An old doctor grows older.

Abstract:An old man, I am convinced that aging is no disease, but a normal part of living, just like childhood. Society should provide for our inevitable decline rather than support research to postpone our dying. Retirement, now so arbitrary, defines when men and women are old, and so discards contributions from the elderly who want to work.

Commentary: The practice of empathy.

In response to the articles in this issue about measuring physician empathy by Hojat and colleagues, Di Lillo and colleagues, and Kataoka and colleagues, this commentary further explores the concept of empathy. It is posited that empathy is an emotion important to medical care, but it is emphasized that it really doesn't matter whether empathy is a thought or an emotion. Retaining or enhancing it in medical care givers is worth doing and may be achieved through (1) the selection of medical students and others who will care for the sick, (2) the training caretakers receive, and more fundamentally even, (3) reconsideration of what doctors do in a world so much changed and so diverse.

Dean Milton C. Winternitz at Yale.

Milton Winternitz led Yale Medical School as its Dean from 1920 to 1935. An innovative, even maverick leader, he not only kept the school from going under, but turned it into a first-class research institution. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medicine" and the study of humans in their culture and environment.