Paul Bruce Beeson.

In the spring of 1965, Dr. Beeson decided to leave the chairmanship of Internal Medicine at Yale for the Nuffield Chair in Internal Medicine at Oxford. With this decision he brought to an end a fruitful and exciting period in the development of the Yale Medical School. In recognition of his contributions to the institution in which he played so important a part, the editors of the YALE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE have decided to publish a special issue dedicated to him. This issue should reflect in some degree at least several different facets of Beeson's professional life. Like many academic physicians, he is active in teaching, in administration , in national scholarly societies, in patient care, and in research. His outstanding achievements in the last area are the easiest to document, and represent the basis of the major part of this issue of the YALE JOURNAL. In this brief introduction, I shall try to do justice to some of the less obvious but highly important aspects of Dr. Beeson's activities at Yale and in American academic medicine in general. The past 14 years have seen extensive changes in the organization and commitments of American medical schools. Yale Medical School was fortunate to have Paul Beeson as chairman of its Department of Internal Medicine during these years of transition. His broad clinical knowledge and his extensive and productive research experience provided the basis for a balanced expansion of the Department and, to a considerable extent, of the School as a whole. For this guidance, Yale and the entire American medical community owes him a great debt of gratitude. When Beeson arrived at Yale in the spring of 1952, he found a medical school dedicated to a unique system of medical education. The absence of university examinations, combined with a great deal of free time for elective study and a requirement that each student write an acceptable doctoral dissertation created an atmosphere in which students and faculty worked together as colleagues rather than as disciples and masters. This teaching program makes unusual demands on both the students and the faculty. The students must be mature enough to take the responsibilty for educating themselves, and the faculty must be capable of engaging the interest and attention of the students without the coercion of examinations. The atmosphere of cooperation such a teaching method requires was highly congenial to the new professor. He …