2009

Chicken or the egg?

By Erik Moore August 18, 2009
Medical school

Which came first: the original students admitted to the Medical School or the first graduates?

If you said graduates then you must be paying attention.

In the past I’ve discussed how the original requirements for admission to the Medical School (then known as the Department of Medicine) where formulated in April of 1888 with the first class entering in October of that same year. Prior to that, the College of Medicine consisted of faculty members that served as an examination body that recommended candidates to the Board of Regents to receive a Bachelor of Medicine or M.D. It did not provide instruction, rather it assessed all candidates on their scientific and professional skills. The first graduates earned their degrees in 1884. Four years before the first entering class. Those graduates were James Simpson and Hugo Speier.

The following is a partial list of examination questions they faced in 1884.

Anatomy

Give Chemical composition and microscopic structure of bone.

Give boundaries of the Fourth Ventricle.

Physiology

Fats: Variations and use in the economy.

Protein compounds: Characteristics and ultimate destination.

Medical Chemistry

Describe the symptoms of poisoning by oxalic acid. (a) Mention the antidote or antidotes for oxalic acid, with an explanation of their actions. (b) How is oxalic acid liable to be taken by mistake?

Pathology

What condition of the brain would you expect to find in a case of death from acute alcoholic poisoning?

What is Cancer? Describe its varieties.

Sanitary Science

What do you understand by Preventive Medicine as distinct from public or private hygiene? Give an illustration.

Name the dangers to health most likely to occur in the house of a farmer or in a private house in towns or cities. State how you would search for them and how prevent or remedy them.

Surgery

How should a punctured fracture of the skull be treated?

For what injuries and diseases is amputation generally performed?

Practice of Medicine

Is there a distinction between functional and structural diseases? If so, give a definition of each kind and illustrate by example.

What is Meningitis and what are its results?

Diseases of Women & Children

Give anatomy of the Uterus.

Give differential diagnosis of scarlitina and measles.

Read the faculty minutes for the College of Medicine from 1883-1886 and see the full set of examination questions (pages 21-28) below.

Box variations

By Erik Moore August 4, 2009
Curiosities

Archivists can spend a lot of time thinking about what goes into a box. Whatever document, report, letter, memo, etc. placed inside immediately earns an institutional commitment to its long-term preservation. Who knew going into a box was such a privileged position?

At other times, archivists hear the perennial call to think outside the box, which is an ironic metaphor for a profession that cannot stop thinking about the inside of the box.

One recent visitor to the archives dryly noted that even our boxes come in boxes. And, as if to add insult to injury, for five years this archivist lived next door to a traveling box salesman. It seems we cannot escape the box.

And then there are those rare moments when we must think of the box, not as a storage device, but as part of our history.

Such is the case with this copper container that was once the time capsule located inside Jackson Hall. Sealed and placed in the cornerstone of the new anatomy building on September 5, 1911, this box contained local newspapers, University of Minnesota photos, reports, Masonic publications, Cass Gilbert plans for south of Washington Avenue as well as a letter written by Dr. Thomas Lee, then Director of Anatomy, which accompanied the items. Opened in January 2005 to much fanfare, this box and its contents continue to attract attention and commemoration.

The most recent box variation presenting itself in the archives is a drawing of a box that is stored safely inside an archival box. This is an architect’s design of the copper time capsule placed inside the walls of Basic Sciences, now Hasselmo Hall. Once opened, perhaps this copper box and its contents can join its architectural rendering in the archives for their long-term preservation. Time and time again, the commitment to the archival box seems to outlast the guarantee of brick and mortar.

1926 or 2009?

By Erik Moore July 21, 2009
AHC documents, Medical school

On July 27, 1926 then University of Minnesota President Lotus D. Coffman wrote a letter to Dr. H. M. Johnson, Chairman of the Committee of the Minnesota State Medical Association outlining the University’s business plan to put into practice the employment of full time clinical instructors and the use of the hospital facilities by private & per diem patients.

Many of the concepts in Coffman’s letter are echoed in today’s discussions regarding the clinical enterprise and partnerships. To see the parallels one has to look no further than last month’s presentation to the Board of Regents “Moving the Clinical Enterprise from Partnership to Integration: Conceptual Framework.”

Although the style of language for the most part reveals their age, read the following excerpts from the above two mentioned documents and see if you can guess their date of origin: 1926 or 2009.

Enhanced ability to recruit and retain faculty and compensate them at a competitive market rate. 1926 or 2009?
The problem of securing and keeping a staff of talented and enthusiastic teachers is one of the most difficult and continuous tasks that confronts any university. 1926 or 2009?
Greater access to a larger population for participation in clinical research and to support the education of the next generation of health professionals. 1926 or 2009?
The University here faces the practical necessity of providing enough hospital beds to insure those types of cases and diseases, and in sufficient numbers, that may be necessary for the education and training of those proposing to enter the professions of nursing and medicine. This is a great educational responsibility which the University cannot fail to discharge. 1926 or 2009?
Enable the health professions of the AHC to achieve relevance, leadership and excellence into the 21st century. 1926 or 2009?
Ambitious clinical and laboratory teachers will not associate themselves, even for high salaries, with an institution which cannot offer good opportunities for their continuing growth and intellectual development. 1926 or 2009?

Feel free to leave your answers in the comments and read the full letter from President Coffman as well as the details about the clinical framework at the University in 1926 below.

Wind tunnel

By Erik Moore July 7, 2009
AHC documents, Facilities

“A wind advisory has been issued…”

If you work within earshot of a functioning intercom speaker in any of the health sciences facilities, you will recognize the implications of the above alert. The wind gusts through the tunnel area between the Malcolm Moos Health Sciences Tower (Unit A) and the Philips-Wangensteen Building (Unit B/C) has the power to stop you in your tracks, push you back, and quite possibly knock you over.

It does not take a particularly windy day to create this effect. In fact, the narrow space within this cluster of buildings amplifies any sustained wind.

The force of this unintentional wind tunnel became evident after the completion of the Philips-Wangensteen Building in 1979. Shortly thereafter, concerns developed about how the problem might be aggravated by the next phase of planned construction: the new hospital (Unit J). Two major fears were that the new hospital would increase the wind shear at the pedestrian level or may cause a downward draft bringing chemical fumes vented from the roof tops of the Mayo Building and Diehl Hall.

After a wind related “incident” in January of 1980 at the outpatient entrance on Delaware St., a memo suggested the need to evaluate the extreme wind conditions and to develop a plan to minimize the risks. That memo led to a 1981 study of the wind tunnel effect at the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The 1980 memo and subsequent documentation on implementing the wind tunnel study are available below. Or, read the final technical report issued by the WBWT in 1982.

No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end

By Erik Moore June 22, 2009
Acquisitions, Medical school, Perspectives

The teaching of geology often starts with an introduction to the geologic time scale as a means to acquaint students with the concept of deep time and how to better comprehend eons, eras & epochs.

Although littered with catastrophic events such as meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes, the surface of the earth and the life forms it has supported have been most profoundly changed by the incremental affects of water, plate tectonics, and photosynthesis over the course of 4.5 billion years.

So, do archives have a deep time?

Occasionally, the events that bring records to the archives are cataclysmic: the death of an individual, the closing of an organization, or even a natural disaster. These same catastrophes all too frequently tilt toward the utter destruction of the materials and remove them entirely from the record.

But more commonly, records trickle in like water, move slowly from one place to another, and even proliferate through technological photogenic processes such as the photocopier and scanner.

These deep time thoughts, so to speak, came to me last week as I looked over a recently acquired collection of correspondence. The letters are to and from Hal Downey (1877-1959), a world-renowned hematologist who spent the majority of his life studying, teaching, and researching at the University of Minnesota.

The collection is largely exchanges between Downey and his colleagues in the U.S. and Europe before World War I through the late 1950s. Most notable are a series of letters related to Dr. A. Maximov, a Russian hematologist looking to escape the restrictive conditions of early Soviet Russia. Downey eventually helped Maximov secure a position at the University of Chicago.

However, it was actually a pair of letters that set my thoughts in motion. The first was a letter from E. W. McDiarmid the University Librarian dated February 26, 1946 on the occasion of Downey’s retirement. In his letter McDiarmid requested that Downey consider turning over to the archives any material he will no longer need in his retirement. He specifically asked for letters, committee reports, and departmental correspondence that may be in his possession.

Downey responded that “it is not likely that I have anything of importance” and that he hoped to remain in his lab space for years to come. He would remember the archives if anything seemed of value.

Sixty-three years later, Hal Downey’s daughter and two granddaughters deposited his valuable correspondence in the archives. The material joined a small collection of Downey’s manuscripts that were donated by his wife Iva shortly after his death in 1959. It was a lifetime between McDiarmid’s request and the actual deposit. It was a fraction of the University’s history. It was a blip on the geologic time scale.

If we are students of the earth then we realize that none of us are permanent residents of this planet, nor are our institutions. Yet, to invoke Hutton, archives exist because we see “no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” So, we create, document, preserve, and then begin again.

Read the letters between McDiarmid and Downey below.

Image Credit: A diagram of the geological time scale available from the US Geologic Survey. Source image available from the Wikimedia Commons.

Salvage

By Erik Moore June 8, 2009
AHC documents, Facilities, Nursing

What would you salvage from a building before it is torn down?

Fire hoses, time clocks, light fixtures, outlet & switch cover plates, drinking fountains, p-traps from sinks, window screens, paper towel dispensers, and elevators #20 & #21 are just a few of the items the University Hospitals requested to be salvaged from Powell Hall prior to its demolition in 1981. The building was located on the site of today’s University of Minnesota Medical Center.

Powell Hall was built as a residence hall for student nurses and their supervisors. Dedicated in 1933 as the Nurses’ Hall, it was later named for Louise Powell, Superintendent of Nurses and later Director of the School of Nursing from 1910-1924, on the occasion of the School’s 30th anniversary in 1939. The building was easily identifiable by the bronze cupola on its roof. The cupola now serves as a historical marker near the original site. The picture above was taken after the cupola was removed.

University Hospitals were not the only interested party in salvaging material from Powell Hall. Other University departments and private individuals laid claim to materials and mementos in the months leading up to the demolition. Written requests for salvaged materials included windows, a dumbwaiter, wood paneling, chandeliers, patio stones, and an offer to provide a new home for a wishing well.

Did you take home a souvenir from Powell Hall? Let us know with a comment!

Read the document below to learn more about the pre-demolition salvage operation and see who got what.

A school without walls

By Erik Moore May 26, 2009
AHC documents, Facilities, Public health

Where is the School of Public Health?

Over the years the administrative and programmatic offices for SPH have moved all over campus. Some might even call it a school without walls. A map of SPH locations in the late 1960s illustrates the point.

The map is from a 1969 narrative about the School and its space needs. The report provides a great historical overview of the SPH up until the reorganization of the health sciences into the present day Academic Health Center in 1970. It emphasizes the history of the School and its community partnerships as well as descriptions of each of the divisions and programs and their origins. Read the full narrative below.

And as for being a school without walls, thirty years later the School of Public Health’s emphasis on student/faculty use of online tools and social media publishing is spreading the School’s activities and influences far beyond the map above. It is also expanding the archival terms of digitally documenting and preserving such activities for institutional memory and historical research.

Elliot Memorial Hospital dedication

By Erik Moore May 12, 2009
AHC documents, Facilities, Hospitals

“If we believe in our form of government, we have a right to expect that the State should and will administer public business. We believe that education is the business of the State and that teaching for physicians and nurses should be in reality a training in social service. We believe therefore that Minnesota has done wisely and we deem our optimism well founded.”

The above is from the comments Dean Wesbrook made at the dedication ceremony for the newly opened Elliot Memorial Hospital on September 5, 1911. However, the dedication booklet below reveals that the state appropriated only one-fifth of the required sum. In comparison to Wesbrook’s remarks, this seems to be a smaller than expected amount.

The hospital was primarily funded by a $113,000 gift to honor the hospital’s namesakes, the late Dr. and Mrs. Adolphus Elliot. With accumulated interest and additional donations the total amount privately raised for the hospital equaled $162,000. The State of Minnesota provided the remaining $40,000 necessary to purchase the land and construct the new facility.

The booklet also includes a brief history of the push to establish a teaching hospital on campus by Dr. J. E. Moore, the dedication address by University of Minnesota president, George Vincent, details of the Elliot Endowment and other donors, and essays on the value of teaching hospitals by Dr. Charles Moore and the newly organized School for Nurses by Dr. Richard Olding Beard as well as the teaching hospital’s economic benefit to the state by Dr. Charles Mayo.

Some interesting statistics of the first year of the hospital are included at the end:

Number of patients admitted to the hospital during the first year: 912
Number of patients seen through outpatient services: 33,190
Number of outpatient prescriptions filled: 13,513

An historical evening

By Erik Moore April 28, 2009
AHC documents, Medical school

April 26 marked the 121st anniversary of the Department of Medicine as established by the Board of Regents, which included the College of Medicine and Surgery and Dentistry. Although the original charter for the University of Minnesota listed a medical school as a component of the University, it was not formally opened until 1888.

I was once told that in the minds of most people, history begins the day before you were born. All other things that happen during the course of your life seem like current events because you experienced them one way or another.

It can be curious then to see how others celebrated their own lived history long before present day. The book below is one such example. It is a collection of essays documenting the history of medical education in Minnesota from the mid nineteenth century up until 1908. The first 20 years of the Medical School takes center stage and the essays are presented primarily by the individuals who formulated its organization.

The book concludes with a look forward and to three primary needs for medical education in Minnesota: the addition of hospital & laboratory space; better cooperation with state institutions; and ways to diffuse medical knowledge to physicians & the public.

Before reading the book, consider the fact that more than 85% of the history of the Medical School has taken place since this historical evening. How will your life’s experiences fit into someone else’s history?

The archivist is in

By Erik Moore April 20, 2009
Project admin

I am back in the office and ready to help you with any historical questions and/or assistance in determining what should be sent to the archives.

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Academic Health Center

History Project

Building the AHC Archives from the ground up

2009

Chicken or the egg?

Box variations

1926 or 2009?

Wind tunnel

No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end

Salvage

A school without walls

Elliot Memorial Hospital dedication

An historical evening

The archivist is in

2009

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