June 17, 1936
We were all so glad to get your last letter and to hear about your experiences in Professor Kirschner's Clinic. I am sure that you are enjoying it a great deal and are getting a lot out of it. I have the utmost respect for Kirschner and believe that he is one of the greatest surgical minds living today. I am happy that you are having this experience with him, because it is going to be of immense value to you in later life.
I hope you will pardon me for my delay in answering your letters, but I have been so confounded busy this spring that I just haven't had much time to think. I think I wrote you in my last letter that I attended the spring meetings and had a paper for each of them. On the way home Dr. Gage and I stopped in St. Louis to attend a banquet given in honor of Dr. Warren Cole with whom I went to school and who was recently appointed Professor of Surgery at Illinois. I was home only a week and then had to go to Houston to read some papers before the Texas State Medical Association. Before returning home I spent a day in Temple, Texas, where the Scott and White Clinic is, and ended up by doing a gastric resection in Port Arthur. I remained home for five days before I went to South Dakota. My old Alma Mater in Vermillion honored me by giving me an honorary degree.
There are going to be many new changes in the Department next year. George Lilly is going to Miami to practice. Louis Bristow is going back to the town where he was in practice, and Berry Bowman is going out to practice. We are reserving a place for you, and I hope that you will be able to come back some time during September. At least I was under the impression that you would not stay in Germany any longer than that. We have two new men coming in, one who is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, and the other, one of our own graduates a year ago.
I suppose that you know Ernest is planning on going to Europe this summer, and also Vada Odom is going over. I imagine both of them will see you and what great time you all will have.
Akky is home now, and we are all so happy to have him. He has improved perfectly splendidly. Instead of the little boy who was sent away to school he is almost a grown man. It is perfectly remarkable what this year has done for him, and we are as proud of the things that he has accomplished as we can be. We are particularly proud of the fact that he got a gold medal for activities.
Write whenever you have time so that we may be posted concerning your activities.
Everyone here joins me in sending regards,
Sincerely yours,
Alton Ochsner