|
“What a fabulous tradition to be part of!”
 Welcome
to the third issue of Medicine at Michigan.
Last fall was a busy one at the Medical School. The highlight
of the season was the October 1 academic convocation held in
Hill Auditorium to kick off our sesquicentennial year. The 2,000
guests who attended were able to view our wonderful 15-minute
video on the history of the School. Narrated by CBS-TV journalist
and U-M graduate Mike Wallace, it celebrates the School’s
150 years of distinction. I opened the ceremony with the following
remarks:
“We pay homage today to the legacy entrusted to us, to
the scientists, physicians, teachers and researchers, beginning
with Regent Zina Pitcher and the first five members of the faculty,
Sager, Denton, Douglas, Allen and Gunn, who blazed a path.
“On October 3, 1850, the first medical lecture in the
U-M Medical School was presented to 91 students. It was a time
before electricity, before natural gas service to Ann Arbor,
when Harriet Tubman had just escaped from slavery, Zachary Taylor
was the twelfth president of the U.S., and Medical School tuition
was five dollars. While we are struck by the contrast in knowledge
and technology when compared with today, we find inspiration
and challenge in the leadership and vision of the men and women
who lived their lives teaching, exploring and healing here in
Ann Arbor.
“The Medical School quickly addressed the challenges of
its earliest era—cholera and quackery. Ever since, the
School’s graduates and faculty have taken part in addressing
the medical problems of their era. Early accounts in the Michigan
Alumnus tell of our graduates’ service in the Civil War.
Dean Victor Vaughan was called on to work with Walter Reed to
combat typhus during the Spanish American War. The federal government
recruited Frederick Novy to study an outbreak of bubonic plague
in San Francisco. (The story of those experiments became the
inspiration for Sinclair Lewis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel, Arrowsmith.) Vaughan also studied influenza following
the deadly outbreak at the end of World War I. David Murray
Cowie solved the goiter problem by persuading salt manufacturers
to include iodine in table salt. In World War II, Michigan men
and women again responded to the needs of their time and mobilized
to join the 298th General Hospital to care for the wounded in
the European theater. Michigan played a crucial role in ending
the polio epidemics with the work of Thomas Francis in designing
the field trials for Jonas Salk’s vaccine. Our leadership
continues with the pioneering work of Francis Collins on the
Human Genome Project and Gary Nabel’s recent departure
to the NIH to develop a vaccine for AIDS.
“What a fabulous tradition to be part of!
“There are stories, thousands of stories, that could
be told of each one of our graduates and faculty by grateful
patients, students, and fellow researchers, people whose lives
and work have been touched by Michigan doctors. Today we’ve
invited some very special people connected with the Medical
School to share their personal stories and to be honored on
this historic day.”
My welcome was followed by reminiscences and observations on
the School and its place in the medical world by a series of
distinguished speakers, including Keith Black, a graduate of
our School and a neurosurgeon in Los Angeles, representing medical
students; David Botstein, chair of Stanford’s Department
of Genetics and a former Ph.D. student, representing graduate
students; William Hubbard, the tenth dean of the Medical School,
representing the School’s administration; Erik Morganroth,
who underwent a heart transplant at U-M Hospital, representing
the many patients we have cared for; Antonia Novello, former
pediatrics resident here and former U.S. surgeon general, representing
house officers; and Harold Shapiro, former president of the
University, who recounted the fascinating challenges of building
the new University Hospital. Gil Omenn, executive vice president
for health affairs, and President Lee Bollinger commented on
contemporary issues that confront our School and voiced our
hopes for the future. Jack Dixon, the Minor J. Coon Professor
and chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry, and James
Stanley, professor and section chief of Vascular Surgery, did
a superb job guiding the ceremony and introducing the speakers.
(There are photos of the convocation on pages 44-47 that you
should be sure to take time to enjoy.)
The culmination of our year-long celebration of the Medical
School Sesquicentennial will take place on October 13-14, 2000,
at our annual Alumni Reunion Weekend. I hope to see you this
October in Ann Arbor!
Sincerely,
Allen S. Lichter, M.D.
Dean
|
