The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

Other appointments of particular importance in the earlier years of the Medical Department were those of Samuel G. Armor, Missouri Medical College, '44, who became Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica in 1861, and of Albert Benjamin Prescott, '64m, who entered the same year upon his long term of distinguished service in the Chemical Laboratory and later the Department of Pharmacy, loved and honored by many generations of students. Changes in the personnel of the Faculty were frequent, however, and few men remained long enough to identify their lives wholly with that of the University. When Dr. Sager retired as Emeritus Professor and Dean in 1874, Dr. Edward S. Dunster, New York College of Medicine and Surgery, '59, was appointed to his chair, and held it until his death in 1888. Dr. Palmer succeeded Dr. Sager as Dean, but in 1887, the position passed to Dr. Ford, and then, in 1891, to Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, Mt. Pleasant (Mo.) College, '72; M.D. (Michigan), '78, the first graduate of the School to become its Dean. He has been a member of the Faculty since 1879, serving as Professor of Physiology and Pathological Chemistry and Assistant Professor of Therapeutics and Materia Medica.

As the growth of the School continued and as the field of medical knowledge widened, new laboratories and professorships were continually becoming necessary. The early history of the Anatomical Laboratory has been touched upon. Dr. Ford remained in charge until 1894, when he was succeeded by Dr. J. Playfair McMurrich, Toronto, '79, who did much for the advancement of the scientific study of anatomy until his return to Toronto in 1907, when George Linius Streeter, Union, '95, assumed the chair. He resigned in 1914, and Dr. G. Carl Huber, '87m, Professor of Histology then became Director of the Anatomical Laboratories. Mention should also be made in this place of the services of Dr. George E. Fothingham, '64m, Professor of Ophthalmology from 1870 to 1889, who for some years was connected with the Department of Anatomy and drafted the first good anatomical law.

Courses in histology were given as far back as 1856 but the emphasis on scientific methods did not come for many years, and the courses in both histology and physiology were long taught solely by lectures. In 1877, however, the Legislature appropriated $3,500 for a laboratory in those subjects and Dr. C.H. Stowell, '72m, was appointed instructor, becoming Assistant Professor in 1880. About the same time a separate chair in physiology was created with Dr. Henry Sewall, Wesleyan, '76, as the first Professor. Under Dr. Sewall the Physiological Laboratory grew rapidly; new apparatus was purchased and many valuable researches were conducted, not the least of these being the proof, published in 1887, that pigeons might be immunized against rattle-snake poison,—one of the first cases of the production of an artificial immunity. The two departments were again united in 1889 under Dr. William H. Howell, Johns Hopkins, '81. He was succeeded in 1892 by Dr. Warren P. Lombard, Harvard, '78, who held both Professorships until 1898, when Dr. Huber, at that time Assistant Professor of Anatomy, was made Director of the Histological Laboratory, becoming Junior Professor in 1899 and Professor of Histology and Embryology four years later.

A Laboratory in Electro-Therapeutics was opened in 1878, the first of its kind in America, largely through the efforts of Dr. John W. Langley, Harvard, '61, M.D. Michigan, (hon.) '77, Professor of General Chemistry at that time; but the subject did not become a compulsory part of the course until the appointment in 1890 of Dr. William J. Herdman, '72, who had been a member of the Medical Faculty since 1875, as Professor of Nervous Diseases and Electro-Therapeutics. Practical instruction in pathology was inaugurated in 1879 under Dr. Herdman and Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, but the beginnings were modest and laboratory work only became incorporated in the course in 1888 under Dr. Heneage Gibbes, Aberdeen, '79, called from London as Professor of Pathology. Even then the quarters were extremely limited and the laboratory was moved several times before its final establishment in the present Medical Building in 1903. In 1895 Dr. George Dock, Pennsylvania, '84, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Clinical Medicine since 1891, succeeded Dr. Gibbes in the chair of Pathology but resigned it in 1903 to Dr. Aldred Scott Warthin, '91m, (Indiana, '88), who became also Director of the Pathological Laboratory.

A request from the State Board of Health led to the opening of a Hygienic Laboratory in 1888, with the threefold object of instruction, research, and the examination of suspected food and water, with Dr. V.C. Vaughan, who had come to the University in 1875 as an assistant in the Chemical Laboratory, as its first Director.

The first officially recognized Laboratory of Clinical Medicine was established by Dr. Dock, when he came to the University in 1891, with the purpose of carrying out the instrumental investigation of disease, and teaching the technique of diagnosis. This was followed the next year by demonstration courses in the different branches of medicine and surgery. Dr. Dock was succeeded, upon his resignation in 1908, by Dr. A. Walter Hewlett, California, '95, who returned to Leland Stanford, Jr. University after six years' service.

A Surgical Laboratory, established soon after Dr. Charles de Nancrède, Pennsylvania (M.D.), '69, came as Professor of Surgery, speedily proved its educational value, and increasing facilities were offered students for the demonstration of surgery on bodies and on animals, with the same care taken as to antiseptics, asepsis, and dressings as in actual operations. Dr. de Nancrède retired in 1917, and in 1919 Dr. Hugh Cabot, Harvard, '94, succeeded to the chair. A Laboratory in Experimental Pharmacology, still another instance of a brand new venture on the University's part, was established in 1891 under Dr. John Jacob Abel, '83. He only remained two years, however, and was succeeded by Dr. Arthur R. Cushny, Aberdeen, '86, of London, under whom the new laboratory assumed its present important place. Dr. Cushny returned to the University College in London in 1905 and the Professorship of Pharmacology eventually passed to Dr. Charles W. Edmunds, '01m, at present Secretary of the Medical School. As the result of long effort on the part of Dr. Herdman, who held the chair of Nervous Diseases, a State Psychopathic Hospital, the first of its kind in the country, was established at the University in 1903 under the joint supervision of the Regents and a State Board, affording a practical laboratory and clinic for students specializing in nervous diseases. It has been under the direction of Dr. Albert M. Barrett, Iowa, '93, Professor of Psychiatry since 1906.

The old make-shift hospital on the Campus was enlarged in 1876, but it was never able to overtake the ever-increasing demand, and a new building eventually became imperative. This came in 1891, when the present Hospital, soon fated to go the way of the first, was erected northeast of the Campus on the hills above the Huron River. Designed to accommodate about eighty patients, it has been enlarged again and again, until finally in 1919 the State appropriated over a million dollars for an entirely new building, which will cost eventually three times that sum, to be completed in 1922. Not only will this new Hospital accommodate nearly six hundred patients under the far more exacting requirements of modern hospital practice, but it will also be by far the largest hospital controlled entirely by a medical school and maintained for the sole benefit of the people of a state.

The medical course was finally increased in 1890 to four years of nine months, while the entrance requirements were placed on the same basis as the admission to the classical or scientific courses in the Literary Department. At the same time a "combination" course enabled the student to graduate from both the Literary Department and the Medical School in six years. The final evolution of the curriculum up to the present time came in 1914 when this combination was made compulsory. This meant that at least two years' preliminary work in the Literary College was required before the student was permitted to enter the Medical School. In 1903 a new Medical Building was completed at a cost of about $200,000, to provide the class rooms and laboratories for the work of the first two years. It contains two amphitheaters, two lecture rooms, and the laboratories of hygiene, bacteriology, physiological chemistry, anatomy, histology and embryology and pathology, as well as the pathological museum. To the great regret of many medical alumni, and in fact all who loved the relics of the University's first days, the picturesque old Medical Building with its simple Greek portico was razed in 1914. It had been considered unsafe for some time, and stood abandoned and unused at one side of the new building.

Although the original University Act called for a Law Department, and even gave it first place in their scheme for organization after the Literary College, the favorable time for its establishment did not appear for nearly twenty years. There were already a number of law schools in operation elsewhere, one of them at the University of Pennsylvania dated as far back as 1790; but for the most part legal education was haphazard and primitive. Candidates for the bar ordinarily prepared for practice by reading in a lawyer's office, a good old method that perhaps has some merits, but one which did not, save in the case of a teacher of exceptional qualifications, give a uniform preparation or an insight into the principles of legal philosophy. As the general level of education advanced, however, the advantages of some systematic instruction in law became more and more apparent, and it was not long after the establishment of the University before demands for a Law School began to be heard. This sentiment grew, in spite of the conservatism, and even active opposition, of the lawyers of the old school who believed the established office method of education the only practical one.