Prevention of Future Shock

To the Editor: In his article, “Future Shock in Academic Medicine” (N Engl J Med 286:1031–1035, 1972), Professor Braunwald makes some illuminating and trenchant observations about the present impermanency of faculty members. He points out how people come and go in academic institutions at a rate undreamt of 50 years ago. In the past — in the colleges at Oxford in the 18th century, for example — there was an obvious danger of intellectual stagnation and petrification for want of new people with new ideas. Institutions that do not bring in fresh blood at regular intervals seem doomed to wither ….