Dr. Franklin P. Mall : an appreciation / [Simon Flexner].

  • Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dr. Franklin P. Mall : an appreciation / [Simon Flexner]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    DR. FRANKLIN P. MALL: AN APPRECIATION The death of Doctor Mall is so recent and my grief for his loss so fresh that I find myself reflecting on the fruitful and delightful memories of our past association instead of writing out my impressions of his unusual personality. Doctor Mall came to Johns Hopkins in the late summer of 1893 and just before the medical school opened its doors to the first class of students in the autumn. It was there that we met. I recall vividly my excitement and nervousness when the rumor was circulated about the old patho¬ logical building that Mall had arrived. His name had been a tradition among the small group in the department of pathology. A few years earlier, before the hospital had been opened to patients, he had come to the laboratory and as fellow in pathology had performed a miracle of interesting and important studies on the connective tissue foundations of the organs. Fellows in pathology there had been since his time, but no one whose memory was glorified as Mall’s 'had been. We had so often heard him and his work spoken of by Doctor Welch, Doctor Halsted, and others, including the indispensable Schultz, who was for many years presiding genius over the technical and janitorial services of the laboratories and whose commendation car¬ ried with us such great weight, that I pictured Mall as quite different from what in actual life he proved to be. One’s fancy—my fancy surely was so— when young is apt to produce its own pic¬ tures. In my fanciful portrait of Mall I represented. him as large, absorbed, and rather austere. Never was a fancy more completely and happily shattered. I can just remember our meeting; those who knew Mall well will never forget how engagingly he smiled. It was with one of the best of his smiles that he greeted me. That event was the auspicious beginning of a warm friendship which never wavered until his death. During the first period of half a dozen years we were in almost daily contact. Later, and after 1900, when I left the medical school to enter the University of Pennsylvania, our meetings were at first not infrequent. I shall never cease to regret the increasing intervals be¬ tween them which followed my removal to the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Increasing responsibilities and enlarging duties play havoc with one’s life, and I feel that I suffered a grievous and now irremediable loss in permitting those cir¬ cumstances to cut me off to the extent it seemed inevitable they should from asso¬ ciation with Mall. To a certain extent, letters took the place of personal contact. Thus I kept more or less in touch with the workings of his restless and constructive mind. It probably will strike few except his very intimate friends that Mall was by temperament a reformer. He was an un¬ compromising democrat and hence enter-