1901-1911: Prelude to a Transformation

1911-1921: The Deanship of George Blumer and the Beginnings of the Move to Cedar Street

1921-1931: Milton C. Winternitz and the "Boom Years" at Yale School of Medicine

1931-1941: The Institute of Human Relations and the Depression Years

1941-1951: War Service, War Research, and the Immediate Postwar Period

Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

Historical Library

Bibliography of
Secondary Sources
on the History of
Yale Medical School

 

1931-1941

This Depression decade saw the creation of a Department of Psychiatry, the extensive publications of the Institute of Human Relations, and Harvey Cushing's return to Yale. In 1935, Stanhope Bayne-Jones replaced Winternitz as dean. At the end of the decade, additional funds from the Sterling bequest built the Yale Medical Library with its magnificent Historical Library.

 

Psychiatry Group, ca. 1935

Winternitz had long wanted to create a Department of Psychiatry. Psychiatry had previously little role in the Medical School curriculum. The Department was initially part of the Institute of Human Relations and provided mental hygiene services for Yale College students as well as training of medical students. Eugen Kahn (third from left), chairman, was Sterling Professor of Psychiatry from 1930 to 1946.. Under Bayne-Jones' Deanship, Psychiatry became a department in the Medical School like other departments.

Front Row: Lloyd James Thompson, Edwin Francis Gildea, Eugen Khan, Paul Preu.
Second Row: ---, ---, ---, ---, Helen Richter Gillmore, Warren Brown, Richard Newman, ---, ---, ---, ---

 

Department of Physiology, 1936

Winternitz recruited John F. Fulton to be Sterling professor of physiology in 1929. A graduate of Harvard Medical School and a resident under Harvey Cushing, Fulton had also obtained a D.Sc. working with Charles Sherrington at Oxford. At Yale, Fulton set up one of the first primate laboratories. He gathered around him a group of associates, especially Margaret Kennard, Theodore C. Ruch and Carlyle Jacobsen, to investigate such problems as the cortical control of muscular contraction in primates and the relation of the frontal lobes to behavior. Fulton's research interests focussed initially on the cerebral cortex, but he went on to do work on the hypothalamus, the autonomic nervous system, the cerebellum, the vestibular system, spinal cord, temporal lobe, and limbic system. In 1951, Fulton became the first professor of History of Medicine.

From top row left: Harvey Days, Dr. Overdraw, Earl Walker, Dr. Bolwell, Kenneth Thompson, Dr. Rish, --. Middle row: Miss Bereltee, Mrs. Peters, Louis Nahum, Ebbe C. Hoff, John F. Fulton, Dr. Green, Theodore C. Ruch, --, --.
Front row: Clif Clark?, Carl Clark?, Kerby (the keeper, with chimpanzee), Al Cappola, --, --.

 

Stanhope Bayne-Jones, Dean of the School of Medicine 1935-40

Stanhope Bayne-Jones graduated from Yale University in 1910 and received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1914. After studying bacteriology at Columbia University as well as abroad, he joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins and later at the newly established School of Medicine in Rochester, New York. In 1932, he came to Yale as professor of bacteriology. From 1935 to 1940 he served as Dean of the School of Medicine. During his tenure, the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research and the Institute of Human Nutrition were established. Bayne-Jones, who had a long interest in the history of medicine, oversaw the building of the Yale Medical Library and supported the efforts of John Fulton to create the Historical Library. After stepping down as dean, he served in administrative posts in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General during World War II, as president of the board of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and on numerous national committees. He contributed to the planning and execution of the massive series of historical volumes on the medical history of World War II.

 

Cooperative Research at the Institute of Human Relations

After the appointment of Mark May to be Director of the Institute of Human Relations in 1935, the Institute embarked on a series of interdisciplinary projects in the social sciences. This book is one of the many fruits of collaboration among psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, sociologists, and others, published in the 1930s and 1940s.

Frustration and aggression, by John Dollard, Neal E. Miller, Leonard W. Doob, O.H. Mowrer [and] Robert T. Sears, in collaboration with Clellan S. Ford, Carl Iver Hovland, Richard T. Sollenberger, Institute of Human Relations,Yale University. New Haven : Published for the Institute of Human Relations by Yale University Press, 1939.

 

Robert Mearns Yerkes, Professor of Psychobiology

Robert M. Yerkes, a pioneer in primate research, received a Ph.D. in zoology from Harvard in 1902. After holding major posts at the National Research Council and other Washington institutions, he came to Yale in 1924 as Professor of Psychology. From 1929 to 1944 he was Professor of Psychobiology at the Medical School. He was initially associated with the Institute of Human Relations. Yerkes directed the celebrated Laboratories of Primate Biology (Yerkes Laboratory) in New Haven and in Orange Park, Florida. His life work was the study of the evolution of learning and behavior in animals.

 

Arnold Gesell and the Clinic of Child Development

Arnold Gesell received his Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University in 1906 and his M.D. from Yale in 1915. In 1911, soon after his arrival, he set up a "psycho-clinic" at the New Haven Dispensary, later known as the Clinic of Child Development, which he directed from 1930 to 1948. From 1915 to 1948, Gesell was Professor of Child Hygiene at Yale. He and his associates were initially part of the Institute of Human Relations. Gesell's area of research was the development of the normal pre-school child, a subject on which he authored a number of influential works. Gesell's Clinic was the forerunner of the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.

 

Harvey Cushing Returns to Yale, 1932

After a distinguished career as America's foremost neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital at Harvard, Cushing, forced to retire from Harvard, was invited to Yale as Professor of Neurology in 1932. He brought with him Louise Eisenstadt and the Brain Tumor Registry which she managed; Madeline Stanton, his secretary, later Librarian of the Historical Library; and his magnificent collection of rare books and manuscripts. In 1934 Cushing hatched a plan whereby he, John F. Fulton, and Arnold Klebs would donate their rare books to Yale if Yale would build a Medical Library. Cushing died in October 1939 knowing that the Library would be built. The photograph shows Cushing at home in New Haven with his book collection, bequeathed to Yale in 1939 to become part of the Historical Library. A subsequent Tercentennial exhibit will trace the history of the Medical Library.

 

Doctors for America, 1939

The Depression had curtailed the building boom of the 1920s. This illustrated booklet, intended for development purposes, described the progress of Medical School and its needs. At this time the Administration was contemplating a two-million dollar building to house a library and a large auditorium. A much more modest building was decided upon in 1939. (See the future Tercentennial exhibit on the history of the Medical Library).

Doctors for America. New Haven, Yale University, The President's Committee on University Development, Division of Medicine and Public Health [1939].

 

Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research, established 1937

This endowment fund, initially valued at $3.5 million dollars, has long provided funds for cancer research to Yale and other institutions. It was established in 1937 by a gift in trust to Yale University by Starling W. Childs and Alice C. Coffin in memory of their daughter Jane Coffin Childs who died of cancer. The grant recipients were selected by a Board of Scientific Advisors, under the directorship of Stanhope Bayne-Jones. In its first three years, the Fund made grants for cancer research totaling $138,000. Today the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, which is housed in Sterling Hall of Medicine, awards fellowships for cancer research to recent M.D.s and Ph.D.s.

The photograph shows the Managers of the Fund in 1938.
First row: Frederic C. Walcott, U.S. Senator from Connecticut; Starling W. Childs, founder of the Fund; Charles Seymour, President of Yale.
Second row: Christie P. Hamilton; Stanhope Bayne-Jones, first Director of the Fund and Dean of the Medical School; George Parmly Day, Secretary of Yale.

 

Aerial View of the Medical School and Hospital, 1940

In the foreground is the entrance to the Hospital (Clinical Building), built in 1929 and facing Howard Street. Behind it is the Sterling Hall of Medicine.

 

Class of 1941

 

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