Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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Research The conventional image of the mad scientist locked in his isolated laboratory with his bubbling test tubes and cages of tortured animals has almost completely faded from the American scene, except possibly in an occasional late movie. This change has been of such a nature and magnitude that our modern-day research scientist must no longer worry that his efforts will go unappreciated or be misunderstood. While part of the credit for this decidedly improved situation goes to a more knowledgeable and concerned public, the greater share belongs to the research community itself, and with good reason. Our typical research practitioner today is likely to be a member of a research team of experts, the joint effort of which enables equal and vital contributions of clinical as well as theoretical import. The offspring of such a happy union bear real testimony to its effectiveness, for it is through such combined efforts of theory and practice as pictured here that medical progress and knowledge have climbed at such an astonishing pace. Obviously, much remains to be done; but it is within the continued joint worlds of the theoretician and the clinician that these problems will be met and ultimately resolved. 16

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In his visionary book, The New Day, published in 1904, the Rev. Russell H. Conwell, founder and first president of Temple University, wrote: In the practice of medicine the demand has gone far beyond the supply ... The need for both men and women in the duty of healing disease grows apace. To help fill this need, particularly from the ranks of those not financially privileged, Temple University School of Medicine had opened three years earlier. The first coeducational medical school in Pennsylvania, it began with a night and weekend program optimistically geared to the schedule of working people. The course was distributed over five years in order to provide the equivalent of four years' day instruction. In the Bulletin of Temple College (1901-02), the medical school was proclaimed with assurance: This department of the Temple College opens September 16,1901. This college will be the equal of the very best in the city or in the United States. What may have been lacking in facilities was offset by the quality of the new medical school's faculty. Conwell interested several outstanding physicians and surgeons in the project. The first Dean, W. Wallace Fritz, M.D., D.D.S., also served as professor of anatomy and clinical surgery. Ten other faculty members joined him, teaching in the chemistry and biology laboratories of the undergraduate college. Classes met in College Hall adjacent to PastorConwell's Baptist Temple Church. For the 700 hours of required practical clinical instruction, medical students travelled north on Broad Street to the Samaritan Hospital, located at Ontario Street, which had opened with twelve beds under Conwell's direction in 1891 The first dissection room was located in the loft of the hospital ambulance house — with the vehicle and its horses quartered below. Dr. Fritz guided the embryonic medical school during its initial two years. In 1903, Dr. I. Newton Snively, A.M., M.D., assumed the deanship and held it through 1909. A capable administrator and teacher. Dr. Snively had earlier been the first physician to administer diphtheria antitoxin in Philadelphia. The professor of surgery, Dr. Edmund W. Holmes, served as chief surgeon at the Samaritan Hospital from 1893-1903. His book. Outline of Anatomy, was a widely used contemporary teaching text. Dr. Holmes, in 1903, was succeeded in the chair of surgery by Dr. W. Wayne Babcock, who subsequently achieved international recognition during his forty-year tenure in this post. Two men, Frederick C. Lehman and Frank E. Watkins, who had been admitted to Temple Medical School with advanced standing, became the first to receive Doctor of Medicine degrees in 1904. Since that time, over 5,000 medical doctors have received their diplomas. Annual enrollment is now approximately 500 students, with the average graduating class numbering 125. In addition, the hospital post-graduate program for interns, fellows and residents now provides training for more than 200 physicians annually, from this hemisphere and other countries of the world. EEMPLE UNIVERSITY SIXTY-FIVE YEARS PAST- REV. RUSSELL CONWELL. 1924 18