An overview of the history of the U-M Medical School and health system, now called Michigan Medicine, with a focus on people, buildings and clinical/scientific achievements that were "firsts" in the nation or state, or for U-M. Preparted for the History Club of the Ann Arbor City Club in October 2023.

1. Kara Gavin, M.S. - Michigan Medicine Department of Communication
175 Years of U-M Medical “Firsts”

2. AGENDA
Ann Arbor City Club
History Club
October 5, 2023
1. In the beginning…
The early days of the Medical School
and Hospital
2. Growing & diversifying
The student body, faculty & facilities
3. Scientific & clinical innovation
Moving medicine forward
4. Help us prepare to celebrate 175!
Your ideas, questions & memories

3. In the beginning…

4. A brief refresher about U-M’s early days
• 1817: University of Michigania established in Detroit
• More of an academy… and not terribly successful…
• 1837: Following statehood, reconstituted as the University of Michigan
under a Board of Regents appointed by the governor
• 40 acres (the Diag) in Ann Arbor given by local developers after Lansing
chosen as state capital
• Charter envisions medicine as one of three disciplines to be taught
• 1840: President’s House and two Professors’ Houses built
• 1841: First class of 7 students enrolls, attending classes in Mason Hall

5. The Founding of the Medical School
• January 1847: The Regents authorize a Select Committee led by Zina
Pitcher, M.D., to explore creating a medical school
• January 1848: Approval of a "Medical Department" to train physicians.
• The committee’s report calls upon U-M to create one that will be “an example worthy
of imitation”
• Provides $3,000 to build a Laboratory building for medical education
• Known as Department of Medicine & Surgery; “Medical School” formally in 1915
• U-M becomes the first university-based medical school in the country
to employ physicians as full members of the faculty

6. First faculty:
Drs. Silas Douglass, Abram
Sager (the first dean),
Moses Gunn, Jonathan
Adams Allen, Jr. and
Samuel Denton
Center: Dr. Zina Pitcher

7. Jasper Francis Cropsey, 1855 (View of the U-M campus looking west)

8. First Medical Building
• On the Diag, with doors facing
eastward
• Modeled on a Greek temple
• September 1850:
First 90 students &
5 honorary students enroll.
• Six students who started
elsewhere become the first
graduates in 1851.
• Expanded in 1865 – funded in
part by Ann Arbor’s citizens

9. Chemical Laboratory
• Opened 1856 behind
Medical Laboratory
• First building at any U.S.
university devoted to
chemistry
• Medical students and other
students learned chemical
analysis and preparation of
medications
• Burned down Christmas
Eve 1981

10. Early U-M medical education
● Tuition in 1850: $5 for 6 months of
lectures & demonstrations
● 2nd year = repeat of the 1st year
● Crowded lectures: 500+ by 1865
● Demonstrations on patients from
faculty practices (300 by 1868)
● Difficult to get anatomy cadavers
● Apprenticeships with practicing
physicians during summer

11. The nation’s first university-owned hospital
● Regents turned down a
move to Detroit
● Retrofitted professor’s
house for up to 20 patients
who volunteered to be
treated in lecture halls
● Opened December 1869
● Room & board charges
● 1st employee: Steward
● 1st resident M.D.: 1874

12. 1876 Expansion: “Pavilion Hospital”
● Funded by state & Ann Arbor in
compromise for Homeopathic
Medical School (1875-1922)
● First staff nurses are hired
● First house surgeon in 1877
Extended behind original hospital into Diag

13. Growing & Diversifying

14. Student “firsts”
● 1853: Mixed-race student Samuel Codes
Watson “passes” as white & attends
● 1863: Alpheus Tucker & John Rapier, Jr.
enroll as first Black students.
● 1870: U-M becomes the first major
medical school to admit women with 17
students who are mainly taught separately
● 1871: Amanda Sanford (who started studies
elsewhere) is 1st female medical graduate
● 1872: William Henry Fitzbutler, Jr., is the
first Black graduate

15. Student “firsts” ● 1878: Grace Roberts (Homeopathic)
U-M’s first Black female graduate
● 1880: José Celso Barbosa, first
Puerto Rican student at U-M,
graduates top of Med School class
● 1882: The first graduate of Asian
origin was Myatt Kyau of Burma
● 1885: Sophia Bethena Jones is the
first Black female graduate
● 1896: Shi Meiyu (Mary Stone) &
Kang Cheng (Ida Kahn) of China are
the 1st female Asian graduates

16. New educational programs & pathways
● 1890: First post-graduation medical residencies
● 1891: First six Training School for Nurses students admitted
○ First nursing degrees awarded in 1919 – five-year program
● 1897: First master of science in hygiene (part of Medical School) awarded
○ Graduate School Division of Hygiene created in 1920, School of Public Health founded 1941
● 1899: First in the U.S. clinical clerkships, plus first med school “interns”

17. Faculty & staff growth & diversification
● 1876: Kate Crane (Pharm ‘74) became the first female
employee, an assistant in the Chemical Laboratory
● 1892: First staff pharmacist, James Perry Briggs, hired
● 1896: Eliza Mosher, M.D. (Medical School 1871)
returns as professor of hygiene & first dean of women –
U-M’s first female faculty member
● 1936: Anatomist Elizabeth Crosby, Ph.D. becomes the first tenured female
professor at the Medical School
● 1953: Microbiologist Albert Wheeler (Ph.D. 1944) became the first Black
tenured professor at U-M

18. Scientific & clinical innovation

19. An early hotbed of anatomy and “germ theory”
● 1887: First Hygienic Laboratory, serving Michigan by analyzing milk, water, etc.
● 1889: First U.S. building devoted to the study of anatomy
● 1901: First department of Bacteriology in the U.S.

20. Innovative hospitals & clinical programs
● 1903: One of first children’s hospital wards in the U.S. – Palmer Ward
● 1906: Psychopathic Hospital opens; one of first in U.S. for diagnosis/research
● 1918: One of nation’s first departments of Radiology (Roentgenology)
● 1925: University Hospital becomes the largest university hospital in the U.S.
● 1926: Simpson Memorial Institute: clinical research on blood disorders

21. Clinical milestones
● 1934: First hospital statistical department, enabling registry studies
● 1939: First Blood Bank – one of first in U.S.
● 1941: One of 1st hospital-based hereditary disease clinics; sickle cell trait 1949
● 1951: Nation’s third Poliomyelitis Respirator Center
● 1952: U-M’s first 24-hour emergency department
● 1955: One of nation’s first child/adolescent psychiatric hospitals
● 1959: One of nation’s first burn centers

22. More clinical & research innovations
● 1960: First pediatric open-heart surgery paves way for Congenital Heart Center
● 1964: First kidney transplant paves way for Transplant Center
● 1972: First neonatal ICU built to link obstetrical and pediatric hospitals
● 1981: First ECMO patient treated at U-M
● 1982: First Survival Flight helicopter mission
● 1986: One of first university-owned health insurance plans (M-CARE)
● 1989: Discovery of first single gene for a human disease (cystic fibrosis)

23. Help us prepare to celebrate 175 years!

24. Your memories, ideas, questions?
● Visit michmed.org/history for a full timeline and
many stories & resources
● Visit historyofum.umich.edu and
heritage.umich.edu for more U-M history
● What are we missing? What can you contribute?
Email me kegavin@umich.edu

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26. THANK YOU