Medicine in the Heartland
1903 was a year of discovery and change. American audiences were
awed by the “The Great Train Robbery,” a twelve-minute
reel of moving pictures. The Model A rolled off the production line
in Detroit. Two brothers took to the air over the wind-swept beaches
of Kitty Hawk. And in Bloomington, Indiana, a vision took flight
with the creation of the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Today that vision continues to soar in Bloomington, at seven other
IU medical education centers in Indiana, and at the School’s
Indianapolis hub on the Indiana University-Purdue University campus.
Since 1903, IUSM has grown to become the nation’s second-largest
school of medicine – after University of Illinois –
educating 1,200 students annually. It also is the training ground
for 1,000 medical residents and research fellows; and its faculty
and staff are a powerful force in clinical care, research and education.
September 23, 2003, marks the start of a year-long special observance
of the School’s one-hundredth anniversary, dubbed Centennial
Celebration … Advancing Medicine Since 1903.
All of the School’s campuses will participate in a variety
of ways, many tailored for their home communities. A detailed history
book about the School is under way and is expected to be published
by Indiana University Press at a later date. Indiana University
Medicine magazine’s four-part series about IUSM’s 100-year
history begins with this issue and will offer history, trivia, anecdotes
and vintage images.
“More than 100 years ago, several farsighted individuals
transformed a vision into a reality and established the Indiana
University School of Medicine,” says IUSM Dean D. Craig Brater,
MD, Walter J. Daly Professor. “Like those who founded our
School, we today pursue ideals and innovations that will carry us
into a second century of service.”
Dr. Pohlman led us gloriously through muscles, nerves, liver
and bones, while Dr. Myers brought us in the brains and told Bennett
to bring in the class. Dr. May said, ‘You’ll flunk
for sure if you don’t watch out.’ And sometimes, unfortunately,
a few failed to do the watching or, at least, the required work.
-- A member of the Class of 1914 writing in IU
yearbook, The Arbutus
On a late summer day in 1903, Burton D. Myers, MD, walked into
the dissecting room at Indiana University’s Science Hall in
Bloomington to greet the first anxious medical students, on their
first day of class, at the newborn Indiana University School of
Medicine.
A long-time vision was at last coming into focus. It was a plan
that IU’s new president, William Lowe Bryan, a former philosophy
and psychology professor, had been pondering for some time, inspired
by physician and former IU President David Starr Jordan.
In March, 1903, Bryan recommended to the university’s board
of trustees that a two-year medical school curriculum be established
by adding pathology and anatomy classes to the existing biological
sciences program. It was understood that third and fourth clinical
years would be added later. With the board’s approval, Bryan
also recruited Dr. Myers from Johns Hopkins – a model of medical
education then as now – to teach anatomy at Bloomington.
IUSM was not the first medical school in Indiana. Twenty-four medical
schools were chartered between 1806 and 1906, but many were small
and loosely organized, had no affiliation with academic institutions
and little financial support.
Following the Civil War, leaders in the medical profession and
education felt strongly that medical standards and qualifications
should be raised. They wanted to ensure that all students graduating
from medical school were truly prepared to face the realities of
practicing medicine.
When IUSM was admitted to membership in the American Association
of Medical Colleges and was recognized by the Indiana State Board
of Medical Registration and Examination in 1904, it was one of only
four schools that required two years of college before admission.
Political Football
The School of Medicine was intended to be a four-year program.
However, since the Bloomington campus lacked both the facilities
for clinical instruction and the populations of students and educators
needed, the School’s leaders looked north to Indianapolis
to seek a union with the Medical College of Indiana and the Central
College of Physicians and Surgeons.
These two proprietary Indianapolis schools rebuffed the overture
because both wanted full control over their destinies. In 1905,
however, joined by the Fort Wayne College of Medicine, they cast
their lot with Purdue University, forming the Indiana Medical College
(Purdue Medical Department) near the state capitol building in downtown
Indianapolis.
IU forged ahead alone. In 1906, leaders and benefactors of the
university bought the vacated Central College of Physicians and
Surgeons and transformed it into a teaching hospital. So intense
was the competition between IU and Purdue that they temporarily
parted ways: even their long-standing annual football showdown –
the Old Oaken Bucket Game – was suspended in 1906 and 1907
(the year IU graduated its first 25 students).
Eventually, cooler heads prevailed, and in 1908, President Bryan
and Purdue University President Winthrop Stone officially agreed
to unite all the state’s medical schools under the aegis of
Indiana University. The Indiana General Assembly adopted legislation
authorizing IU to have a medical school in Marion County. Allison
Maxwell, MD, was immediately appointed dean of the School.
(And on Nov. 21, 1908, IU clawed its way to a 10-4 victory over
Purdue to reclaim the “Old Oaken Bucket.”)
Building the Future
A reform movement in medical education and clinical teaching was
under way in 1909, led by educator Abraham Flexner. His 1910 book
Medical Education in the United States and Canada, better known
as the Flexner Report, emphasized the need to eliminate substandard
proprietary medical schools.
In 1909, Flexner visited the IU School of Medicine. He wrote, “…the
situation in the state was, thanks to the intelligent attitude of
the university, distinctly hopeful, though it will take time to
work it fully…”
He recommended that IUSM hire more full-time faculty, increase lab
equipment and improve the organization of clinical courses.
“That done,” Flexner noted, “Indiana will be
one of the few states that have solved the problem of medical education.”
IUSM proceeded to build its faculty cadre. Charles P. Emerson,
MD, a Johns Hopkins medical graduate, was lured from his positions
as a sanitarium superintendent and Cornell University medical professor
to become the second dean of IUSM (1912-32). He began to hire the
best faculty members available, drawing deeply from the Johns Hopkins
talent pool.
B.B. Turner, MD, became the School’s first full-time pharmacologist.
Willis D. Gatch, MD, inventor of the adjustable hospital bed, was
appointed professor of surgery and went on to serve as dean (1932-36).
John F. Barnhill, MD, a specialist in head and neck diseases, came
aboard and later launched an annual course in head and neck anatomy,
marking the beginning of IUSM’s Continuing Medical Education
program. Alice Fitzgerald was hired as the first superintendent
of the IU Training School for Nurses, a component of the medical
school.
The challenge of finding space was being met, too. A $200,000 gift
from Indianapolis physician Robert W. Long paved the way for construction
of a teaching hospital. After much wrangling with city officials,
the IU Board of Trustees settled on a site near the Indianapolis
City Hospital at Barnhill Drive and West Michigan Street.
When Long Hospital opened in 1914, it marked the birth of the IU
Medical Center. The hospital had 106 patient beds, eighteen of which
were in private rooms, plus operating rooms, X-ray and electrocardiograph
stations, and food service.
A second building was added nearby in 1919, replacing the Indiana
Medical College, which was a considerable distance from Long Hospital.
The new Medical School Building, later renamed in honor of Dean
Emerson, was financed by the state and designed to meet the School’s
growing laboratory and classroom needs.
The swampy landscape on which the School was being built in Indianapolis
continued to change throughout the 1920s. In 1921, state lawmakers
authorized establishing the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children.
A statewide fundraising campaign was launched, and the hospital
opened in 1924 just north of Long Hospital.
Immediately west of Long, the state’s first women’s
hospital was built, thanks to a $300,000 donation from lumber baron
William H. Coleman and his wife. In 1928, Muncie industrialist George
A. Ball, a philanthropist and member of the Riley Memorial Association,
gave $500,000 to construct the Ball Residence for Nurses, providing
an aca-demic and residential home for IU’s student nurses.
A quarter century had passed since that day Burton Myers and those
first medical students looked at one another on the first day of
class. Could they have envisioned the many changes and challenges
that had occurred in that time?
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