Everyone was either a child of a physician... or a child of immigrants. One guy was both.
I suppose that says something about the pools that medicine draws from. Assume that, if you go into medicine, you have to think you'll love it. That expectation seems to come from either growing up around doctors, or from a residual old-country respect for physicians.
These are deep-seated influences, to be sure. And it's encouraging to think that future physicians are inspired by a familiarity with, or notion of, the importance of doctoring.
But maybe carrying these notions with us is the only way to get through the process of becoming a doctor. No other motivation seems to be doing the trick as reliably.