If John Rock, MD, were alive today, he would be coauthor of this article. I first saw John Rock in Boston's Colonial Theater in 1929, when I was a third-year student at Harvard Medical School. Seated four rows ahead of me, he was pointed out by a proper Bostonian lady directly in front, who turned to her companion and said, "That man (indicating Dr Rock) is a prominent Harvard gynecologist but was also a famous actor as a Harvard undergraduate." The story is germane to understanding and appreciating John Rock. He was a famous gynecologist and reproductive physiologist and a consummate actor as well. In 1948, at the annual conference of obstetrics and gynecology in Los Angeles, where we were both on the program, we were christened "the ham and the egg."
I first met Dr Rock personally and as a teacher when I was a fourth-year medical student "on