At Student Research Day, a primer on the scientific method

When medical student Edwin Anderson of Wilmington, N.C., wrote his Yale thesis in 1837, he would not have expected it to generate excitement a century and a half later. Bearing the Latin title De Calculo Vesicae, Anderson’s treatise on bladder stones made its case in 155 pages and 40 chapters and contained two pages of references, not unusual for its day. What set it apart 152 years later was its discovery among the archives by a professor tracing the roots of student research at Yale.

The professor, John Forrest, M.D. ’67, came across the slim volume in 1989 while preparing remarks for the 150th anniversary of the thesis requirement, first documented in the medical school Bulletin in 1839. (Anderson’s work, the earliest bound thesis that has been located, is among a handful known to predate the requirement; the earliest was written in 1823.)

In early May, Forrest brought Anderson’s work to Student Research Day, the annual celebration of scientific inquiry by students. What began in 1987 as a yearly poster session has become one of the brightest days on the academic calendar. It is also an opportunity for medical students to sit at the feet of leading figures in science and medicine who visit under the auspices of the Lee E. Farr, M.D. ’33, Lectureship. This year, Nobel laureate and former NIH Director Harold Varmus delivered a talk entitled “Genes and Cancer: The Quest Continues.”

Forrest told students and faculty who gathered to hear presentations of five outstanding works that “the value of the thesis is to teach that all physicians are scientists. It is a way,” he said, “to help ensure that Yale medical students learn the scientific method from the inside out.”