Lewellys F. Barker

Artist: Tadeusz Styka; Oil on canvas

Lewellys Franklin Barker was born in Oxford County, Ontario, Canada on September 16, 1867.  He received his MB and was a Medalist at Toronto University in 1890. In 1891, he moved to Baltimore and became an Assistant Resident Physician at the recently-opened Johns Hopkins Hospital. He became a Fellow in Pathology at Johns Hopkins University in 1892 and 1893.

He was an Associate Professor of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins University from 1898 to 1900, as well as an Assistant Pathologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1892 to 1899.  In 1900, he became a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Chicago. Dr. Barker was the author of The Nervous System and its Constituent Neurones, New York, 1899.

In 1914, Dr. Barker, William Osler's successor as Professor of Medicine and physician-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, resigned to enter private practice rather than accept the terms of a full-time plan, whereby professors in clinical departments would be salaried like other professors in the university.

Barker had been an early proponent of the full-time plan. His decision reflected not only a personal desire for a larger income but also contradictions inherent in the Flexnerian ideal of clinical medicine as a research-oriented university discipline, devoid of financial incentives to see patients.

In private practice, Barker maintained a high profile as a teacher, writer, supporter of the Johns Hopkins medical institutions, and public figure. The issues raised by his difficult decision remain relevant and were never satisfactorily resolved.