Harvard School of Medicine - Aesculapiad Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Henry Asbury Christian By ELLIOTT C. CUTLER, M.D. URING my third year at Harvard Medical School, 191 1-12, the lectures in medicine were given by Dr. Henry A. Christian, then Dean as well as Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic. These lectures were given in the Amphitheatre of Building A. The opportunity to glimpse the activities going on in the cow pasture across the street, which were soon to lead to the formation of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was only occasionally utilized, for the tall, already bald, young professor voiced his opinions with clarity and precision and always held the interest of the class. As the years have gone by and the distant appreciation of a student for a valuable teacher has ripened into an affectionate intimacy, I have acquired a steadily increasing admira- tion for Dr. Christian's intellectual courage and abilities and his senti- ments concerning life and our profession. His honesty of purpose and frankness of speech are qualities which have raised him frequently above the level of his colleagues as one whose position is always known and therefore greatly respected. i His background may have given him many advantages, for he comes from a distinguished Virginian family, the seventh descendant of Thomas Christian who arrived in Virginia from England in 1657. From that time on his family have been persons of substance and importance in their community. He attended, at the age of sixteen, a small Virginia College, Randolph-Macon, the faculty of which was comprised of re- markable men whose stimulation struck f1re on his innate abilities. Upon graduating from this College with the degrees of A.B. and A.M. in 1895, he was fortunate enough to continue for another year in the field of chemistry, a foundation for medical practice then scarcely visualized even by the leaders of our profession. Finally, his medical education at Johns Hopkins University, from which he graduated with the degree of M.D. in 1900, blessed him with the unusual opportunity of studying under the distinguished group of teachers assembled in Baltimore. Immediately after graduating, he came to Boston, at first working in the Department of Pathology at the Boston City Hospital. His Chief there, Dr. Frank Mallory, will not take it amiss if we point out here that it was Dr. Christianas extreme accuracy of observation and thorough- ness that led to his rapid advance in this Held. He was soon recognized 8

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i To Henry Christian in respectful dedication

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by the students as an unusual teacher. When, shortly afterwards, he entered upon his duties as Instructor in the Theory and Practice of Physic, matters of great importance for the future education of our students at the Harvard Medical School began to happen. In the elec- tive course in medicine given by Dr. Reginald H. Fitz, then Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic, Dr. Christian instituted for the first time in Boston the clinical clerkship arrangement of teach- ing our students QIQO5-075. This was the Hrst opportunity given to the students to take histories, conduct physical examinations and carry out laboratory procedures on their ward patients. If patients died, the stu- dents were always presentbat the autopsies, and indeed generally per- formed them. The thoroughness and closeness of the association of the student with the patient over a considerable period of time was an inno- vation of the greatest importance to this School. Dr. Christian had already experienced the advantage of this form of teaching at Johns Hopkins, but we who subsequently prohted from it here owe to him a deep debt of gratitude. While Dr. Christian was Dean of the Medical School, a good deal of reorganization of great beneht to the School took place. At first the Summer School of Medicine was reorganized, and later the Graduate School of Medicine was established as a continued growth of this re- organized Summer School. The relationships between the Associated Hospitals were tremendously improved, and the custom was started whereby the nomination of the Chiefs of Staffs in most of the afliliated hospitals originated in the Medical School. During his Deanship, a new Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine was established, and it was also during his term of oliice that the Faculty of the Medical School first brought forward a new degree, that of Doctor of Public Health. With the opening of the new Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in IQI 3, Dr. Christianjs career as a great clinical teacher began. It would be impossible to review in the short space available here the tremendous influence for good in American medicine which has emanated from his teachings at this Hospital. The amazing number of distinguished pupils who now hold high places in medicine scattered all over our country are the chief documents of his precious influence. N 0 teacher of medi- cine in our day has sent forward a more capable or meritorious group of pupils. The very breadth of his clinical teaching emphasizes his value as a teacher. VVe note among his pupils men who now hold distinguished positions in the realms of cardiology, bacteriology, allergy, and general medicine. The field of allergy as now practiced in this country really began with the work of his pupil, Dr. I. C. Walker, in the Medical 9