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

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SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, 1901-1966 OF PROFESSIONAL PROGRESS UPPER: SAMARITAN HOSPITAL, 1893 DR. W. WAYNE 8A8COCK OPERATING, 1916 LOWER: ANATOMY LAB IN FIRST MEDICAL SCHOOL 19

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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

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PRESENT- In 1910, Frank C. Hammond, M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S., became the dean, an office he held until 1929. A skilled surgeon. Dr. Hammond served in a transition period of growth and change as the tiny acorn, filling a need, slowly became a sizeable oak in professional circles. Unfavorable legislation made abandonment of the original evening classes mandatory. Day classes were accordingly organized in 1907, and two years later the midnight school was no more. Also in 1907, the Philadelphia Dental College,opened in 1865 and second oldest in the nation, joined with Temple in the year it changed its name to Temple University. The medical and pharmacy schools, which had opened simultaneously in 1901, then moved into the dental building on Spring Garden Street where larger classes could be accommodated and each laboratory department could occupy an entire floor. In 1929, William N. Parkinson, M.S., M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., L.H.D., F.A.C.S., a medical graduate of 1911, became Dean —a position he filled with distinction for thirty years. During his tenure the school and hospital expanded in facilities and excellence. Also in 1929, the enlarged hospital's name was changed to Temple University Hospital to denote its close connection with the University. In the same year ground was broken for a new medical school building situated directly opposite the hospital at Broad and Ontario Streets. Dr. Charles W. Mayo, Sr., was the main speaker at dedication ceremonies in September, 1930. Augmenting the hospital's School of Nursing, dating from 1892, a School of Medical Technology was opened in 1939. St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, a medical center for infants and children, became the pediatric unit of Temple University School of Medicine in 1947. Remarkable further expansion occurred in 1956 with the opening of three additional buildings at Temple University Medical Center: Parkinson Pavilion (a ten-story, 600 bed in-patient building), Out-Patient Building (an eight-story structure), and Ancillary Service Building (a two-story unit incorpating x-ray, operating rooms and clinical laboratories). Also in 1956, the Skin and Cancer Hospital of Philadelphia became a part of the Department of Dermatology at Temple University School of Medicine. Nine years later it moved into a modern building adjacent to the Medical School on North Broad Street. In 1959, Robert M. Bucher, M.S., M.D., F.A.C.S., a medical graduate of 1944, assumed the Deanship of the Medical School. Two years later the Edith Bolling Jones Residence was opened for student nurses and other woman students in the health sciences. A nine-story Medical Research Building, of unusual architectural design and functional capacity, was completed in 1963. The Pels Research Institute, affiliated with the medical school since 1946, is now housed on the seventh and eighth floors of this building. The Agnes Barr Chase Foundation for Surgical Research, named for an outstanding medical alumna of 1909, occupies its ninth floor. Continued expansion of the Health Sciences at Temple University led to the appointment in 1962 of Leroy E. Burney, M.P.H., M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.A.C.P., immedi- ate past Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, as Vice President of this division. Including the medical,dental, pharmacy, nursing, medical technology, oral hygiene and related auxiliary health professions, the Temple University Health Sciences Center now extends over a large geographical area in North Philadelphia and includes teaching affiliations with Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia General Hospital, Abington, Episcopal and Germantown Hospitals, Shriner's Hospital, Wills Eye Hospital and Philadelphia District Public Health Center No. 8. Currently under construction is a new teaching building for the Medical School, to be named the Kresge Building because of munificent support from the Kresge Foundation. This edifice will incorporate new classrooms, laboratories, medical library, auditorium and offices. Additional plans include expansion of the health sciences campus to increase student enrollment and permit closer coordination between the various schools. To conclude this brief review of sixty-five years' progress at Temple University School of Medicine, another quotation from Conwell's The New Day is appropriate: Mighty advances are being made now in medical knowledge and surgical skill, and it creates a feeling of awe as we reasonably forsee the miraculous things which will soon be done with our bodily organs. The multiplication oi great hospitals in the cities and the building of numberless sanitariums in the country gives science a fair chance to experiment without danger to patients and secure knowledge which doctors need to keep up their practices. The profession is a sacred one and it is important as it is holy. It deals with Cod's masterpiece and he who can take a chronometer apart and repair it completely is next to the maker in knowledge and power. Fred B. Rogers, M.D.