History of the Medical College of Georgia

Preface

Preface t has been almost sixty years since William H. Goodrich published his History of the Medical Department of the University of Georgia. I would be belaboring the obvious to say that Dean Goodrich's work is dated. Even the title of the volume indicates that the basic status of the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) has changed radically since the school celebrated its centenary in 1928. Furthermore, Goodrich's work, although spiced with a wealth of detail from MCG's early years, has almost nothing to say about the institution's post-Civil War period, and goes into no critical or comparative analysis at all. He suggests many research areas for historians of medicine who followed him, but few of these have been touched. Cecilia C. Mettler andJoseph Krafka, Jr., both on the faculty at the Medical College, did some stimulating and useful work that appeared in medical journals during the decades of the 1930s and 1940s, but it lacked the scope or depth needed for a full history of Georgia's oldest medical school. In the 1950s and early 1960s S.Joseph Lewis, Jr., worked on a manuscript that, it was thought, would satisfy a need that had by then become a crying one. For a complex of reasons, however, Lewis's work was never printed and he died without the satisfaction of seeing his research and writing accorded the public respect they deserved. Finally, in the euphoria of the Medical College of Georgia's sesquicentennial , it was decided by alumni and personnel of the institution that a published history was to be one of the main projects to mark the school's anniversary. It was at that time that I was contacted and that I began my own research into the history of medicine in general, and the history of MCG in particular. The search and the writing have been in turn arduous, grueling, and exciting—but never dull. The life story of the Medical College has seen to that. IX i x Preface By the time this volume is published it will have been almost a decade in the making. But there is an old adage that I hope applies about good things setting their own precious schedules. This extended period of gestation was due to many factors, especially my not having any released time from my teaching at the University of Georgia. Suffice it tosay, however, that should the volume fall short of expectations, I can blame neither old saws nor time—nor anyone other than myself. The need for this History is particularly apparent in 1986-87 as the Medical College of Georgia heads toward the twenty-firstcentury under a new president and with flags flying at full mast. Another old saying— this one especially relevant to history—holds that you never knowexactly where you are going until you can tell who you are and where you have been. If this volume can,through its insights and historical perspectives, help outline in some significant way the identity of the remarkable and resilient school known affectionately as MCG,then it will have served its purpose. The money, the knitted brows, and both the mental and physical perspiration will have been worth it; the book will have proved to be an appropriate investment in the school's past as well as in its future. Institutional history, though, is far from simple to write, particularly when that history continues to the present—or very near it, as this one does. Feelings get hurt because names or events that contemporaries think should be included are not;interpretations that are consistent within the framework of the full history of a school seem unfair or wrong. To those who tend to deify the medical professions, the cold light of objectivity appears to probe more for faults than for stunning triumphs and glorious victories. Fortunately, the time when velvet-lined platitudes constituted America's idea of what medical history should be has gone, although this day still lingers in some quarters. MCG, much to its credit, chose to go with the new rather than the old,and it is a gauge of its current approach toward itself that I was given free access to all the school's records. The Registrar's office, where many of these records are housed, could not have been more cooperative, and I owe the friendly and well-informed Frances Wingfield there hearty appreciation. Furthermore, I have received only the most cordial encouragement— in addition to...