Well, I'll tell you one anecdote of the army... it has really no relevance to science proper but it does have to human judgment and interaction and, after all, that in the end is what the brain is responsible for, so we'll probably come to my interest in the brain. At that time it wasn't so explicit, but I had a commanding officer who must have gotten his medical degree from the back of a comic book because he never really did anything except when he went on ward rounds with us at the American Hospital. We had one whole floor at the 196 Station Hospital; he would say, no matter who it was and what age and what the disease was... let's say a kid with the flu, he'd look down and say, 'Gentlemen, you know this could be cancer', and the patient of course would go into a tremendous tail spin. And so we used to hide the patients from him.
One day I was delivering a baby and had just finished and I was writing up the case when the phone rang and a lady said, 'I'm Major General So-and-so's wife', and I said, 'Oh yes, I know your husband – Air Force isn't it?' And she said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'What seems to be the trouble?' She said... by the way, this was about 12:30, half hour after midnight... she says, 'Well, he has some pain', and I said, 'Where?' And she said, 'I'd rather not say.' And I said, 'Down there?' And she said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Does he have any fever?' And she said, 'Well, I don't have a thermometer but he feels a little warm.' I said, 'Tell you what I'm going to do. I'll send a technician out with some stuff and I'll see him first thing in the morning in the clinic, I assure you.' She said, 'Hold the phone, I heard some screaming.' She came back; she said, 'The general says you're going to put on your uniform, get the Cadillac ambulance and drive out to St Cloud and see him yourself.' I said, 'Ma'am, I can't do that; I'm officer of the day.' And she started yelling, and I said just, 'I'll call you right back.' And I called up my commanding officer, the colonel, and I said, 'Colonel, we have a case here; Major General So-and-so has epididymitis.' And he said, 'What's that?' And I said, 'Never mind; just come.' And he said, 'You wake me up for this?' I said, 'It is a Major General', so he came. I gave him the red pill and the blue pill and he went out and then I delivered another baby. And when I was writing that one up three figures came down the hall. By this time it was about three in the morning and it was the general, white as a sheet, the wife looking nonplussed and my commanding officer with a huge smile on his face. He went out there, he peeled back the blanket, and he looked at the general's soft parts, and he said, 'You know, General, this could be cancer', and he leaped into his trousers and that was the end of that story. I assure you it was real, it was like MASH.