Medicine: Patriarch’s Party

“. . . Dr. Welch is only 70 years old and has at least ten years of active work before him. Ten years of Dr. Welch is more important, in our estimation, than the advantages offered by other universities.” This terse appraisal of William Henry Welch, “Dean of American Medicine,” by the powers of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1920, netted Johns Hopkins $7,000,000 much sought after by other universities, to found its School of Hygiene and Public Health. Many another loose million has been lured to Johns Hopkins to be converted into buildings, laboratories, endowment by the scientific and diplomatic prowess of energetic Octogenarian Welch.

Curious people who wish to see so magnetic a personality had best not write for an appointment. In his book-littered bachelor quarters he piles the day’s mail, unopened, on a great oak table. Over this a newspaper is spread on which the following day’s mail goes. This unique filing system usually collapses after a few days; the mail is thrown in the wastebasket by a despairing housekeeper.

One who wishes to enjoy the deep laugh, the sparkling conversation of William Henry Welch should seek him out at Baltimore’s Maryland or University Clubs, where he often sits playing chess; or in the white-tiled chain restaurant where he frequently eats; or at the university whose medical school he has made world-famed.

Seekers could, early this week (April 8), have found Dr. Welch seated with Herbert Hoover, President Livingston Farrand of Cornell and Director Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, on the stage of Memorial Continental Hall in Washington. He was fidgeting nervously, smiling sheepishly under a barrage of praise which was going out to scores of notables who sat peering at him from the audience, and to radio listeners all over the world. It was Dr. Welch’s 80th birthday party. To uphold the ancient custom of birthday present-giving the committee in charge of the celebration was hard put. No degrees could they give Dr. Welch; he had 18. Medals would not answer; he had plenty of them. On other occasions he had been given the presidencies of most of the prominent medical societies, had been decorated a number of times by foreign governments. Final decision: a dry point etching by Alfred Hutty. Print No. 1 went to Dr. Welch. The rest of the edition (45 copies) was scattered over the world to medical institutes, colleges, museums. As the prints of the etching were presented to various medical groups, ceremonies were held similar to the one in Washington.

The story of the man they honored:

Fourth generation representative of a medical family, young William Welch decided when he was graduated from Yale to upset Welch tradition, to teach Greek and Latin instead of studying medicine. He realized his mistake after a year, went back to Yale, then to the College of Physicians & Surgeons (Manhattan), then to Strassburg, Leipzig, Vienna, Berlin. Breslau, where he rubbed elbows with mountainous medical names: Paul Ehrlich (discoverer of salvarsan); Koch (discoverer of the bacilli of anthrax, tuberculosis, cholera); Pasteur (vaccines).

He returned to the U. S. and immediately began spreading the new, heretical doctrine that disease was caused by microscopic bodies. He found a fertile field for his missionary work. At Bellevue Hospital (Manhattan), he set up a laboratory, studied, taught, practiced what he preached.

In the late ’60s Johns Hopkins, wealthy Quaker merchant of Baltimore, provided money to establish there a University which would include a hospital and a medical school. Much preliminary preparation was necessary before the medical school could be opened. Finally, in 1883, needing a pathologist to open the school, the trustees despatched an emissary to Germany to find one. The Germans sent the emissary back to the U. S. “Find Welch,” they said. “We have no one bigger.”

Three other medical men were found for the nuclei around which Johns Hopkins was to grow great. One was a young Canadian, William Osier, destined to become Sir William, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. Before going to Hopkins he had had ten years teaching’ experience at McGill University, Montreal. For his work there he was later to get the unofficial title “Father of Modern Medicine in Canada.” The other two nuclei: Dr. Howard Kelly, now an internationally known surgeon, and the late Dr. William Halsted, whose fame was his operative technique for the eradication of goitre.

Once the school was functioning a long parade of students started, whose praise of Dr. Welch was to amount to little short of canonization. They have justly credited to him a connection with almost every great advance in U. S. medicine in the past 45 years.

“Welch Rabbits,” a cartoon in a Yale classbook, depicted Dr. Welch as a magician. From a silk hat he was drawing rabbits, labeled with names of his students. Some of the rabbits’ names: Joseph Colt Bloodgood, Simon Flexner, Franklin P. Mall, William Sydney Thayer, Lewellys Barker, Eugene Lindsay Opie, George Blumer, Walter Reed, James Carroll.

In 1917, aged 67, Dr. Welch joined the medical reserve corps, was commissioned major. Continuing his research work, he discovered the Welch bacillus (named by others), the gas-producing organism causing “gas gangrene” which attacked many a wounded soldier. In recognition of this and other work he was commissioned brigadier general in the Officers Reserve Corps.

Dr. Welch has held virtually every position in the Johns Hopkins medical school. Its first dean, he resigned to devote his entire time to the chair of pathology, which he held for 32 years. In 1916 he organized the School of Hygiene and Public Health, one of the first of its kind in the world, became its director. In 1926 he resigned “to give younger men a chance,” assumed the chair of History of Medicine which he founded. Three years later he opened the Welch Medical Library, one of the world’s great medical libraries (TIME, Oct. 28).

Johns Hopkins students long ago took a cue from Dr. Osler and nicknamed their school “St. Johns.” Their patriarch they nicknamed “Popsy.” They love him for defending them at faculty meetings after they have run amuck. They have affectionate stories about him. Example:

When he was moving his office last year the moving men found a great pyramid of books in a corner of his old office. As the books were taken away, corners of a desk appeared under the pile, finally a whole desk. Dr. Welch was surprised; confessed that he had lost the desk several years before.

There is on record only one unfavorable remark by “Popsy” Welch about another human being. Years ago he was told of a highly disparaging remark made about his colleague Dr. Osler by a Continental scientist. A few years later Dr. Welch was asked to express an opinion about the detractor. For a long time he hesitated, then mumbled in a hesitating voice that he must be “a terrible person.”

When old Johns Hopkins men revisit their school, or when callers come from foreign lands, they enter the great limestone Italian Renaissance library through its bronze doors, climb a flight of stairs, see a bronze bust of Dr. Welch on the landing, climb on to the second floor and in the Great Hall see John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the Four Founders—a huge canvas glowing with rich reds, symbolical of a great nation’s medical cornerstone.