From the days of the 'Wild West' to world renown: Medical historian describes the U-M Medical School's first...( ANN ARBOR - Today's world-renowned Un...),Health

ANN ARBOR - Today's world-renowned University of Michigan Medical School seems a long way off from the place one early medical student excitedly wrote his mother about - saying a classmate had gone 'out west' and brought back two dead gunmen for dissection.

Such is the case, however, for a medical school born in the days of the stagecoach and this year celebrating its 150th anniversary, says medical historian Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., in a paper in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Markel highlights the U-M Medical School's rich and groundbreaking history in an article, "An Example Worthy of Imitation: The University of Michigan Medical School, 1850-2000", that is included in a special issue of JAMA devoted to the U-M in recognition of its sesquicentennial. Markel, director of U-M's Historical Center for the Health Sciences, is now on sabbatical in The Center for Scholars and Writers in the New York Public Library.

The seemingly bizarre acquisition of cadavers for medical students to dissect wasn't really that strange for a 19th century medical school, Markel writes, quoting historian Thomas N. Bonner: "No school of this era was without its 'horror stories' of nightly raids on cemeteries, a provoked and outraged citizenry and violent attacks on the offending parties."

Yet there are also many examples of distinction in the U-M's 150-year history, especially its scientific approach to training, says Markel, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases at the U-M.

Indeed, he writes, even as early as the 1870s, "Instead of requiring regurgitation of dusty textbooks and antiquated prescriptions, Michigan medical students were challenged to be active participants in their medical education."

He continues, "They were required to understand the biological basis of disease and to reason through puzzling clinical presentations. Scientific thought was now the monarch of modern med
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Contact: Kara Gavin
UMHSmedia@umich.edu
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University of Michigan Health System
14-Feb-2000