2011 BYU 21st
Annual Russell B Clark Gerontology
Conference – March 14, 2011
The 2011 BYU Gerontology
Conference will be held in Provo,
Utah on March 14
(9:00am-3:00pm). It is free to the
general public and includes lunch. Historic
attendance has been 500-600 Seniors. Scheduled
speakers are:
Byron Baird, MD specializes
in internal medicine and works at the University of Utah. He will be speaking on Alzheimer’s.
Tom Finucane, MD specializes
in geriatric care and co-directs the Gerontology Conference at Johns Hopkins.. He will speak with Dr. Baird on Alzheimer’s and appropriate
medicine for Seniors.
Robin McKenzie, MD. She is an epidemiologist and will be speaking
about infections possibly contracted at the hospital.
John Kane, MD. He specializes in internal medicine at the University of San Francisco. He will be speaking about his studies on
genetic markers of heart disease.
Barbara Hurst, MD specializes
in osteoporosis and pelvic reconstructive surgery and will be speaking on
women’s health.
Jane MacPherson, MD
specializes in palliative care and hospice and will be speaking to these
topics.
Notes: An RSVP list may be requested by BYU
soon. We will let you know when and if
that is required. Collegium Aesculapium is
evaluating to see if the presentations qualify for CME.
2011 Annual Spring Meeting
of Collegium Aesculapium in Salt Lake
City – March 31 to April 1.
The 2011 Spring meeting will
be in downtown Salt
Lake again this
year. The location is in negotiation
right now and we will let you know as soon as it is confirmed.
Schedule:
Thursday March 31
Morning –
Humanitarian/Welfare Project/Tour
Afternoon – Temple Session
at the Salt Lake Temple
Evening – Dinner and Fireside
Friday April 1
CME Meetings 8:00am – 5:00pm
Tentatively Planned topics:
SocioEconomic impact of
Health Care Reform. Perspectives from
Government, State, and Medical specialists.
Bed Bugs
Water Born Illness
Men’s Health
Judy Brummer – Her
inspirational experience leading up to and translating the Book of Mormon into
Xhosa (one of the African clicking languages).
Hawaii 2011 We are evaluating
whether to hold the Fall meeting in Hawaii. We
need your feedback in helping with this decision. The proposal would be for Collegium to
schedule CME meetings at a hotel on Oahu for
consecutive days in the morning – 4 hours each day for a total of 20
hours. Members would have the ability
to schedule personal trips around the CME schedule. There would not be a tour plan or package as
we normally do because Hawaii
does not lend itself to full tour packages.
However, we could schedule a few optional group trips to the Polynesian Cultural
Center, Laie
Temple, Pearl
Harbor. We feel that with
this flexibility, members can plan trips according to personal preferences and
costs. Boomerang Travel would be
available to help anyone coordinate their trips. Cost will be determined soon, but will only
be for the CME meetings. Travel,
accommodations and most meals will be managed personally and individually.
**Please email
us and let us know how likely it is that you would attend an event like
this. Additionally, let us know if you
would prefer to go in August or October (during the week of UEA break in Utah).**
A Great Story
by an LDS MD
AND NOT TO YIELD
by Scott C. Richards,
MD
“Dumb
kids!” Thompson muttered under his breath.
You
would think that young men raised on the frontier would know how to walk
quietly in the dark, but these two seemed completely ignorant of the
concept. Jacob, the larger and obviously
clumsier of Thompson’s two helpers, picked himself up out of the damp dirt of
the road while his friend John giggled like a schoolgirl. John had claimed to be twenty years old, with
Jacob only a few months behind him.
Surely they were mature enough to keep their feet under them and their
wits about them long enough to finish a simple job like this. Thompson had hoped to bolster their courage
and reduce their inhibitions with the judicious application of brandy, but
perhaps he had overdone it a bit.
A
growled command from the older man was sufficient to silence the two, and they
resumed their travel down the roadway, albeit more mindful of protruding roots
and stones than before. The wind was
picking up slightly, swaying the branches of the birches just enough to provide
a soothing rustle to cover their footsteps.
The cool night air was a relief after the heat of the day, but it
promised more of a chill before their errand was done. Thompson quickened his pace slightly, and the
boys moved to keep up with him.
It was their arrogance that bothered Thompson
the most. Not really these two, although
they certainly had their share of youthful overconfidence or he would not have
enlisted them for this project. It was
all of them, the rising generations of either century, perhaps of all
centuries. It was the young
administrators and prematurely-tenured professors that had forced him to step
down from his chairmanship at the ridiculously young age of 63. It was the cocky physicians at the Institute
administering his longevity treatments, so sure they knew more about his body’s
complaints than he did. It was the young
sleek executives from FRT that had given him his briefing and assignment,
interested in him not as a renowned expert in 19th century American
history, but only as an expendable tool that might help forward their
agenda. Finally, it was the Institute
scientists, young men and women seemingly just out of their teens, who
pontificated about wavefront distortions and probability nexuses as though
they’d been managing time travel for decades.
All they saw in him was a thin balding payload in a tweed jacket,
another shuffling reminder of their own inconvenient mortality.
Thompson
chuckled silently when he thought of those arrogant kids at the Temporal
Insitute. They had promised to set him
down gently in a secluded area just outside of Rutland Massachusetts
in July 1826. Instead, he was dropped in
the middle of a muddy farmyard near Knowersville,
New York at about midnight,
startling a pair of overprotective dogs.
Amidst a flood of Dutch invectives from the dogs’ owner, he managed to
escape from the farm without losing the knapsack with his precious
canister. After spending a long cold
night in a stand of ironwood trees, he made his way into Albany to discover that it was March 3rd,
1828. He remembered now almost giving up
on his primary objective when he saw how far behind schedule he was. Nevertheless, his stubborn pride had won
out, and here he was, about to accomplish his assignment in spite of the
incompetence of the Institute staff.
The
three men stopped at the entrance to the Smith property, a rough track leading
off the main road and along an open field of ankle-high sprouts, presumably
wheat or rye. The small house on the
other side of the field was dark except for a faint flickering light from one
small window. Apparently someone was
still awake.
“Are
you sure there are no dogs?” Thompson asked in a low voice.
“None
that I’ve heard tell of,” Jacob rumbled.
“The way I hear it, Smith barely had enough money to buy the farm and
some seed to get started. You sure he’s
got gold here?”
“That’s
what we’re here to find out,” the older man replied. “John, cock your rifle and keep it out where
he’ll be able to see it.”
“I
still don’t understand,” whispered John from his other side. “Why did we bring a rifle if it’s not
loaded?”
“So
nobody gets hurt.” Seeing the puzzled
look on the smaller boy’s face, Thompson continued impatiently, “Never mind,
just trust me on this.” He certainly
didn’t have time to explain Novikov and Everett theories to these two, even if
he thought they might understand, even if he really understood them
himself. The Institute kids claimed that
changing the past in any appreciable way was impossible. Still, Thompson couldn’t imagine how the
accidental death of a well-known historical figure like the ‘boy prophet’ 15
years ahead of schedule could not have a significant effect on the
timeline. Perhaps preservation of the
integrity of the timeline would require that Thompson somehow die instead of
Smith. Perhaps that was why some of his
fellow time travelers had seemingly disappeared. In any case, he wasn’t about to take an
unnecessary risk to himself or his objectives.
As
the three crept along the dirt road toward the farmhouse, Thompson reviewed his
assignments for the umpteenth time. The
primary objective was to learn as much as possible about Joseph Smith and his
gold bible, specifically looking for evidence of fraud. Oh, the people from the Foundation for
Religious Truth who were footing the bill for this expedition hadn’t quite said
as much, but Thompson had played the academic political game long enough to
read between the lines. They had seemed
particularly interested in proving the existence or nonexistence of this
‘ancient record written on plates of gold’ that Smith claimed as the source
material for his new scriptures.
Although Thompson had tried to explain to the FRT the difficulties in
proving the nonexistence of an historical record, they were determined to send
him anyway, and he wasn’t about to blow this opportunity by arguing with them.
His
second objective was to discover, if possible, the reason for the
disappearances of the other time travelers.
Thompson was only the ninth man ever sent on a temporal expedition, and
the Institute’s track record with the first eight was not stellar. Three of the travelers disappeared without a
trace, with no way to know if they ever reached their destinations. The other five had buried their canisters
with the GPS transponder set to activate one week after their departure date as
instructed, and the canisters had been successfully retrieved. However, none of the five had truly completed
all their objectives, and none had recorded more than a few years’ data before
burying their canister. The Institute
experts had postulated some accelerated form of Alzheimer’s disease or
depression caused by the temporal distortion, which made some sense given the
older age of the travelers. All of them
to date had been similar to Thompson – males over the age of 60, experts in the
time period they were visiting, retired, in good physical condition for their
age, and with no significant family or emotional ties to the future they were
leaving behind. The Institute’s
rheopheresis treatments were likely to keep them alive and vigorous until age
100 or more, barring accident or severe infection. They were the most logical candidates for
this one-way journey, old enough to be observers rather than participants in
the struggles of history, and old enough to be expendable. It had seemed a perfect solution, but the
failure of the travelers to complete their assignments was starting to reflect
in the Institute’s stock prices. Unless
this trip could provide some answers, the Institute would have to rethink their
approach. Thompson was to test and
record his mental functioning and general health every few months using a
handheld device kept in his canister. He
was also to keep a detailed written diary of any physical and emotional
symptoms that seemed pertinent as well as any ideas as to what had happened to
his fellow travelers.
As
Thompson approached the house, he motioned for the boys to stay with him and
quickened his pace. A few steps took him
across the porch, and he quickly swung the door open and stepped into the
dwelling. To his right as he entered was
the young man he recognized as Smith, sitting at a rough but sturdy sawbuck
table, writing by the light of a single candle.
The young man looked up as Thompson entered the room.
“Good
evening, sir,” Smith said calmly. “I’ve
been expecting you. My apologies, but
could I ask you to be as quiet as possible while you are visiting? My wife Emma has been ill these last two
days, and has just fallen asleep.”
Thompson
stopped short, confused by the mild reception.
Jacob bumped into him from behind, nearly knocking him over. John stepped up to Thompson’s left side, his
rifle pointed directly at Smith.
“I
expect you’re here to search my house for treasure, like all the others.” Smith
continued as he rose from the table.
“You are welcome to look, but I should in good conscience advise you
that you will not be successful.”
“We’ll
look anyway, if it’s all the same to you,” said Thompson with a smile. He wasn’t about to let the cool arrogance of
this young man dissuade him from his purpose, but he had to admit that Smith
had charm and quick wits.
Smith
smiled back, an open and confident smile, as though he were greeting old
friends. “By all means, search if you
please. I see you’ve brought some young men
from the town to assist you. Jacob
Miller here is one of the best stick-pullers I’ve had the pleasure of
meeting. And this other young man must
be John Kline’s oldest boy.” Smith
stepped calmly across the room and held out his hand toward John, forcing the
boy to tip the barrel of the long rifle toward the ceiling. After a moment of silence, John shifted the
rifle to his left hand and hesitantly took Smith’s hand in his own. “Your mother brought us a most excellent jar
of apple butter when we arrived in town.” Smith said, grasping the boy’s hand
firmly. “Please thank her again for her
kindness.” John looked down at his feet
and mumbled, “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
Letting
go of John’s hand, Smith turned to look into Thompson’s grey eyes. “You, sir, seem to have taken an unusual
interest in my activities. I believe I
noticed you in Harmony two months ago, and I heard that you were inquiring
after me in Palmyra
as well.”
Thompson felt himself flush slightly. It was true that he had spent several months
in Harmony, Pennsylvania,
researching and waiting. The time had
been well-spent, since he had been able to acquire some information and
artifacts that might be of help to the FRT.
“And
yet,” Smith added with a thoughtful look in his eyes, “I think you have come
from much further away than Harmony, and have not truly seen harmony these many
long years.”
The
older man felt the familiar anguish rising in him, the memories, the grief, the
loneliness, threatening to overwhelm him.
With the control of long practice, he angrily pushed the flood
back. “We’re wasting time,” he
snapped. “I believe we were talking
about searching your house, were we not?”
“As
you wish,” Smith sighed. “Let me find
some extra candles to aid in your search.”
The
search took but a few minutes, since the house was small and the possessions of
the Smith family were few. The two boys
were of no help, seemingly having lost all enthusiasm for the adventure, and
Thompson sent them outside with candles to search the yard for signs of
digging. Thompson examined the papers on
the table where Smith had been sitting, hoping to find an alleged translation,
but was disappointed to see only a half-written letter to Smith’s mother. He checked each of the planks of the puncheon
floor, and lifted any that were loose, but without success. As he moved toward the door leading to the
second room of the house, Smith stepped into his way.
“I
hope it will not be necessary to disturb my wife,” he said quietly.
“I’m
afraid it is, unless you’d like to give me the plates of gold,” Thompson
replied stubbornly. “I’m a very rich
man, Mr. Smith, and we could avoid all this unpleasantness if you would sell me
the plates.” Fortunately, the Institute
had provided him with expertly forged letters of credit drawn on banks in London, Albany, Hartford, and Philadelphia. After making his way to Boston, he had opened accounts that allowed
him to access those funds and establish himself as a well-to-do retired
merchant before beginning his journey westward.
“You could live in luxury for the rest of your life instead scraping by
in this place,” Thompson continued.
“I’ll pay you five thousand dollars to give me the plates. Or, I’ll pay you the same amount to sign a
document stating that the plates don’t actually exist.”
The
younger man smiled gently. “I will not
deny the truth for any amount of money, and I cannot sell you what is not mine
to sell. My honor would forbid it, even
if the Lord did not. On this point, I
cannot yield.”
“Then
I must continue my search,” said Thompson.
Smith
hesitated for a moment, and Thompson wondered if there was to be some
resistance after all. Then Smith turned
and entered the bedroom, holding the door open for the other man.
By
the light of the candles, Thompson could make out the form of a woman in the
bed, covered by a threadbare quilt. Her
dark hair was plastered against her forehead with sweat, and she moaned and
shifted position but did not awaken.
Small furrows between her eyebrows spoke of a troubled sleep. Just like his dear Julia in the last few
hours before the overwhelming infections finished what the leukemia had
begun. He felt again the emptiness, the
aching hole left behind when she had been taken from him, the despair of ever
finding real purpose to his life again.
He had immersed himself in his work for the next sixteen years, clinging
to the wreckage, knowing all the while that it was a poor substitute. His department became the child that he and
Julia were never able to have, until that also was taken from him.
“What’s
wrong with her?” he asked, blinking back tears.
“She’s
had a fever and a diarrhea. The doctor
believes it to be cholera. He was kind
enough to give her some calomel and bleed her, although I can’t afford to pay
him.”
“Calomel
and bleeding, of course, the panacea of the 19th century,” Thompson
mused. He stood, watching while Smith
sat on a stool beside his wife and took her hand in his. Just as he had done with Julia so many times
near the end. He remembered Julia’s
hands so clearly, perhaps even more clearly than her face. He continued to watch silently, feeling like
an intruder as Smith kissed his wife’s hand, placed it gently back at her side,
and rose to face him again.
“I
believe you were searching for something,” Smith said tiredly.
After
a few more moments of silence, Thompson realized that his decision was not a
terribly difficult one. “It can wait,”
he said. He took a deep breath, and
continued, “I hope you will not allow any more calomel or bleeding treatments
for your wife. They will do more harm
than good. She’s dehydrated from the
diarrhea and needs fluids. Mix a large
pinch of salt and a handful of sugar into a gallon of water. Boil the water first for five minutes to be
sure it’s clean. Have her drink as much
of the mixture as possible. Laudanum
will help slow the diarrhea, but use small doses, as little as possible. An infusion of willow bark will help with the
fever if you can find it or make it.”
“Yes,
I believe there is a woman in town who sells those remedies,” Smith
answered. “Are you a physician, sir?”
“No,
but I do have some training in this area.” He thought gratefully of his
wilderness medicine classes at the Institute, and wished that he had paid
closer attention. Of course, at the
time, he hadn’t cared too much about prolonging life, even his own. “Please, just trust me on this.” He waited anxiously as the younger man looked
steadily into his face for several seconds.
“Very
well,” said Smith. “It would seem that
you are to be trusted after all.”
Thompson
sighed with relief. “I’ll be back to
check on her tomorrow evening, if you don’t mind.” He made a mental note to bring some
broad-spectrum antibiotics and some acetaminophen from the emergency kit in his
canister, just in case she wasn’t improving.
“Thank
you for your kindness, sir’” Smith replied as the two men stepped back into the
main room. “Yes, please return tomorrow
evening, if you will. I believe we have
much to discuss.”
Fletcher
looked up from his desk as the aide burst into his office carrying a sheaf of
papers. Stupid kids, he thought, don’t
they know how to knock? He made the aide
wait for several seconds while he straightened some papers, noting with
satisfaction the young man’s fidgety impatience. Finally, he motioned for the aide to report.
“Sir,
we’ve successfully recovered Thompson’s canister from Gildersleeve
Mountain, just outside of Cleveland. The techies are working on the handheld
device to extract the medical data, and they say it looks good so far. Thompson’s journal shows that he didn’t do
any better than the others, but that’s what we expected. He claims to have an answer to the
disappearing travelers, but it doesn’t make sense to me. The FRT folks won’t be too happy,
though.”
“Why
do you say that?”
“Look
at the last page, sir.”
Fletcher
took the papers from the aide, flipped to the last page, and began to read.
10 Sept. 1835
This
will be my last journal entry for quite a while, probably forever. Sorry to disappoint you good folks at the
Institute, but I’ve decided that I have more important things to do. Besides, it will be good to bury that
canister and be done with both the past and future.
Please
give my apologies to our friends at the FRT.
As you can tell from my previous journal entries, I have been unable to
help them with their agenda. I tried to
warn them that it was impossible from the beginning. I never saw the plates, but I also never saw
any evidence of fraud or deceit. The 11
men who claim to have seen the plates consistently stand by their stories, and
they seem to be otherwise reasonable and honest men. I’ve reached the conclusion that this
question will have to remain one of faith rather than fact. I, at least, have been unable to prove or
disprove their existence despite all the resources at my command. I never thought to hear an old historian say
so, but perhaps facts are less important than matters of the heart.
You
may have noticed that the manuscript pages I bought from Mrs. Harris in Palmyra are not in the
canister. They were never really hers to
sell in the first place, so I gave them back to Joseph Smith. When I handed him the manuscript pages last
week, he just laughed and said that they had taught him a great lesson but were
no longer needed. I think he may have
destroyed them, but I don’t really know.
As
to the question of why we old travelers stop reporting ahead of schedule, the
answer is much simpler than you think.
The results of the medical monitor should show that my mental and
physical functioning hasn’t declined significantly. I actually feel better than I have in many
years. I just don’t want to waste what
time I have left.
Your
young people don’t study Tennyson much anymore, but perhaps they should. He’ll be writing these words within the next
few years:
Tho’ much is
taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not
now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth
and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One
equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by
time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to
seek, to find, and not to yield.
Is it any wonder that we no
longer value your culture if it no longer values us?
Dumb
kids, Thompson thought, shaking his head with a smile. The four boys, oldest not yet 16, set down
their huge loads of much-needed buffalo meat on the makeshift table by the
wagons. Their mothers scolded them for
not returning before dark, but Thompson could see their secret smiles as they
mumbled apologies. He was proud of them,
and proud to have had some small influence in their lives.
A chilly wind was picking up, and the prairie grass
rustled in response. The cold made his
bones ache, and he wrapped his cloak more tightly around himself. It wouldn’t do to get ill out here in what
would someday be known as Wyoming. His small store of 21st century
pharmaceuticals was long gone, used mostly on the children of his adopted
community. He had grown to love these
people, more deeply than he had once thought possible. There were great trials ahead for them, and
Thompson intended to be there. There was
still so much he could do to help. Tho’
much is taken, much abides, he thought, as he straightened his creaky back and
moved to get closer to the fire.
An upcoming edition will include the “Specialty
Pearls” section. If you have a “Pearl” of information
about what is new in your specialty or medicine in general, please send it to newsletter@collegiumaesculapium.org
and we will include it in an upcoming newsletter.
Executive
Committee: Board:
Dr.
Johnnie Cook Dr. Gerald Ford Dr. George Snell
Dr. Bruce Woolley Dr.
Val Hemming Dr. Don
Doty
Dr.
Susan Puls Dr. Scott
Soulier Dr. David Anderson
Dr.
Marv Orrock Dr. David Prier Dr. Matthew Weeks
Dr.
Jim Pingree Dr. Carolyn Monahan Dr.
John C. Nelson
Dr.
Larry Noble Dr. Jean Carnes
Dr.
Ed Heyes (President) Dr. Tony Temple
Dr.
Tony Middleton (Pres. Elct) Dr. Dean Bristow
