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One who disagrees with Smith is Dr. Thomas Richard Early, 30, another member of U.C.L.A.'s first graduating class. Early is just finishing a fruitful year of internship at San Diego Naval Hospital, during which he has worked up to 105 hours a week, delivered 50 babies, done 23 hernia operations, snipped 21 appendices and twelve sets of tonsils—altogether 178 operations under supervision of a senior doctor. Early, a down-to-earth son of a South Dakota wheat farmer, has no interest in specializing, feels that good medicine depends on knowing the patients and that the best way to know them is to treat them for everything that ails them—up to the limits of his knowledge.
Says Early: "There's no reason for a doctor to send Johnny off to a pediatrician to have a boil lanced or a sliver removed, just because Johnny is under twelve. Yet an internist is supposed, ethically, to send all patients under twelve to pediatricians. There's no reason why a general practitioner can't do most minor surgery and most obstetrics. If there's anything unusual about a case he'll call in a specialist anyhow." General Practitioner Early starts practice this week in Lemon Grove (pop. 20,000), nine miles from San Diego, in partnership with an older doctor.
He will find, like any doctor worth his pills, that his medical education is just beginning. Says Teacher Warren: "One of my pals among the medical deans likes to say: 'What we are interested in is the 40-year education process—having a doctor go on learning all his active life, from his patients, his fellows and from graduate courses—not just four years of medical schooling.' And I agree with him."