Medical School

Heidelberg Notes...

In fact, I was indifferent to wine.

I took a two-year sabbatical at the University of Heidelberg Cancer Center: off hours, it was mostly about beer. Over 24 months, I sampled the best of 300 breweries, most of which were in business prior to 1776.

My German colleagues knew wine and had a sense I did not.

Therefore, they bought me the book Der Kleine Johnson, a narrow handbook listing many, many wines and rating vintages.

My first serious bottle was Trimbach Gewuertztraminer, from Alsace. The following Monday, I learned it was meant to be savored one glass at a time. In spring, it went well with Spargel.

It was only years later I learned Hugh Johnson was not German, but a fine English wine writer. It was only well into his third book, that I learned he favored whites over reds, and congratulated myself on my own taste.

Some years earlier, I attended a lecture on sensory molecular biology by Dr. Richard Axel. He won a Nobel Prize for unraveling the role of GTP-binding proteins in olfaction.

Gustation, the sense of taste, is a relatively simple matter of five receptors on the tongue and elsewhere, for sweet, sour, bitter, salt and umami (savory).

But sensation of wine is a complex blend of both taste (five receptors) and smell (thousands of receptors involving GTP-binding proteins).

Axel ended with an anecdote.

“I went to medical school. Dean called me in and said ‘Axel, we’ll let you graduate but you must promise me one thing.’”

“Sir?” asked Axel.

“You must promise me never to practice medicine on a living person…”

Having graduated, he selected an internship/residency in pathology.

At three years, the Head Resident called Axel into his office.

“Richard,” started the Chief slowly. “OK: we will let you complete the residency, but you must promise me one thing…”

“Sir?”

“Axel, you’ll finish but you must promise me never to practice medicine on a dead person…”

“And that,” concluded Axel, “is how I began my career in research…”