[Some paragraph breaks added for ease of reading.]2921 Bainbridge Ave
New York City.Dear Miss Turner
This is rather a delayed reply to your Christmas note, which Miss Paige so kindly delivered. I was so pleased to hear from you that I wanted to wait until I had time to write a really decent letter. You can probably imagine that time was rather scarce with the fear of a final exam in Anatomy hanging over me.
We had our exam last week; finished up Anatomy for good and all, except for the state board in June. It was a good deal of a relief to have it over, because [I] thought it was interesting; it involved such a vast amount of memory work. They could have given us a terribly hard exam but fortunately didn't.
Physiology is also finished now. They were trying out a new method of giving the course, so Dr. Williams told us at the end, and he seemed to think it had worked pretty well. Looking back at it, the class thinks so too, but in the process it was rather hectic. We were divided in groups of six for laboratory work. Different groups did different experiments, a good many of them interesting, but complicated, operative experiments on cats. The lectures were pretty sketchy and made no attempt at all to hitch things up, so that all the correlating of the course we had to do for ourselves from our reading.
We also had weekly quizzes which were entirely based on Starling. I found Starling much harder reading than Howell. The last month of the course was really fun, for they let us spend all our time on special problems. My problem was to try to see if insulin could be given by mouth. One man has reported that he found it worked on rabbits so I tried it - giving it by a stomach tube and in alcoholic solution. The rabbits didn't care at all for the stomach tube business and one of them swallowed his tube one day but it didn't seem to hurt him. While we were working on the problem, another article came out in the American Journal of Physiology by a man who had seen Mr. Winter's article and who said that alcohol alone would account for the fall in blood sugar Winter observed. That made an added complication. We didn't have much time nor enough rabbits, but as far as we went we couldn't see that the rabbits absorbed the insulin at all, for several times we gave doses large enough, if given hyperdermically, to have sent them into terrific shock and they never showed a sign and showed practically no drop in blood sugar.
The examination in Physiology was most amusing and unusual. They announced before hand that we might bring with us to the exam any notebooks, text books, or other help that we pleased, because Dr Williams thought a course shouldn't stuff your head full of facts but rather should give you a Physiological point of view and a knowledge of where to find the facts and how to use them. The examination consisted in writing for three hours on any topic you pleased, using any references you wanted. It was a most refreshing sort of exam and I quite enjoyed writing a little discourse on Digestion.
With the beginning of this semester, our courses all change. The big thing for this semester is Pathology, which we have sixteen hours a week, besides which we have to be ready to be called out to autopsies Sundays and evenings as well as week days. We had Surgery for the first time this morning - it is all about wounds this year. We produce experimental wounds on animals and watch them heal and also study wounds at Vanderbilt Clinic and Presbyterian Hospital. We spent the time this morning learning how to get dressed up for the operating room. There are just hundreds of ways to make slips and then you have to start all over again - then when you are finally all in the gown and cap and gloves (the gloves are the worst to get on, for you have to get them on without ever touching the outside)[.] Then when you are all beautifully sterile your nose begins to itch and before you know it you've touched it and have to start all over again. I've watched people get into the things before but I never knew it was such a job.
We are also having Pharmacology and Psychopathology this semester. Pharmacology we had yesterday and it was very pleasant - we haven't started the psych. yet nor Physical diagnosis, these last two we have once a week.
Saturday there was a New York Alumnae Tea - It was awfully nice and very "Holyoky". Quite a lot of 1923 people were there, Olive Spear and Grace Gorham, Jean Natsch, Ellen Willcox and a lot of others. It was fine to hear that Olive Spear was going to be at P. & S. next year. She's coming down some day to have me show her the beauties of our ancient building. Grace Gorham seemed very enthusiastic about her work but she said she wanted to talk to me someday so I hope she'll switch to medicine sometime for she'd be good.
Isabel Waterhouse comes over sometimes when she is off duty and has lunch with me. She always has some college news for me because she sees all the Holyoke people over at the Hospital. I was so sorry to hear about Katie Lyman's losing her father and having to leave the hospital for awhile to nurse her stepmother. It certainly will be a shame if she should lose her chance at the job at the Yale School of Nursing thru being away, as Isabel thought she might. The last time I saw Katie she was talking about it and was very eager for it. I saw Virginia Bliss about a month ago just after she'd been up to college - she comes over to P. & S. to see Dr Hopkins about her hand. I do wish it would hurry up and clear away for good, all she seems to have to do is to start work for the infection to start up again.
You must be all very busy with plans for March seventeenth - Surely we must get all the money we need this time so that it will be a great day for the college and a suitable birthday celebration for Dr Clapp. I am looking forward so much to getting back to re-union in June, much more so than I would have believed possible when I was actually in college. Sometimes I get regular fits of homesickness for college and would do anything just for a sight of one of the buildings to say nothing of the people in them. If state boards keep me from coming up in June I don't know what I will do -
In the mean time, I hope since you asked for my address that you will write me another little note some day, or best of all that you will be coming New Yorkward in Spring Vacation.
With love
Betty KnoxFebruary 5, 1924.