Evening Star Newspaper, March 30, 1930, Page 87

Fiction Art PART SEVEN. Magasine WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 1930. Features Books 24 PAGES. HonorsForDean of American Medicine A World-Wide Celebration, With President Hoover Heading This Nation’s Observance, Will Be Held on April 8 to Mark the Eightieth Birthday Anniversary of Dr. William H. Welch of Johns Hopkins, for Fifty Years the Chief Inspiration of Medical Education. HE idea that contagious diseases are caused by invisi- ble animals and plants which attack men from the food they eat and the air they breathe was regarded, only 55 years ago, as the stupid theorizing of philosophers and - -laughed at by all respectable scientists. When medicine was at this low ebb, Dr. William H. Welch, known to doctors as “the dean of American medicine,” was graduated from the College of Physi- cians and Surgeons at Columbia Uni- .versity. He was forced to study abroad be- cause an adequate medical training could not be secured in the United States. But since then, largely through the influence of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, with Dr. Welch as dean, and the power of innumerable founda- tions on which Dr. Welch has served, American education has risen to equality with that of all other countries, except, perhaps, Germany. And so American doctors were enabled to play their part in the international battle with germs that was soon to come. And now, when Dr. Welch is celebrat- ing his eightieth birthday anniversary, with the President of the United States heading the committee to do him honor, the war on germs has been so complete= .1y won that the young minds of Ameri- can medicine are turning to other battlefields, where the armies of man still flee before unfathomed diseases .that appear like specters out of the night of man’s ignorance and against whom there is no appeal. Aiming no longer to destroy exterior plagues, the medical generals of today are mobilizing against ills caused by the treachery of the body itself. His birthday anniversary, a week from this Tuesday, will be the occasion of an international celebration. Most of America’s distinguished scientists will go to Washington, where the main cele- bration will be held, with President Hoover delivering the principal address. Many important university centers in the United States and abroad will hold simultaneous ceremonies and it is hoped that all will be tied together by an in- ternational radio hook-up. R. WELCH does not feel the span of threescore years and ten a man may expect through biblical pre- . cept has been increased by the remark- able advance of science. The length of a man’s life, he believes, is regulated by heredity. But in the past few men have lived long enough to let old age kill them—now many do. This is the triumph of modern medicine. Laughing at prohibitionists who claim they have aided doctors in lengthening men’s actual lives, Dr. Weleh says that during his years of research he has found no evidence that moderate drink- ing shortens life. The 55 years during which Dr. Welch ‘has been shaping medical destiny cover practically the whole bacteriological era. He was graduated from medical school a short time before medicine was trans- formed by the scientific demonstration of the germ origin of disease. Although Pasteur had been working for a quarter of a century, he had not, in 1872, at- tacked the problem of human infectious diseases. Koch was still unknown. Dr. William H. Welch—A leader in the battle against disease. But all 4he way down the long stretch of history philoso- phers had sat back and observed epidemics theoretically, without the advantage of microscope of scientific method. Wondering why plagues which started with a few concentrat- ed cases should widen their malignant influence until whole cities were stricken, they established the doc- trine of “living contagion,” which corresponds roughly with the theory of scientific bacteri- ology. _ But, as always, the doctors scorned philo- sophical medicine. They believed that diseases were caused by filth or by such contamination of the air as produces bad smells. In those days public health and the fighting of epidemics were thought of in terms of street cleaning and sewage, which goes to prove that although theories are bad, their applications may be bet- ter. Dr. Welch had already been out of medical school for one whole year when Robert Koch, an obscure German scientist, isolated the bacil- lus which causes anthrax, a malady of cattle. The germ origin of contagious diseases had been scientifically established! But American doctors went on playing with bad smells as if nothing had happened. Dr. Welch traveled and studied all through Ger- many and Austria, went back to New York, ac- cepted and rejected academic positions, built a Iaboratory or so and, finally, went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But even then, nine years after Koch’s discovery, the germ theory was not universally believed. “Koch’s experiment was received with a great deal of skepticism in the United States,” Dr. Welch explained. “When I left New York 1 doubt if any doctors except Austin Flint, who was regarded as an old fogey, accepted it. Then came discovery after discovery based on it, but American doctors were not willing to see the truth for a iong time. Germany and France both accepted it rapidly, but England was as slow as we.” THE inability of even the leading American doctors to recognize verity when they saw it was one of many indications that, when Dr. Welch went to Johns Hopkins, the American medical world needed education above every- thing. The stage had to be set before there could be productive research. Dr. Welch, although he has done valuable experimental work, stands out in the forefront By James Thomas Flexner. Drawn by Eric Pape. Association, the National Academy eof Sciences and the American Social Ry- giene Association. He is a fellow of the American Acade- my of Arts and Science, the College of Physicians and of three English associa= tions—the Royal Society of Medicine; the Royal Sanitary Institute in London and the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. In addition, he belongs to honorary societies in Germany, France, Belgium and Italy. ¥ Describing the American medical schools of his youth, Dr. Welch said: “BEverything was lectures, and nothing was taught practically except anatomy. Although we had some examples of men with great native ability, who, despite the bad American training, succeeded, :he majority who became leaders studied abroad. “This was because American schools were attuned to the pioneer conditions of the country. With the rapid growth of population and communities, due to immigration and the pressing of civili- zation westward, there came a great need for doctors, and more doctors, which had to be supplied quickly. In- dependent medical schools grew up in profusion, unconnected with universi- ties and for the most part giving miser- able instruction. “The remedy consisted in forcing doc- tors to have practicing licenses. In my day anybody who received a so-called medical degree from any school, repu=- table or otherwise, could attempt to cure the sick. But when prospective doctors faced the necessity of passing examinae tions for a practicing license, they had to study in a school with standards high enough to get them by. As a result, the total number of medical schools has been cut in two during a period when the law schools doubled.” But the legal necessity for good medi- cal schools did not create them. It was the privilege of Johns Hopkins, under the leadership of Dr. Welch, to show the way. HEN, in 1878, Dr. Welch returned from his two years’ study abroad he was offered a position at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, then prob- ably the leading medical school and therefore a great opportunity for so young a man. But he refused in order to go to the Bellevue Hospital Medieal School, which, although a more obscure institution, allowed him freedom to set up a pathological laboratory, the first of its kind connected with an American school. His method of letting the stu- dent find out for himself by experiment was so immediately successful that very soon the College of Physicians and Sure geons capitulated and set up a labora- tory, too. Six years later Dr. Welch was called to Baltimore. The Johns Hopkins Hos- pital was approaching completion and the thoughts of President Gilman and the trustees of the university were turn< ing toward the establishment of the medical school provided for in Mr. Hop- kins’ original gift. Seeking a leader to guide the new enterprise, they invited Dr. Welch to become professor of pa- thology in the university and pathologist to the hospital. Having studied for an- other year in Germany, Dr. Welch ar- rived at Johns Hopkins in 1885. As soon as the new medical school was estab- lished he became dean. “The state of medical education when the Johns Hopkins filedlcnl School was started,” Dr. Welch modestly explained, was most favorable to the development of such a school as we had in mind. As early as 1880 there had been efforts to improve the medical schools of this country. By then the of American medicine as an educator. He has been the teacher and inspiration of our great investigators. Who knows in the background of how many great discoveries looms the portly figure of the “dean of American medicine”? Dr. Welch is rotund. He possesses the ami- ability for which portly men are famous, but none of the softness. Though immense in body and mind, he is flabby in neither. Well vead on all subjects and liking to talk with authority, he knows where his knowledge ends. But what has endeared him to generations of doctors is the warm personal interest and the childlike joy he takes in all the world offers. The passing of 80 years has made him walk a little slower, but even now he thrills to everything that is new. There is hardly an honor which the Amer- ican world has to offer that it has not laid at Dr. Welch's feet. He has been president of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Association of American Physi- cians, the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science; the American Medical Harvard Medical School, the school at Ann Arbor and a few other medical schools had al- ready taken sicps to improve the standard. There was consequenily an eagerness on the part of the medical profession to see the es- tabfishment of a scho-l of a higher order than any which existed at that time. We felt that to add one more similar medical school to the list of those already existing would be of little service to the community or to the country or to the cause of medicine.” When Dr. Welch went to Jjohns Hopkins, pathology, the study of the diseased conditions of the body in all their aspccts, was not beinzy taught as a unified s-ience. Every university had one department of bacteriology, the study of germs; another of histology, the study of tissues or “microscopic anatomy,” and a third of pathological anatomy, but the professors did not, correlate their teachings, or in many cases even agree. _ Under Dr. Welch's leadership the study of all diseased conditions began to Continued on Second Page