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An introduction to organic chemistry
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BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION
Quest for Excellence in Medical Education, A Personal Survey By Sir G e o r g e P i c k e r i n g . P u b l i s h e d for t h e N u f f i e l d P r o v i n c i a l H o s p i t a l s T r u s t by t h e O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s . P p . 102. P r i c e £ 4 . 5 0 . 1978. The author has had a most distinguished career in Medical Education having been not only a Professor of Medicine in both London and Oxford but also a member of the University Grants Committee. The present report arose out of a Conference at Pembroke College, Oxford held in 1973. The author visited thirteen medical schools in the U.K. in an attempt to look at medical education as a whole and to see the respective roles and purposes of undergraduates, graduate and continuing education and the outstanding needs of each. It is, of course, a personal account but none the less valuable for that in view of the eminence of the author. His thesis is that, at least in the U.K,, postgraduate education in medicine is set on a sound path so that the undergraduate period has been freed for its proper purpose - - the training of the mind. He is particularly keen that during that during this period the student should have the opportunity of studying in depth for about a year. Such students are likely to be truly educated in that they know how to set about asking a question, providing evidence to answer it, judging the validity of that evidence and setting out the evidence and the conclusions based on it lucidly and concisely. He concludes by saying that "1 have become deeply concerned at the growing regimentation of the doctor in training. In the undergraduate period his intellectual freedom is seriously curtailed by the tyranny of frequently repeated examinations, most in the guise of continuous assessment. This tyranny is compounded by the move towards multiple choice questions which, though at their best valid tests of a certain kind of knowledge, encourage the student to learn answers without the evidence on which they are based, and thus encourage bad intellectual habits and discourage literacy. We are, I think, in danger of putting the medical student and the young doctor in a straightjacket that we are now fashioning. We are making the fit very tight. This is being done in the cause of eliminating bad doctors. I fear that it will also eliminate the best, particularly the creative minds, on whom future developments will depend. This is an issue of such gravity that I find it difficult to stress it sufficiently. It is particularly unfortunate coming at a time when medical students are better than they have ever been before." Concerning biochemistry the following excerpt may be of interest to our readers. "Medical education in the undergraduate period should have two principal aims. The first should be to give the student a general conspectus or overview of the whole field of knowledge. Such a n overview is essential to any doctor and is of great value even to the specialist research workers for he thus knows when his scientific discoveries may have a useful practical application. The second aim is to train the student's mind so that its range of awareness is increased and his ability to ask questions and to answer them is enhanced. It is most important that in this period the young person should learn to express himself lucidly and concisely. If he has not learned to do this on graduation it is doubtful if he ever will. In practice, the chief danger is and always h a s been that one subject hogs the first objective, thus leaving no time and no energy for the second. That subject used to be anatomy. At present in this country it seems to be biochemistry. A professor once asked his colleagues if any of them knew of a case whose proper treatment had depended on a detailed knowledge of the Krebs cycle. The response was silence. And yet no-one would deny that understanding the Krebs cycle is quite essential for the understanding of how the body works." This little book will certainly stimulate and challenge all those who teach in medical schools. P. N. Campbell
January 1979 Vol. 7 No. 1
An Introduction to Organic Chemistry By W i l l i a m H. R e u s c h . P p . 817. H o l d e n - D a y , Inc. S a n F r a n c i s c o , U . S . A . 1977. £ 1 5 . 7 5 . When the reviewer was a student of chemistry, he was the proud possessor of a shelf of textbooks of organic chemistry by, among others, Richter, Julius Schmidt, Gilman, Whitmore, Paul Karrer and Fieser & Fieser. They seemed fine, straightforward and descriptive and one tended to learn by rote that A reacted with B. Comparison of these standard but now faded textbooks of yesteryear with the fine new book by William Reusch of Michigan State University, highlighted to the reviewer the remarkable evolution that has occurred in organic chemistry. Formerly the emphasis was on what happened, now it is on how and why. As one reads these pages, one can appreciate the feelings of Stanley Dagley who wrote recently (Biochemical Education, 6, 1978, 51) that organic chemistry now presents itself to him as the most precise, logical and satisfying of sciences. The authors says that his aim was to present a thorough but concise introduction to the most important and fundamental principles of organic chemistry for a beginning one-year course serving both chemistry majors and non-majors. I felt that the student would have to have a high I.Q. and work very hard to master all the material in these 817 pages in one year. Although things start simply enough with the calculation of empirical formulae, before long the student is being asked "to predict the pmr spectra (including splitting patterns) for l:2-dimethoxyethane" or will come face-to-face with the H O M O - L U M O interactions in a (4s + 2s) thermal cycloaddition. I think the author is too modest and that his book will continue to be of great value to the student long after the end of his one-year course. The scope of the book can be gauged from the innocently sounding chapter "Alkyl halides" which introduces topics such as infra-red and pmr spectroscopy, nucleophilic substitution, SN1, SN2, Et and E 2 mechanisms, carbonium ion stability, etc. Problems are interspersed in the text of this chapter (as in all chapters), e.g. "l-chlorobicyclic (2, 2, 1) heptane does not react by a SN2 mechanism. Suggest a reason for this inert behaviour". The answers to the text problems occupy the last h u n d r e d pages of the book. The chapter is concluded by a s u m m a r y and an extensive series of exercises of the type "what products are expected f r o m . . . which pairs of compounds would react more rapidly . . . outline mechanisms to account for . . ." No answers are supplied. A six page account of linear combination of atomic orbitals (LCAO) lies in wait for the student in the next chapter on alkenes. A functionalgroup approach has been chosen for the first 14 chapters and there is constant reference to infra-red and p m r spectra since these are considered to be very important spectroscopic tools in modern organic chemistry and particularly suitable for the beginner. The next chapter deals with interacting functional groups (condensation, addition, substitution reactions etc.) and the following one is on non-ionic organic reactians, e.g. free radicals and pericyclic reactions. I thought that the going was now getting rather tough for the novice. Two chapters follow on carbohydrates and proteins etc., a n d finally a chapter on "The Strategy of Organic Synthesis" enables an integration to be made of much that has come before. It is unusual to find a book of this type in which there is no mention of the double helix and the author dismisses nucleic acids in a line or two. even the index entry reads "DNA - - see diribonucleic acid" (sic!). On the other hand, there is honourable mention of the alpha-helix, pleated sheet, collagen, and haemoglobin. A biochemist, at least, might consider proteins and nucleic acids of equal fascination, interest and importance. I thought that this was a splendid text and one which should cause the student to think carefully and deeply about what he was reading. People searching for an organic text for the nineteeneighties should certainly inspect this work. But it is not an easy "'organic chemistry shown to the children" and teachers of biochemistry should not be ashamed to have it on their bookshelf within easy reach. B. A. Kilby
BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION
Quest for Excellence in Medical Education, A Personal Survey By Sir G e o r g e P i c k e r i n g . P u b l i s h e d for t h e N u f f i e l d P r o v i n c i a l H o s p i t a l s T r u s t by t h e O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s . P p . 102. P r i c e £ 4 . 5 0 . 1978. The author has had a most distinguished career in Medical Education having been not only a Professor of Medicine in both London and Oxford but also a member of the University Grants Committee. The present report arose out of a Conference at Pembroke College, Oxford held in 1973. The author visited thirteen medical schools in the U.K. in an attempt to look at medical education as a whole and to see the respective roles and purposes of undergraduates, graduate and continuing education and the outstanding needs of each. It is, of course, a personal account but none the less valuable for that in view of the eminence of the author. His thesis is that, at least in the U.K,, postgraduate education in medicine is set on a sound path so that the undergraduate period has been freed for its proper purpose - - the training of the mind. He is particularly keen that during that during this period the student should have the opportunity of studying in depth for about a year. Such students are likely to be truly educated in that they know how to set about asking a question, providing evidence to answer it, judging the validity of that evidence and setting out the evidence and the conclusions based on it lucidly and concisely. He concludes by saying that "1 have become deeply concerned at the growing regimentation of the doctor in training. In the undergraduate period his intellectual freedom is seriously curtailed by the tyranny of frequently repeated examinations, most in the guise of continuous assessment. This tyranny is compounded by the move towards multiple choice questions which, though at their best valid tests of a certain kind of knowledge, encourage the student to learn answers without the evidence on which they are based, and thus encourage bad intellectual habits and discourage literacy. We are, I think, in danger of putting the medical student and the young doctor in a straightjacket that we are now fashioning. We are making the fit very tight. This is being done in the cause of eliminating bad doctors. I fear that it will also eliminate the best, particularly the creative minds, on whom future developments will depend. This is an issue of such gravity that I find it difficult to stress it sufficiently. It is particularly unfortunate coming at a time when medical students are better than they have ever been before." Concerning biochemistry the following excerpt may be of interest to our readers. "Medical education in the undergraduate period should have two principal aims. The first should be to give the student a general conspectus or overview of the whole field of knowledge. Such a n overview is essential to any doctor and is of great value even to the specialist research workers for he thus knows when his scientific discoveries may have a useful practical application. The second aim is to train the student's mind so that its range of awareness is increased and his ability to ask questions and to answer them is enhanced. It is most important that in this period the young person should learn to express himself lucidly and concisely. If he has not learned to do this on graduation it is doubtful if he ever will. In practice, the chief danger is and always h a s been that one subject hogs the first objective, thus leaving no time and no energy for the second. That subject used to be anatomy. At present in this country it seems to be biochemistry. A professor once asked his colleagues if any of them knew of a case whose proper treatment had depended on a detailed knowledge of the Krebs cycle. The response was silence. And yet no-one would deny that understanding the Krebs cycle is quite essential for the understanding of how the body works." This little book will certainly stimulate and challenge all those who teach in medical schools. P. N. Campbell
January 1979 Vol. 7 No. 1
An Introduction to Organic Chemistry By W i l l i a m H. R e u s c h . P p . 817. H o l d e n - D a y , Inc. S a n F r a n c i s c o , U . S . A . 1977. £ 1 5 . 7 5 . When the reviewer was a student of chemistry, he was the proud possessor of a shelf of textbooks of organic chemistry by, among others, Richter, Julius Schmidt, Gilman, Whitmore, Paul Karrer and Fieser & Fieser. They seemed fine, straightforward and descriptive and one tended to learn by rote that A reacted with B. Comparison of these standard but now faded textbooks of yesteryear with the fine new book by William Reusch of Michigan State University, highlighted to the reviewer the remarkable evolution that has occurred in organic chemistry. Formerly the emphasis was on what happened, now it is on how and why. As one reads these pages, one can appreciate the feelings of Stanley Dagley who wrote recently (Biochemical Education, 6, 1978, 51) that organic chemistry now presents itself to him as the most precise, logical and satisfying of sciences. The authors says that his aim was to present a thorough but concise introduction to the most important and fundamental principles of organic chemistry for a beginning one-year course serving both chemistry majors and non-majors. I felt that the student would have to have a high I.Q. and work very hard to master all the material in these 817 pages in one year. Although things start simply enough with the calculation of empirical formulae, before long the student is being asked "to predict the pmr spectra (including splitting patterns) for l:2-dimethoxyethane" or will come face-to-face with the H O M O - L U M O interactions in a (4s + 2s) thermal cycloaddition. I think the author is too modest and that his book will continue to be of great value to the student long after the end of his one-year course. The scope of the book can be gauged from the innocently sounding chapter "Alkyl halides" which introduces topics such as infra-red and pmr spectroscopy, nucleophilic substitution, SN1, SN2, Et and E 2 mechanisms, carbonium ion stability, etc. Problems are interspersed in the text of this chapter (as in all chapters), e.g. "l-chlorobicyclic (2, 2, 1) heptane does not react by a SN2 mechanism. Suggest a reason for this inert behaviour". The answers to the text problems occupy the last h u n d r e d pages of the book. The chapter is concluded by a s u m m a r y and an extensive series of exercises of the type "what products are expected f r o m . . . which pairs of compounds would react more rapidly . . . outline mechanisms to account for . . ." No answers are supplied. A six page account of linear combination of atomic orbitals (LCAO) lies in wait for the student in the next chapter on alkenes. A functionalgroup approach has been chosen for the first 14 chapters and there is constant reference to infra-red and p m r spectra since these are considered to be very important spectroscopic tools in modern organic chemistry and particularly suitable for the beginner. The next chapter deals with interacting functional groups (condensation, addition, substitution reactions etc.) and the following one is on non-ionic organic reactians, e.g. free radicals and pericyclic reactions. I thought that the going was now getting rather tough for the novice. Two chapters follow on carbohydrates and proteins etc., a n d finally a chapter on "The Strategy of Organic Synthesis" enables an integration to be made of much that has come before. It is unusual to find a book of this type in which there is no mention of the double helix and the author dismisses nucleic acids in a line or two. even the index entry reads "DNA - - see diribonucleic acid" (sic!). On the other hand, there is honourable mention of the alpha-helix, pleated sheet, collagen, and haemoglobin. A biochemist, at least, might consider proteins and nucleic acids of equal fascination, interest and importance. I thought that this was a splendid text and one which should cause the student to think carefully and deeply about what he was reading. People searching for an organic text for the nineteeneighties should certainly inspect this work. But it is not an easy "'organic chemistry shown to the children" and teachers of biochemistry should not be ashamed to have it on their bookshelf within easy reach. B. A. Kilby