History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

216 History of Medical Practice in IllinoisTrustees of the medical schools should be made up of business men withno financial interest in the school.Formal postgraduate instruction in obstetrics and gynecology was begunwith the formation of the Chicago Policlinic at LaSalle Street and ChicagoAvenue in July 1886. It grew to have a clinic attendance of 30,000 and 250students attended during the year. Dr. F. Henrotin was Secretary and Professorof Gynecology; Dr. Henry Hooper was Professor of Obstetrics, andDr. Henry Banga was added as a Professor of Gynecology, with the laterBacon and C. E. Manierre wereaddition of Dr. Denslow Lewis. Drs. C. S.later named to the Department of Obstetrics.Two years later (1888) 5 a group of doctors left the Policlinic School tofound the Postgraduate Medical School of Chicago. This school prospered.It was associated with the Chicago Medical College which later became theNorthwestern University Medical School. These schools were the first toprovide specialized training for men practicing incommunities aroundChicago and in the Middle West, and who had previously been forced togo to one of the eastern cities or to Cincinnati or St. Louis for such instruction.Returning from these refresher courses, which consisted largelyof lectures, demonstrations and operative clinics, these men were consideredspecialists in the communities where they were practicing.Dr. Joseph B. DeLee graduated from medical school in 1891, 6 and thenotes he made as a student at the Chicago Medical College indicate someof the teaching handicaps of the time. There was no provision for demonstratingclinical material to undergraduates. To offset this the studentswould make up a purse by passing the hat; half of the sum collected wasgiven to the patient whom they had persuaded to come to the school fordelivery by Dr. Jaggard (then Professor of Obstetrics) before the class, andthe other half went to Mercy Hospital for her care. Later, Jaggard, by clearingout bones, skeletons and anatomical dissections from a room underthe anatomical amphitheater, acquired a space large enough to house twobeds. Women were delivered in the amphitheater after the cadavers wereremoved, and after delivery they were kept in the two-bed obstetric wardunder the seats of the amphitheater. The janitor fed these patients, andvisiting nurses bathed the babies and dressed the mothers. The followingweek they would be wheeled back into the pit and Dr. Jaggard woulddemonstrate the physiology and pathology of the puerperium and of thenewborn. Occasionally a student could induce a motherly old womanto let him deliver her at home. This practice was forbidden by the schoolafter a lawsuit was filed against it by the husband of a woman who died ofpuerperal infection after such a delivery.5History of Medicine and Surgery and Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago, 1803-1922.6 Fishbein, Morris, and DeLee, Sol T.: Joseph Bolivar DeLee, Crusading Obstetrician,N. Y. E. P. Dutton, 1949.