Start the afternoon with a visit to the MedChi Museum of Maryland Medical History, learn about our treasures which date back to the 1500s, tour the historic Osler Hall building, and have a pre-movie snack. Walk across Cathedral Street to take in the sold-out movie, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, complete with live orchestrations.
Experience the first on-screen adventure of everyone's favorite archaeologist/action hero like never before! Follow along with the adventures of Indiana Jones as he travels across the globe to secure the Ark of the Covenant, accompanied by endearing companions and facing notorious villains. The BSO performs John Williams’ legendary score live from stage while the full-length film plays on the big screen.
Reservations are $100, which includes one ticket to the movie, pre-movie snacks, a tour of the MedChi Museum, and a tax-deductible contribution to support MedChi's Museum and Archives. Unfortunately, there are no discounted tickets to this event, as the event is sold out, and this is a fundraiser for the Museum and Archives. To purchase tickets, please scan the QR code below.
Parking is available in MedChi's private lot at 1204 Maryland Avenue. Public transportation is also available.
As you may know, we hosted a Women's History Month Symposium on March 1. I am going to share each of the speakers' talks, starting with mine.
In 1886,
MedChi welcomed its first woman member, Dr. Amanda Taylor Norris. In addition
to being the first woman member, Dr. Norris was the first woman with a medical
degree to practice in Baltimore.
She
graduated in 1880 from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania and returned
to Baltimore where she began her career. The Baltimore Medical College, a small
school, offered her a faculty position as a demonstrator of anatomy, which she
readily accepted.
As with
most physicians of the day, Dr. Norris was a generalist. She taught materia
medica, or the pharmaceutical aspects of medicine, practical obstetrics and
gynecology, and throat and chest medicine. Dr. Norris was also the physician to several
women’s clinics including the Female House of Refuge and the Evening Dispensary
for Women and Girls, which I will talk about shortly.
Before 1911, there were eleven medical schools in Baltimore.
That changed when the Flexner Report was published. This compared all medical
schools in the US to Johns Hopkins, a new and well-funded medical school. Most
other med schools were small and ill-funded and paled in comparison.
Originally
located on Eutaw Street, the college moved several times in its nearly 30-year
lifetime. It
was one of the earliest schools to require either a college diploma or an
entrance exam to attend. Because of the scarcity of women’s medical schools, women from around the world
attended the college.
The
Women’s Medical College closed in 1910, mainly due to lack of an endowment to
keep it going. In the Flexner report, it was stated that the laboratories were
scrupulously well-kept and showed a desire to do the best possible with meager
resources. It also mentions the Women’s Dispensary at the College. The College
would probably have closed regardless, due to paring down of medical schools
after the Flexner report.
From the beginning, women were admitted to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The men at Hopkins hated the fact that women were students, but since philanthropist,
The University of Maryland’s School of Medicine did not admit women until 1919, just before women received the right to vote. There had been a shortage of physicians for a few years due to World War One, and so it was more of a necessity that women were admitted to medical schools.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, there were a number of hospitals for women and children.
There one additional woman I’d like to briefly talk about: Marcia Crocker Noyes.
In 1946, Marcia became ill, so the physicians advanced her 50th anniversary party by a few months.
Thank you so much.
A few months ago, I was thinking about our history (actually, I think about MedChi's history all of the time!), and thought about the early women members, women in medicine today and more.
As I thought about how we could commemorate women, I realized that Women's History Month is in March. Things came together and we decided to host a Women's Symposium.
The event will take place on Saturday, March 1, from 9:30 to 12:30 at MedChi HQ at 1211 Cathedral Street, or 1204 Maryland Avenue (front and back doors). We will begin at 9:30 with a coffee meet-and-greet session and the welcome and first lecture will begin at 10:00.
We have on-site parking, and there is on-street parking and public transportation in the immediate vicinity.
Tickets are $10 per person and will benefit the preservation of MedChi's archives. For more information, or to secure a reservation, please click or scan the QR code below.
Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday.
Leeches to Lasers: 225 Years of Service
Since the earliest days of Maryland’s founding, there have always been medical practitioners in the population. Some had formal training, but many others did not. Many early physicians studied in Europe and then migrated to America. The first medical school in America opened in Philadelphia in 1765, and Marylander, John Archer was the first person to receive a medical diploma in America, mostly by dint of his last name.
Archer returned to his hometown of Bel Air, Maryland and opened the small Medical Hall,
In 1779, Dr. Charles Weisenthal,
This was the
first inkling of a medical society, although Dr. John Archer had established
one in Harford County at his Medical Hall. In local papers in 1785, ‘86 and ‘88,
there were discussions between physicians on the Western Shore of a “medical
establishment,” limited to qualified physicians. It would also create a Board
of Physicians who would license applicants to practice medicine.
Applicants
and now members would pay a sum, which would also be used to maintain a medical
library. And perhaps, eventually, a medical college might be established, with
members of the board serving as its faculty. When this proposal went before the
Maryland State Legislature, it was soundly rejected.
Small
“medical schools” which mainly featured lectures, sprang up around Baltimore,
and in 1788, anatomy students who had “acquired” a body of an executed
prisoner, were set upon by a mob who took the cadaver by force. This is
evidence of the first dissection mob.
As Dr. Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell says in his magnum opus,
“It would be interesting to know the details of the Charter’s
passage, to pry into the past and see the old doctors as they conferred over
this document of such far-reaching significance. But these, like many other
events connected with those early days, are hidden from us, perhaps forever,
and we can only picture them to ourselves in our imagination.”
This might
be a place to tell you to visit our YouTube page, MedChi Museum and Archives,
for some five-minute videos on the founding of MedChi and the first meeting of
the organization.
For the
first few years of the organization, the members met every other year on the
first Monday in June, and the meetings dealt with executive functions rather
than medical knowledge. Board of Physician members continued to examine
prospective members, and gradually elaborate orations were added to the
meetings.
In 1807, the second part of the early discussions, establishing a medical school, came to fruition with the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty establishing one, which eventually became the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The Charter
established a close relationship between the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty
and the College of Medicine which continues until today. Early members acted as
the Board of Regents of the College, and as the faculty, which led to the
shortening of the name to “The Faculty” for the next century and a half.
The
Faculty’s president was the chancellor of the college and members were the
original professors and lecturers at the college. Progress reports from the
college were presented to the biennial meetings of the Faculty.
Although a
number of early physicians had not formally attended medical schools, they used
a system of preceptorship, or studying with an established physician, and
became “Doctors of Medicine by Act of Assembly” from the College of Medicine.
In the early years, classes or lectures were held at the homes of the faculty members, but in 1813 the College of Medicine built what is now known as Davidge Hall, the oldest operational medical school building in the United States.
In addition to teaching medicine and surgery, conducting anatomical classes, the College and Faculty worked to contain diseases which ravaged the population.
Although the Faculty did not have a permanent location in Baltimore where the original Charter mandated meetings be held, Davidge Hall,
In 1830, the Faculty established a medical library, subscribing to a range of medical journals and other publications, so that each member did not have to.
At the
request of the Faculty, the American Medical Association had its first
convention in Baltimore in 1848. It was the most important medical event of the
year. In 1838, members of the Faculty had advocated for a national medical
society, but it took a few years to come to fruition. One of the hot topics at
the meeting was the use of anesthetics. The next time the AMA held their annual
meeting in Baltimore was in 1899.
The Maryland Medical Journal was established in 1877, and continues until today.
Medicine was changing and medical schools were no longer limited to white men only.
Medicine shifted again in 1889 when Dr. William Osler arrived for a 16-year stay in Baltimore.
While Osler (as a reminder, Osler rhymes with dose) was teaching medicine, he was also lecturing around the world, hosting numerous luminaries visiting Baltimore, and working on his best-selling “Principles and Practice of Medicine,” which was in publication for more than 70 years.
Osler, a huge bibliophile, became president of the Faculty in 1896, and was eager to re-establish the library which had gone dormant, as did the Faculty, during the Civil War years. To accomplish that, he hired a young librarian to oversee the library.
One of Osler’s fondest wishes was to have a permanent headquarters building after moving from place to place for almost a century. After he moved to Oxford, England to become the Regius Professor of Medicine, the Faculty acquired a piece of property on the west side of the Mount Vernon neighborhood in Baltimore.
Marcia
visited several other medical societies’ headquarters to get ideas about what
worked and what didn’t, and got together with the architects, Ellicott and
Emmart, to design a building for the benefit of the members. It included
several large meeting rooms, a dining room, reading rooms and a four-story
stacks library with room for 60,000 books!
The building on Cathedral Street opened in 1909 with many luminaries in attendance, including Dr. William Osler who had arrived from England to be part of the opening for which he had long advocated, and to which he had generously donated.
Sir William
Osler died in 1919 of heart-break after the death of his only son in France
during World War One. Memorial services were held around the world, including
here in Baltimore. His books eventually ended up at McGill University in
Montreal, although the Faculty benefitted from his generosity over the years,
and they are now in our Rare Book Room.
Marcia Crocker Noyes died in 1946, four days after her 50th anniversary of being hired to work at the Faculty. Her funeral was held in Osler Hall and 60 physicians acted as her pallbearers.
Soon after Marcia’s death, the first official Executive Director was hired at the Faculty, and began to professionalize the organization.
Medical advances seemed to be coming faster than ever, and at the summer meeting in 1963, a group of members presented something new and un-heard of at the time, but in common parlance today.
Sudden
cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, but
CPR has been used to “bring people back to life.” It is one of the most
important things that a layman can do to help a dying person. Combining the
engineering skills with medical skills of professionals from Johns Hopkins,
this new method of resuscitation was perfected and sent out to the masses who
could possibly save a life.
Small and
large advances in medicine have been made by members of MedChi over the
centuries, but it’s not often that one has the impact that CPR has had.
When the Faculty built its headquarters space in 1909, we were flanked on one side by a row-house and on the other by a junior high school.
We were offered the building and the gymnasium for the
sum of one dollar, and of course, accepted it! A few years later, after enough
money was raised, the main building and the accompanying gymnasium were both
fully renovated and merged with the original building, which was given some
cosmetic updates.
In 1999, MedChi celebrated its 200th Anniversary with a series of events across the state of Maryland. And now, we are celebrating our 225th Anniversary.
When I think about the original 101 founders, I often wonder if they could ever have imagined that the organization they fought so hard to establish would still flourish all these many decades later. Would they be shocked to learn about medicine today, with radiation, laser surgery, gene replacement therapy, organ replacement surgeries, in vitro fertilization and so much more.
Thank you.
