Reforming Medical Education

An extensive history of the founding and early days of the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois

The University of Illinois College of Medicine has its origins in the 1882 opening of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago. In 1897 the College of Physicians and Surgeons became affiliated with the University of Illinois and began a relationship that endured its fair share of trials, successes, and even a few bitter fights. In this fact-filled volume, Winton U. Solberg places the early history of the University of Illinois College of Medicine in a national and international context, tracing its origins, crises, and reforms through its first tumultuous decades.

This history details the efforts of various men and women who worked out the finances, governance, and policies that would balance the College of Medicine’s commitments to patient care, research, and medical education for the twentieth century. In particular, Solberg focuses on two individuals whose efforts were especially instrumental in establishing the University of Illinois College of Medicine. University President Edmund J. James had long been committed to the reform of medical education, and he exerted himself mightily to integrate the College of Medicine within the University. Although not directly affiliated with the University of Illinois, Abraham Flexner’s famous Flexner Report on medical education reform detailed the specific improvements that the University and state of Illinois would need to make to develop the College of Medicine into a major institution.

Solberg discusses the role of the College of Medicine and the city of Chicago in the historic transformation from the late nineteenth century, when Germany was the acknowledged world center of medicine and the germ theory of disease was not yet widely accepted, to 1920, by which time the United States had emerged as the leader in modern medical research and education. With meticulous scholarship and attention to detail, this volume chronicles the long and difficult struggle to achieve that goal.