Contributor: WIlliam Sutton

It was during the year 1953, when I was on the house staff with Dr. Stead. What an experience that was! One of my special memories, aside from having Doctor Stead peering over my shoulder in the laboratory at "o'dark thirty," was of rounds at a patient's bedside early in my internship. I don't remember the patient's condition except that it wasn't a respiratory tract problem.

Dr. Stead turned to me and asked, "Dr. Sutton, does the red cell breathe?" That was such a great question to signal that this was not going to be an ordinary experience. It stimulated my thinking beyond the obvious. I have never forgotten it or the lesson it represented.