Fifty years ago this month, The Philadelphia Bulletin devoted almost its entire Sunday issue to a look at Philadelphia’s place in the history of medicine. The cover featured a Penn doctor who was already an iconic figure -- I. S. Ravdin, former chair of Surgery. When the issue appeared, Ravdin was about to turn 70 years old. Described as “one of today’s giants,” Ravdin performed four operations in the morning of the photo shoot, using two adjoining operating rooms.
As we begin the celebrations for the Perelman School of Medicine’s 250th birthday, it’s instructive to look back at how Philadelphia’s most widely read newspaper at that time acknowledged the school’s 200th birthday. In his notes, the editor, B. A. Bergman, noted that it was the magazine’s “contribution to the University of Pennsylvania’s celebration of the bicentennial of the founding of America’s first medical school.” He went on to say that “This special issue just touches some of the high points, but enough to show our continuing role in the world’s war against sickness and disease.”
The introductory article, “Philadelphia -- First City of Medicine,” began not by evoking the historical significance of Penn’s medical school but by suggesting its present-day (1964) importance. Examples: a farm boy from Greece with a heart problem, “brought to Philadelphia, where surgeons mended the flaw and fitted him for a normal life.” The daughter of an Indonesian official: “Threatened with glaucoma, she flew the 10,000 miles to Philadelphia, was operated on, and is on the way to full recover.” And the son of a tribal chief in Nigeria who decided to study to be a doctor “and chose Philadelphia.” The city, it was suggested, has an international presence! What followed was a closer look at the city’s medical traditions, in which physicians and professors associated with Penn’s medical school are prominent.
The first article was nicely illustrated with a photograph of the first surgical amphitheater in America, at Pennsylvania Hospital. Noting that the students sat in tiered seats, the caption goes on to note that the medical students of 1960 “generally watch operations on closed-circuit television instead.” Another historical element on the opening spread was photographs of three admission cards, which students in the early years of Penn’s medical school had to buy to attend lectures. Shown were cards for William Shippen Jr., one of the medical school’s founders (1765); for Benjamin Rush (1769), one of the school’s earliest professors and now often considered the father of American psychiatry; and for Thomas Bonds (1770), founder, with Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania Hospital.
In addition to giving a brief account of John Morgan’s efforts to establish a medical school, the article describes Shippen’s interest in doing the same thing. In a letter to the college’s trustees, he explained that he would have approached them about the plan long before Morgan had, “except that he had been waiting for Morgan to come back so they could go into this together.” As that section concludes, both Morgan and Shippen became professors of the new medical program, “but there was no warmth between the two.”
Clearly, the 1964 Bulletin was not afraid of showing all sides of these early figures of Penn medicine. Rush was described as having “a notable talent for antagonizing people.” He even outraged George Washington, by circulating a letter proposing that Washington be replaced as commander-in-chief of the colonists’ army. It’s frightening to think what might have happened if Rush’s letter had had a greater impact. At the same time, however, Rush was also a vocal advocate against slavery and for more science in education. His contributions to mental health were described in another of the magazine’s articles, called “Help for Darkened Minds.”
The other medical schools in Philadelphia were not ignored in the Bulletin’s historical overview. We learn that Jefferson Medical College was founded in 1825 by Dr. George McClellan, a Penn graduate and a brilliant surgeon. “Penn couldn’t see the need for a second medical school and there were cold feelings between the two faculties for a number of years.” Fortunately that’s all in the past! The article also noted Penn’s role in helping establish other schools through the nation -- including, via the efforts of faculty members William Osler and Howard A. Kelly, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine. Philip Syng Physick, the Penn surgeon, was credited with inventing “an instrument to remove tonsils, a surgical pump, and surgical thread that would dissolve in the body.” Also cited was the creation at Penn of the Henry Phipps Institute, founded in1903 and described as a pioneer research organization in the fight against tuberculosis.
Another article, about the struggle of women for equal medical rights, described some tough times, including a day in 1869 when women attending a clinical lecture at Pennsy’s amphitheater were assailed by paper missiles, tinfoil, tobacco quids -- and insults from the men. Even “the stately Dr. D. Hayes Agnew,” chief surgeon at the hospital and soon to become chairman of Surgery at the medical school, resigned when the board of contributors insisted that women continue to be admitted to clinical lectures.
The Bulletin’s last article, “Plagues and Plague Fighters,” also devotes space to Penn physicians over the years. Dr. John Redman Coxe, a graduate of the medical school, was prominent in promoting the smallpox vaccine -- having tested it first on himself in 1801. Also highlighted is the work, in the 1930s, of Joseph Stokes Jr., Werner Henle, and Gertrude Henle on influenza. All three were associated with Penn and with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
How things change over time! The back page of the Sunday issue was an ad for a local business, based at 1500 Spring Garden Street: Smith Kline & French Laboratories, whose Philadelphia roots go back to the 1840s. Now it’s part of the international pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.