GILMAN 221Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior
I. G. Farreras, C. Hannaway and V. A. Harden (Eds.)
IOS Press, 2004
My Experiences as a Research
Associate in Neurophysiology
at the NIH (1958-1960)^1
Sid Gilman
Why would a young man from Los Angeles come to the NIH in 1958?
The answer was that there was a physician draft. The Korean War lasted
for about three years, from 1950 to 1953, and there was a draft for phy
sicians at the time. In 1954, Frank Berry became Assistant Secretary
of Defense, and soon after his appointment, he devised the Berry plan.
This was a system whereby physicians could put their names into a lot
tery, and if their number came up, they would be deferred from military
service for the full extent of their residency training. If the number did
not come up, however, they were subject to the draft.
I graduated from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA)
Medical School in 1957, and during my internship at the UCLA Hospital,
I learned that my number did not come up and that I was vulnerable to
the draft while a house officer. I went to see Augustus Rose, who was my
mentor and the chairman of the neurology department at UCLA at the
time. He said, “Why don’t you go to the National Institutes of Health
(NIH)?” And I said, “The N-I- what?” He explained what this meant and
suggested that I talk to Robert B. Livingston. Livingston had been an
assistant professor in anatomy at the UCLA Medical School, and he had
joined the NIH as scientific director of the National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and
Blindness (NINDB^2 ) intramural basic research program. While I was still
an intern, Livingston happened to visit the UCLA Medical Center and,
at Rose’s urging, I went to see him and asked him about going to the