what happens to smokers."

Finally, Dr. Green’s “Physiology of Coordination” class, which covered neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, could not be underestimated.

A patient came to see me because his eminent doctor was off. He then proceeded to tell me his doctor kept him on his feet for 30 years. His dizziness was a disabling problem until he met this doctor. He then recited his doctor’s curriculum vitae. He was president of his Ear, Nose and Throat Society, and an American Medical Association delegate ad nauseum. I noticed his wide-based gait, and I remembered the talk Dr. Green gave on this subject. He said, "You sir, have tabes dorsalis." Two blood tests and a spinal tap in my office confirmed my diagnosis. Twenty-one tubex spears of penicillin preceded by one gram of Benemid before each daily shot arrested his cerebrospinal syphilis.

Thank you, Marcus Green. I told his doctor I had a job for him stuffing bologna in Lebanon, Pa.