Dear Marion,
Odem is another form of Atem - breath.

ODEM,OTHEM, m. nebenform zu athem (theil 1, 591),
entstanden durch mundartliche trübung des â zu ô (sp. 1040)
und md. erweichung des t zu d (âdem LEXER 1, 103);
odem ist aus der Lutherschen bibel als feierliche form
besonders in die dichtersprache eingedrungen.

The above is an extract from Grimm's Woerterbuch, -
all 33 volumes of which I bought years ago. They fill
two shelves of a bookcase just a few feet from where
I'm sitting; but it's still easier, rather than getting up
from my chair, just to click on the bookmark of my browser
and download the relevant sections from a university in Trier. 
My amazement at this technology knows no bounds.

You keep flattering me with questions about myself, as if
my ego weren't bloated enough already. At this juncture, I
should be asking questions about you; but I'm too shy.
I don't know where to begin.

You ask what I thought about Science when I was in school
and in college. I spent much of the five years in Konnarock
experimenting with electricity. I assembled batteries,
experimented with electrolysis, wound magnets, built tiny
motors from paper clips, repaired electric fans and toasters,
and particularly radios. In Germantown Friends' School in
my senior year, I was the star of the physics class, and
received a very high score, something like 792/800 on the
physics college entrance exam. (My score in German was 800)
I thought I wanted to go to college at MIT, but the
humanistically oriented faculty at Germantown Friends School
dissuaded me. At Harvard, aged 16, I started out majoring
in a combined physics-chemistry program, but distracted
by the courses in philosophy and literature that were
absorbing my energies, I failed my mid-term calculus exam,
and decided that I wouldn't be able to compete as a scientist.
I switched my field of concentration to modern European history
and literature, studies that I found very easy and very congenial.
I took all the non-mathematical philosophy courses in the
catalogue as well as several courses in Greek; we read, if
I remember correctly, some Xenophon, Plato and Sophocles.
Instead of the usual four courses each semester, I took six
and finished in three years. Not knowing what to do with myself,
I spent a year in graduate school in Comparative Literature. My
dream had been to teach literature and or philosophy at
the college level, but I came to understand that the 
positions I might have wanted weren't waiting for me,
and as a last resort, I applied to medical school. I didn't
like it. I thought the afternoon clinics were inanely dull,
and accepted an invitation from a well-known classicist,
Werner Jaeger, of whom you may or may not have heard, to
attend his seminars. While my classmates were subjected
to endlessly repetitive discussions about "once a Caesarian,
always a Caeserian", and whether the patient should spend
6 weeks in bed after acute myocardial infarction or only
four weeks, and how large a tonsil had to become before
it should be removed, and why it was virtually a crime not
to perform a radical mastectomy for even the most minute
of breast cancers, and how often it was necessary to
sigmoidoscope the patient, - I sat at seminar table
on the top floor of Widener, listening to Werner Jaeger
talk about Aristotle's Metaphysics, which he had just edited
for the Oxford Press, and about Greek hymns, and about
Longinus On the Sublime. That made medical school bearable.

In the context of my decision to go to medical school,
I explained to my father that I had no intention of becoming
a rich doctor with an empty head, and this comment also
offended him, although he was neither rich nor empty-headed;
it had never occurred to me that he might think I was 
alluding to him. I decided to study medicine for the
practical reason that I didn't know what else to do.
I had already helped my father in his practice. I had
done blood cell counts and differentials, had developed
X-ray films, and even before I started medical school
I had an idea of how to organize a medical practice.
I hesitate to say "why" I went into medicine, certainly
not to become rich. The explanations I gave to myself
was that as a physician I could have a non-commercial,
non-exploitative relationship to my patients, that I
could entertain an affection for them which was
precluded in business, that sharing their experiences
would be like becoming an observer in a Dostoevsky novel,
and that practicing medicine would give me the
opportunity to spend my life, as it were, in a philosophy
laboratory, which was where I belonged if I wanted to
learn about philosophy. And, believe it or not, I'm
now finishing up under the illusion that my professional
life rewarded me with what I had bargained for.

All the same, I've never stopped regretting that I didn't
become a musician and that I didn't become a physicist,
not instead of, but in addition to how I spent my life.
All these years, I have puzzled about what it is that
one learns, and how one learns it, epistemology, in
other words, sad and ashamed at how little I myself
have actually succeeded in learning.

Jochen