Tag Archives: healthcare history

  • Heritage

    “The Dignity of Man”

    Dr. Paul Cornely, a 1931 graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, devoted his life to championing equal health care for all, leading to the desegregation of America’s hospitals. From enrolling at U-M in 1926 to his 39 years at Howard University to the establishment of the Paul B. Cornely Fellowship in 1988, read about Dr. Cornely's extraordinary impact here.

    read more
  • Michigan Today

    Two Weeks in 1918

    An unfamiliar strain of influenza reached Ann Arbor some time in the final days of September 1918. The early symptoms felt like a common cold plus “more marked irritation of the mucous membrane of the nose, mouth, and throat.” By October 1, 10 men and two women in their 20s and 30s, none of them University of Michigan students, had been hospitalized.

    read more
  • A flu mask is archived in a scrapbook at the Bentley Historical Library
    Heritage

    Fighting the Flu

    Scrapbooks archived at U-M include flu masks from a fatal influenza outbreak post-WWI. Michigan scientists worked tirelessly to develop a vaccine to ensure it never happened again.

    read more
  • Medicine at Michigan

    The First University Hospital

    150 years ago, U-M made history when it converted a professor’s house into the first structure in the U.S. that could rightly be called a hospital owned and operated by a university.

    read more
  • Painting of Sarah Gertrude Banks
    Medicine at Michigan

    In Her Own Right

    Sarah Gertrude Banks, one of the earliest women to graduate from the U-M Medical School, cared for patients while championing women’s suffrage.

    read more
  • Portrait of James Gerrit Van Zwaluwenburg
    Medicine at Michigan

    X-Ray Vision

    James Gerrit Van Zwaluwenburg (M.D. 1908) was an early adopter of X-ray technology, and he made imaging an integral element of clinical diagnoses and patient care at U-M.

    read more