 . . . Fall 1999
The Birth of the University of Michigan Medical School
  ll it took to be a doctor in the 1830s was a potent concoction with a scientific sounding name like Dr. Folger's Olosconium, Spooner's Patent Hygeian Medicines or Dr. Osgood's India Cholagogue, and a long list of the ills and, ailments from pimples to cancer that it would instantly cure. But even the well-meaning physicians, as well as the charlatans, practiced unclean surgery and resorted to magic nostrums, bleedings, cold dung plasters and exclusive reliance on a favorite herb or two.
For those who wanted to study medicine as an empirical science and distinguish what helped from what harmed, the options were few. Medical schools existed in the East and in Europe, but for most aspiring doctors, especially those in Michigan and other recently settled states, the only local option was to study privately with a physician preceptor.
The state twice passed laws to create the institution that became the University of Michigan, first in 1817 and again in 1837. On both occasions the Legislature charged the institution to include a department of medicine as well as a literary college. When U-M opened its doors to students in 1841, however, a medical department was still not even in the planning stages. A petition from several prominent physicians in Ann Arbor and the strong support of Zina Pitcher placed the issue firmly on the agenda of the Regents' January 1847 meeting. Nevertheless, the Board put off the issue, thereby "blasting the hopes" of many young Michiganders who wanted to study medicine in their home state, like the diarist George Pray, a member of the University of Michigan's first graduating class 'in 1845. (See "The First-Class Diary of George Washington Pray," Summer 1999, (Michigan Today.) The reason for the Regents' reluctance was clear to Pray, then studying privately with doctors Silas Douglass, Abram Sager and Moses Gunn in Ann Arbor. Pray complained in his diary: It is maintained by some of them [the Regents] that the study of medicine tends to infidelity and immorality. It may be so. But one thing is probably true, that there is far more damnable hypocrisy among theologians than among medical men. He went on to express exasperation that he and his fellow medical school students were considered "immoral," "infidel" and "resurrectional." The term "resurrectionist" began its life meaning one who brings something to light, or believes in resurrection, until the late 1770s when it became a term denoting a person who digs up bodies for dissection. Pitcher kept up pressure for University medical instruction, invoking the "confessedly low condition of the profession in the West," as Andrew Tell Brook, a professor in the literary department, recounted. Pitcher pointed out "the fact that something like one hundred young men from Michigan were at that time pursuing medical studies in other states." The Regents gave in, and the Medical Department received its first students on October 3, 1850. In those early days of private schools or of public institutions like the new U-M Medical Department, along with the opportunities for learning medicine came ethical dilemmas that involved teacher and student alike. The experiences of four Michigan men reveal the underbelly of medical education and the compromises that the high calling of saving lives made them heir to. |
But things were beginning to change. In 1839, Dr. Zina Pitcher, then 42, began teaching students and practicing medicine at St. Mary's Hospital in Detroit. Although he had no medical degree himself, the custom of the day entitled him to be called "Doctor," in acknowledgment of his private medical studies. Pitcher was a prominent man; not only was he mayor of Detroit several times in the 1840s, he also served as a Regent of the University of Michigan from the time the board was created in 1837 through 1851 when he retired.