Dr. Stanley Truhlsen, 2017 Library Interview - On Ophthalmology
Item
Title
Dr. Stanley Truhlsen, 2017 Library Interview - On Ophthalmology
Date
8 March 2017
Description
Transcript
Gerald Christensen: Well, you seemed like you were on a course to be a pathologist, but you wound up as an ophthalmologist. So, how did that occur?
Stanley Truhlsen: Well, I took pathology—pathology residency, as I intended to go into internal medicine or general surgery. And I thought pathology would be a good basis for it. So, during my pathology residency, we had an excellent technician who did celloidin sections as a type of preparation of tissues to study microscopically. And she also did celloidin sections for the eyes that were removed during—in the hospital during that time. As I studied the various diseases of the eye, I became more and more interested in the specialty. Had to consult in the library and the journals various sources for learning ophthalmology, and became interested enough that I decided that that would be a good specialty and I would like to enter it. Also, I figured out that learning about ophthalmology and the eyeball, which was about an inch in size—diameter, was a little easier than studying for the whole body, which is—
has various organs, and the brain, and the liver, and so forth.
GC: Lots of information, though, even for just that one square inch.
ST: Well, for that one—one little organ, the eye, I later bought a fifteen-volume set of books written by a world-famous English ophthalmologist. So, even though it was a small area, he had fifteen volumes to write about it.
Gerald Christensen: Well, you seemed like you were on a course to be a pathologist, but you wound up as an ophthalmologist. So, how did that occur?
Stanley Truhlsen: Well, I took pathology—pathology residency, as I intended to go into internal medicine or general surgery. And I thought pathology would be a good basis for it. So, during my pathology residency, we had an excellent technician who did celloidin sections as a type of preparation of tissues to study microscopically. And she also did celloidin sections for the eyes that were removed during—in the hospital during that time. As I studied the various diseases of the eye, I became more and more interested in the specialty. Had to consult in the library and the journals various sources for learning ophthalmology, and became interested enough that I decided that that would be a good specialty and I would like to enter it. Also, I figured out that learning about ophthalmology and the eyeball, which was about an inch in size—diameter, was a little easier than studying for the whole body, which is—
has various organs, and the brain, and the liver, and so forth.
GC: Lots of information, though, even for just that one square inch.
ST: Well, for that one—one little organ, the eye, I later bought a fifteen-volume set of books written by a world-famous English ophthalmologist. So, even though it was a small area, he had fifteen volumes to write about it.
Rights
From the McGoogan Health Sciences Library Robert S. Wigton Department of Special Collections and Archives