One of medical school's founding faculty honored
One of medical school's founding faculty honored One of the UF College of Medicine's founding faculty members, who many alumni say taught them everything they know about bedside diagnosis, has been named an honorary alumnus of the university.
W. Jape Taylor, M.D., will receive the prestigious honorary alumni award during a special reception at 1 p.m. Nov. 19 in the J. Wayne Reitz Union auditorium.
Taylor, a retired UF distinguished service professor of cardiology, had a reputation of being tough on his students. Students couldn't slip by if they presented a case to him unprepared in the hospital.
"I could be pretty demanding, but I did something they didn't recognize then," said Taylor, now 81. "I made sure I helped them ask the questions that would lead to the answers. They solved (the case)." If World War II had not intervened when he was a freshman at Yale University, Taylor may have become a mathematician or zoologist. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Taylor was one of many college students the U.S. Navy recruited to attend medical school. He earned his medical degree in 1947 from Harvard Medical School.
He joined the faculty of the fledgling College of Medicine in 1958 as chief of the division of cardiology.
The class of 1973 honored Taylor's teaching with the Hippocratic Award, the highest distinction the senior class bestows on one of its professors each year.
Aside from teaching and his practice, Taylor studied the sickle cell phenomenon in deer for 20 years, and his research with colleagues on pregnant mice that ingested alcohol led to a greater understanding about the link between alcohol and birth defects. He also established Physicians for Social Responsibility, accompanying a group of students to the then-Soviet Union in 1990. Taylor retired in 1996.
"He was an admirable role model," said Robert T. Watson, senior associate dean of educational affairs and one of two College of Medicine alumni to nominate Taylor for the award. "A lot of things I do to this day are modeled after Dr. Taylor."
"He was a true legend in his own time."