Centennial Celebration
Advancing Medicine Since 1903
Between Hard Times and Hope
Eddie Cantor was making whoopee on Broadway, and in a Chicago garage
on St. Valentine’s Day, mobsters in cop uniforms unleashed
a chorus of bullets into the backs of rival gang members. A lost
generation of young American writers in Paris was finding its way
to literary success, a cultural renaissance was flourishing in Harlem,
and a whistling cartoon mouse was winning over movie audiences.
Post-war America was roaring indeed: from flappers, jazz and Gershwin
to art deco and $300 Fords to the ”Red Menace,” the
Scopes Monkey Trial and KKK lynchings. But all of the zaniness and
excess of that decade swirled into a pool of desperation with the
U.S. stock market collapse on “Black Thursday,” October
1929.
Programs and facilities at the IU School of Medicine in Bloomington
and Indianapolis were growing in the 1920s. An addition to Indianapolis’
Medical School Building was erected in 1928, and nearby Long Hospital,
Coleman Women’s Hospital and Riley Hospital for Children were
in full operation. The School also was responsible for overseeing
the training of nurses and dietitians.
But the state’s only medical school had its challenges, too.
Bloomington’s Owen Hall was overcrowded; basic sciences courses
were lacking – the departments of pathology, pharmacology
and bacteriology were understaffed; and Dean Charles Emerson, MD,
acknowledged that the second year curriculum was seriously lacking,
risking censure by national medical education and accreditation
authorities.
Dr. Emerson had been at the helm of the School since 1912, piloting
it through fiscal difficulties, a painful realignment of faculty
resulting from the agreement with Purdue in 1908, and a global war.
Under his leadership student enrollment had doubled, and the School
ranked in the top twenty in student population nationally. In 1931,
however, Dean Emerson decided to chart a new course personally and
professionally. He asked for a leave of absence to serve in the
Far East with a medical mission group. Willis D. Gatch, MD, chair
of the Department of Surgery, was named acting dean and was formally
appointed to that post the following year.
Strive to Survive
As the Great Depression deepened, many of the building expansion
plans for the School of Medicine were put on hold because of budget
and hiring constraints. But the School did not pull back on its
commitment to educate and train physicians. After World War I, the
medical profession increased its emphasis on internships and residencies,
and School leaders sought to shore up that training, even when,
in 1932-33, the Indiana legislature hacked the School’s annual
budget from $425,000 to $350,000. In response, the administration
and faculty looked for new ways to economize.
Virtually all residents – most of whom were men – lived
on the Indianapolis medical campus. Their days were long and arduous.
On hospital floors, residents were responsible for diagnosing and
treating patients and for supervising interns and medical students.
They met regularly with staff and community physicians making hospital
referrals. In the little time left from these duties, they participated
in weekly clinical and pathology conferences and prepared for their
grueling national exams with extensive coursework in basic sciences.
The no-nonsense Dr. Gatch also took steps to make the medical center
more efficient, beginning with laboratory operations. In 1932, six
separate laboratories were merged into the Central Laboratory, providing
fast, sound service to clinicians. The dean turned not to a seasoned
scientist to head the new laboratory, but to young Clyde Culbertson,
MD, a 1931 IU School of Medicine graduate.
In the mid-1930s, the state made deeper cuts. At IUSM, faculty
and staff positions were eliminated, salaries were slashed, drugs
and supply purchases and inventories were scrutinized. The School
did its part to help the state in other ways. In 1933, the Indiana
State Board of Health combined its laboratories with IU, saving
Indiana more than $100,000.
Innovation and Research
Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew a thing or two about dealing with
handicaps. While on vacation with his family in 1921, he contracted
the polio virus and never regained the use of his legs. Undeterred,
the irrepressible New Yorker went on to become governor of his state.
He was elected president in 1932. No small wonder then that young
patients and the staff at Riley Hospital for Children were inspired
when FDR paid them a visit in September 1936 and inspected the hospital’s
newly built hydrotherapeutic pool, designed to help youngsters with
polio and other disabling disorders.
The Research Division was established in 1931, but it wasn't fulfilling
the vision IU leaders had for it. By 1938, the School had attracted
only $15,000 in research support – quite a contrast to leading
medical institutions such as Harvard which had an annual research
budget of nearly $1 million. But the School’s lack of cash
did not stymie scientific study entirely.
In 1931, while Prohibition was still in effect, Rolla Neil Harger
invented a machine that would have lasting importance for law enforcement.
The IUSM professor of biochemistry and toxicology constructed a
machine he called the Drunk-o-meter, a breath test that measured
the amount of alcohol a person had consumed. The device was a forerunner
to the Breathalyzer, invented by one of Harger’s former students,
Robert Borkenstein. Harger donated his patent to IU in 1937.
Other scientists also would enhance the School’s reputation
during the 1930s. Harold M. Trusler’s work in the treatment
of burns garnered national prominence. Sid Robinson, a Bloomington
Department of Physiology faculty member, began landmark studies
into the physiology of exercise and temperature regulation. Clinical
research also investigated wound healing, vascular problems in extremities,
and the effects of using pectin to treat diarrhea in babies.
In this time of change and challenge and despite the devastating
economic depression, some of the curtailed expansion plans did come
to fruition. In the late 1930s, the Clinical Building was completed
and attached to Long Hospital, and a new medical education facility
(now called Myers Hall) was constructed in Bloomington. The State
Board of Health Building, now named Fesler Hall and housing the
School’s administrative offices, was opened.
Soon after, in 1940, one of the men who was present for the birth
of the IU School of Medicine in 1903 and helped nurture it through
its youth decided it was time to step down. Burton D. Myers, MD,
dean of the School’s Bloomington program, announced his retirement.
Rallying Round the Flag
Late the following year, on Dec. 8, 1941, students and faculty
gathered in the medical school building auditorium (the third floor
of what is now Emerson Hall). It was the day after Japan’s
devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, and FDR was calling on Congress
to declare war against Japan, Germany and Italy.
“The hall became totally quiet as everyone lapsed into deep
thought about what lay ahead of us,” recalled Otis Bowen in
his autobiography Doc: Memories from a Life in Public Service (Indiana
University Press). “Ours was the first class to graduate in
wartime.”
The IU School of Medicine was on wartime footing with the rest
of the nation. Dr. Bowen, who would go on to practice medicine in
Bremen, Indiana, later serve as Indiana governor from 1973 to 1981
and as President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary for Health and
Human Services, was among 107 graduates to receive their degrees
early in May 1942. Most would become commissioned officers and serve
in Europe and the Pacific, tending to casualties.
Accelerated studies made it possible for a second class to graduate
in December 1942. The curriculum was streamlined and a new class
entered the School every nine months for the duration of the war.
Another tradition for students was changed as well. Before the war,
the first two years of school were lectures and labs in basic sciences,
with the final two years devoted to outpatient clinics in the morning
and lectures during the afternoon. Students had little hands-on
experience. But in 1943, students in the fourth year were assigned
to clinical rotations in the hospitals with a limited time set aside
for lectures and clinics.
In May 1942, the 32nd General Hospital Medical Corps was
activated and included physicians, nurses, dentists and supporting
enlisted men. The 32nd, named in honor of an IU medical unit mustered
during World War I, was the first U.S. Army medical unit to serve
on French soil following the Allied D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944,
and the first major medical installation in Germany. Drs. Cyrus
Clark and Charles Thompson organized the IUSM unit. IU medical graduates
also would serve in other theaters. Dr. Bowen, for example, served
during the Battle of Okinawa in the Army Medical Corps.
As the war intensified, the faculty ranks at the School grew thin.
Volunteer faculty, most of whom were over fifty years old, taught
clinical courses. However, the institution was able to retain key
faculty members and leaders such as pediatrician Lyman Meiks, MD,
and Dr. John Van Nuys, who as IU medical director oversaw professional
and patient activities. Some on faculty were able to secure government
research contracts. They wrote manuals about identifying chemical
weapons and poisoning water supplies and the adequacy of field rations
used by GIs in the field.
With the end of the global war, more challenges loomed on the horizon
for the Indiana University School of Medicine. In July 1946, Dr.
Willis D. Gatch – surgeon and inventor of the adjustable hospital
bed – reluctantly retired his post. A new leadership and vision
for the School was about to emerge. R
Next issue: New directions in research, patient care and statewide
medical education.
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