The legacy of William H. Welch, the
School of Medicine's first dean and a Johns Hopkins
Hospital founder, will be respectfully honored this month,
as two Hopkins institutions that the illustrious physician
helped to establish will celebrate milestone birthdays.
Both the
Institute of the
History of Medicine and the
Welch Medical
Library will turn 75.
The History of Medicine anniversary was celebrated on
Oct. 18 at a reception following the Gibride Memorial
Lecture held at the School of Medicine's Mountcastle
Auditorium. The Welch Medical Library's 75th anniversary
celebration will take place from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on
Wednesday, Nov. 3, also in the Mountcastle Auditorium. The
event will feature keynote speeches from Randall Packard,
William H. Welch Professor and director of the History of
Medicine Institute; Peter Agre, professor of
biological
chemistry and 2003 Nobel Prize laureate; and David
Nichols, vice dean for education at the School of
Medicine.
The Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns
Hopkins was the first department of its kind in the United
States, and it became a prototype for similar departments
within leading medical schools.
Founded in 1929, it was modeled after the History of
Medicine and Natural Sciences Department at the University
of Leipzig, Germany, where Welch did part of his medical
training. Previously, the School of Medicine had a History
of Medicine Club, founded in the 1890s, and in place of a
library, the school's medical books and journals were
housed in several collections located throughout the
campus.
Packard, who will talk about the Welch Medical
Library's history at the Nov. 3 event, said that it was
Welch's vision to create both a permanent History of
Medicine Department and a library that would promote
scholarship on the history of medicine, disease and the
health sciences, and their relationship to society.
Welch, who died in 1934, was the pathologist in chief
when The Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889. When the
School of Medicine opened in 1893, Welch was named its
first dean. Welch also helped organize the
School of Public
Health, becoming its first director, and founded and
served as the first director of the Institute of the
History of Medicine.
Packard said that institute today serves the same
basic purpose and function that it did 75 years ago under
Welch's leadership.
"Essentially, it has always been a place that is
dedicated to promoting scholarship in the history of
medicine and excellence in the teaching of medical
history," Packard said. "The main differences between then
and now are the size of the department--we have the largest
number of faculty in our history right now--and that we
cover a more diverse area, examining medical history in
Europe, Africa, Russia and China, in addition to the United
States."
Today, the institute, located on the third floor of
the Welch Medical Library, houses the largest history of
medicine faculty in the United States, with eight full-time
members in addition to visiting faculty, postdoctoral
fellows and graduate students. Research at the institute
ranges from the history of early modern medicine, to the
history of disease and public health, to the role of
genetics in medical education and practice. The institute
also is the home of the
Bulletin of
the History of Medicine, the official journal of
the American Association for the History of Medicine.
The institute incorporates both the School of
Medicine's History of Medicine Department and the
Historical Collection, the institute's rare book library.
The institute's director also oversees the
Alan Mason Chesney Archives and JHMI's Cultural Affairs
Program.
The History of Medicine faculty teach a range of
courses, with special emphasis on history of medicine in
early modern Europe, U.S. medical history in the 19th and
20th centuries, the history of the biomedical sciences in
the United States and Russia, the history of disease and
public health, and the history of colonial medicine and
international health.
Dedicated a day before the History of Medicine
Institute opened, the Welch Medical Library was named to
honor Welch's role in the library's creation and the
founding of the Institute of the History of Medicine. Welch
envisioned the library as an epicenter for the retrieval
and transmission of the most current clinical,
epidemiological and laboratory findings, while also being a
repository for the accumulated culture of medicine. Before
the library opened its doors, Welch personally traveled to
Europe to collect thousands of books to be housed in its
stacks.
Its first year, the library had eight staff members
and total holdings that amounted to 79,264 volumes. Today,
its collections contain more than 400,000 bound volumes,
3,400 e-journals, 500 e-books and 1,300 print journals. The
collection covers health, the practice of medicine,
nursing, research literature, methodological literature and
in-depth analyses of areas influencing biomedicine and
health care.
The building itself, located at 1900 E. Monument St.,
was designed by Edward L. Tilton in the Renaissance style.
It has an Indiana limestone exterior, and inside it
features seven varieties of marble, painted ceilings,
17th-century Flemish tapestries and an ancient statue of
Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine.
Welch services the schools of
Medicine,
Nursing and
Public Health;
The
Johns Hopkins Hospital; and the
Kennedy Krieger
Institute, which comprise an estimated customer base of
18,000. In addition to its main branch, the library has six
satellites located at the various medical institutions.
Currently, the library is somewhat in a state of
change. The plan is to transform the library by the year
2015 into a virtual operation where customers access
materials primarily in electronic form; many of the books
in the stacks today will be put in a new
state-of-the-art facility to be built at APL in the
coming year.
Nancy Roderer, director of the library, said that
Welch's main branch eventually will become a conference and
historical center housing a faculty club, meeting space and
expanded facilities for the Historical Collection. The main
branch also could become the new home for the Alan Mason
Chesney Medical Archives, currently housed in an office
suite at 2024 E. Monument St.
Speaking about this week's anniversary event, Roderer
said it's a time to celebrate the past, present and future
of the library and its 75 years of excellent service to its
customers.
"We try hard, and always have, to be the library that
Johns Hopkins deserves," Roderer said. "We serve preeminent
schools of medicine, nursing and public health, and we do
our best to keep up with them and for them."
For more on Welch Medical Library's history and the
Nov. 3 anniversary event, go to
www.welch.jhu.edu/75years/index.html.
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