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John Elefteriades (at center of photo) studied medicine at Yale, did his residency here and stayed on as a fellow. He now leads the section of cardiothoracic surgery and is renowned for both his groundbreaking research on aortic aneurysms and his surgical skills.
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In the early 1880s, surgeon William Henry Carmalt (at center with mustache) was photographed in the operating room on the top floor of the New Haven Hospital. Carmalt, professor of surgery from 1881 to 1929, graduated from Yale Scientific School in 1857, received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1861 and studied abroad from 1870 to 1874. A pioneer in aseptic surgery, he was elected president of the Connecticut Medical Society in 1904 and president of the American Surgical Association in 1907.
Alfred Carlton Gilbert, left, who graduated in 1909, examines a donor in this undated photo, with an unidentified classmate. Gilbert was an Olympic pole vaulter and went on to create the Erector Set.
In the fall of 2008, first-year students Jerry Trejo and Andrew Dei Rossi began to examine their donor in The Anlyan Center anatomy laboratory. This lab features an exhaust system that removes noxious odors, computer terminals at each work table and instant access to medical texts and diagrams. But it also relies on the generosity of donors who dedicate their bodies to medical education. One thing hasn’t changed—the study of anatomy still requires exploration of a human body.
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When Dorothy Horstmann applied to Yale for a fellowship during World War II, her interview did not go well. Francis Gilman Blake, the acting dean, told her “how the last woman he had on the house staff did something awful,” she recalled. “If a woman on the house staff did not live up to expectations it was remembered for the next 50 years,” she told him, “but if the person was a man, it was forgotten by the next year.” Blake left the hiring decision up to John Paul, a young pathologist who had co-founded the Yale Poliomyelitis Study Unit in 1931. Horstmann was hired and she paved the way for a polio vaccine with her discovery that the virus enters the nervous system through the bloodstream. Horstmann, shown here in her lab in the 1970s, was the first woman to be appointed a full professor at the medical school.
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Women have become a ubiquitous presence in classrooms, clinics and laboratories over the years. Sarah Henry, a research associate in neurology, works in the lab of neurologist Jana Preiningerova, who studies multiple sclerosis, MRI analysis and cell-based therapies for multiple sclerosis.
The Class of 1949 was the first to stage a show that mocked the medical school and its faculty. The “Four Years for What Follies” was the brainchild of William Anlyan, who wrote the script, played piano and directed the production. Over the years what had been a fourth-year show became a second-year show. As always, the students mock their professors and classmates and draw the plot from current events.
“The Great ST Depression,” presented in February by the Class of 2011, 60 years after the first student production, depicts faculty, administrators and students struggling to make ends meet in the face of a financial crisis. In one scene, students moonlighting at a fast-food joint, played by Adam Kaufman, Lauren Graber and Henry Park, try to treat a choking victim played by Mei Elansary.
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200 Years of Medicine at Yale
Cast your votes for the most significant events and personalities of the school’s first two centuries.
Nearly 200 years ago, in October 1810, the Connecticut legislature passed a bill establishing the Medical Institution of Yale College, a joint venture between Yale and the Connecticut State Medical Society. The resulting institution then consisted of four professorships appointed by the Corporation of Yale College after nomination by a joint committee of the corporation and the medical society. The fledgling medical school opened its doors in 1813 with those four professors, an adjunct professor and a student body of 37. The course of studies consisted of a few months of lectures in a classroom. Only three students would graduate with medical degrees in 1814.
Next year the medical school will mark the start of its third century with a series of special events and exhibits and the publication of a book looking at the personalities and forces that shaped medicine at Yale.
Yale Medicine would like readers’ opinions about those influences, as well as their recollections of medical school life over the last half century or so. Was Milton C. Winternitz, M.D., the so-called “steam engine in pants” who established the Yale system of medical education, the most dynamic of all deans? Was his educational philosophy the driving force behind the school’s extraordinary growth in reputation? Was Paul B. Beeson, M.D., the most exemplary clinician, or was it John P. Peters, M.D.?
We’d like to hear from you. Following are 10 questions about the history of the School of Medicine and your experiences here compiled by the editors of Yale Medicine. Please take a moment to detach or copy these pages, check off your favorites or nominate your write-in candidates—along with your comments and reminiscences—and mail them back to us at the address below. (There’s also a Web version of this survey at yalemedicine.yale.edu/bestofyalemed.) There are many significant events, findings and discoveries to choose from, but we ask that you select only one response per question, or write in your nominees for the “best of the Yale School of Medicine.”
So whether you feel that the neuro rotation in third year or that role in drag during the second-year show was the pinnacle of your medical school experience, take a few minutes to look back and share your memories, as well as your nominations for the medical school’s best of everything. YM
The best of two centuries
The editors of Yale Medicine would like your opinions on the most significant events and personalities to shape the medical school since its founding in 1810. To start the ball rolling, we’ve suggested a few contenders, but these are just suggestions. We hope the collective wisdom of thousands of alumni, faculty and former house officers on our mailing list will produce other candidates and sharpen our focus when it comes to describing the forces that have made Yale School of Medicine great over the years. Your votes will be counted and your comments included in a follow-up article in Yale Medicine in time for the school’s Bicentennial celebration in 2010-2011.
In addition to voting, please tell us the thinking behind your choice in the space provided for comments. We’ve also included several questions about the best aspects of Yale School of Medicine as you experienced them during your student years.
Please complete this survey online at yalemedicine.yale.edu/bestofyalemed, or fill out the questionnaire that follows and return it in the envelope provided inside the back cover of this magazine.
Contact information:
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1. What event in the history of Yale School of Medicine had the greatest impact in shaping the school?
- Founding in 1810
- Admission of women in 1916
- Creation of the Yale system in the 1920s
- other
- comments
2. What was the greatest scientific advance made at the medical school?
- John Peters’ transformation of clinical chemistry into a discipline of precise, quantitative indicators of disease
- Dorothy Horstmann’s finding that the polio virus enters the central nervous system through the bloodstream, paving the way for the Salk vaccine
- The first antiviral drug, discovered by William Prusoff
- other
- comments
3. What was the medical school’s greatest clinical advance?
- Discovery and successful testing of the therapeutic properties of nitrogen mustard, the first anticancer drug
- First successful use of penicillin in the United States
- Introduction of fetal heart monitoring in the 1950s
- other
- comments
4. Who among the faculty possessed the most extraordinary scientific mind?
- John Fulton
- Dorothy Horstmann
- George Palade
- other
- comments
5. Who was the greatest personality to shape the school?
- Founding faculty member Nathan Smith
- Milton Winternitz, dean from 1920 to 1935
- Vernon Lippard, dean from 1952 to 1967
- other
- comments
6. Who was the medical school’s most outstanding clinician?
- John Peters
- Edith Jackson
- Paul Beeson
- other
- comments
7. Which basic science class impressed you the most?
8. What was your most valuable clinical experience at Yale?
9. Which extracurricular activities were the most enjoyable?
10. What is your favorite memory of medical school?
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