Medicine: Banquet

In Manhattan last week, the alumni association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons assembled to honor a stalwart member. He was 75-year-old Dr. William Henry Welch, Director of the School of Hygiene and Public Health of Johns Hopkins University since 1916. He also has been President of the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research since 1901; trustee of the Carnegie Institution since 1906; a Brigadier General in the Officers Reserve Corps (he served in the Army during the War) ; holder of the Distinguished Service Medal and many another; recipient of a string of honorary degrees from U. S. and foreign universities; author of many standard texts on pathology.

Any of these glories would have served to promote a banquet. But these Manhattan physicians and surgeons had) a more intimate reason. Dr. Welch was one of their number. He had graduated from their school in 1875, five years after finishing at Yale. In 1876 he went to Germany for further study in Strassburg, Leipzig, Breslau and Berlin, interrupting his work for a six-year return to the U. S.

His first year abroad, a baby cooed and gurgled in Germantown, Philadelphia. That infant was to get his A. B. from Yale in 1897, his M. D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons (Columbia) in 1901; to serve in the War, to become Associate Professor of Surgery and Dean of his College in 1919. He was William Darrach.

At the dinner Dr. Darrach followed Dr. Henry E. Hale, President of the alumni association, in lauding his double co-alumnus—of Yale and the College of Physicians and Surgeons.