Brain Advance Access published online on May 23, 2007
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awm089
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A student recalls Sir Charles Sherrington, O.M. (1857–1952)
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
‘Experience is not to be measured by time served, but by the use which a man makes of his opportunities.’(Sir William Osler)
The ‘Great Depression’ following the crash in 1929 of world stock markets ended my intended studies in banking and commerce at the youthful University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Adding a crushing load of courses in histology, chemistry, genetics and embryology, I proceeded instead to a Bachelor of Science degree achieving sufficient grades to enter McGill Medical School, Montreal, in autumn 1933.
There, the freshmen class was amazed at the renowned professors gathered by McGill—such as the anatomist, Dr Samuel Whitnall, an Oxford graduate who lectured to his class wearing a beautiful black silk gown and a monocle which he adeptly expelled from his orbit, catching it in one hand. He instructed the attendant Mr Murphy to display various parts of the human body specially dissected for