Joel D. Howell Named First Victor Vaughan Professor of the History of Medicine

Joel D. Howell, M.D., Ph.D., was installed on November 26, 2001, as the first Victor Vaughan Professor of the History of Medicine. Howell, a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the Medical School and co-director of the U-M Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, also serves as professor of health management and policy in the School of Public Health and as professor of history in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, as well as teaching in the Law School.

Gil Omenn, Joel Howell, Allen Lichter and Marc Lippman Photo: Gregory Fox

Howell is an active clinician at the U-M, where he has been on the faculty since 1984. In 1988, he was the first person whose research is primarily history-focused to be elected to the prestigious American Society of Clinical Investigation. He is the founding director of the U-M Program in Society and Medicine and was recently named to the U-M Society of Fellows. Widely respected for his intellectual leadership, Howell is frequently asked to speak and consult at national and international venues, has written extensively on medical technology and the history and future of human experimentation, and has held numerous lectureships in the U.S. and abroad.

Victor Vaughan

Victor Vaughan (1851-1929) served as dean of the U-M Medical School from 1891 to 1920. He was a biochemist, hygienist, public health authority, medical educator and administrator who was considered one of the great figures in American medicine during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At Michigan, Vaughan worked to improve the clinical, library and laboratory facilities and to solidify the international stature of the Medical School. He helped found the National Board of Medical Examiners and served a term as president of the American Medical Association from 1914-15. Perhaps the most notable feature of Vaughan’s career, based on his desire to see medical knowledge used for the good of all humankind, was his belief that effective health care requires one to see medicine as inextricably embedded in a specific social context. For many, Vaughan’s name symbolizes the need always to recognize the social and cultural nature of health care.

In his inaugural address, Howell said, “Victor Vaughan was willing to support people who would see health and disease in ways that he did not and could not. I plan in the years to come to write and teach and care for patients in ways that promote Victor Vaughan’s vision of medicine as a social enterprise. I hope to do justice to his name.”