Stanford University School of Medicine and the Predecessor
Schools: An Historical Perspective
Part IV: Cooper Medical
college 1883-1912
Chapter 25. Perfidy and Progress 1885-1895
The International Medical Congress of 1877
Dr. Beverly Cole Offends Dr. Lane
During the planning of the 1887 International Medical Congress by the American Medical Association, Dr. Beverly Cole summarily expelled Dr. Lane from the planning committees. The following account of this unfortunate incident will explain the deteriorating relationship between Lane and Cole, and illuminate the status of organized medicine in America at the time.
The Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association was held in Washington in May 1884. Dr. Austin Flint, Sr., (1812-1886), Professor of Medicine at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York, a well-known authority on percussion and auscultation, was President of the Association for that year. In his Presidential Address Dr. Flint reviewed the progress of medical science, and the history of the A. M. A. with special reference to current dissension over its Code of Ethics.[1][2]
With respect to medical science Dr. Flint mentioned recent developments and made some shrewd predictions:[3]
I do not doubt that the present stage of medical progress will hereafter be cited as an important epoch in its history. For the past quarter of a century, histological and clinical studies have tended to develop more and more our knowledge of the existence of specific agents in the causation of diseases. That, as regards certain diseases, these specific agents are micro-organisms, has been demonstrated. The latest discovery in this direction is that of the bacillus tuberculosis, a discovery which is the leading topic in medical literature at the present time. Recent trustworthy researches go far toward demonstrating the existence of specific organisms in pneumonia, typhoid fever, malarial fever, and epidemic cholera; and, reasoning by analogy, it is a logical conclusion that ere long a host of diseases will be proven to be parasitic. It is easy to perceive how important must be the bearing of these developments in etiology and pathology, on prophylaxis and therapeutics.
A new era is about to be inaugurated in these practical departments of medicine. Professor Huxley, in his address at the international Medical Congress in 1881, uttered a prediction in these words: "It will become possible to introduce into the economy a molecular mechanism, which, like a very cunningly contrived torpedo, will find its way to some particular group of living element, and cause an explosion among them, leaving the rest untouched." I would rather say that the time will come when means will be found to destroy morbific agents outside the body, thereby securing the prevention of diseases; and that means will be found to effect the destruction of these agents within the body, thereby arresting the course of diseases.
In his sketch of the history of the A. M. A. Dr. Flint called special attention to its Code of Ethics, adopted at the Philadelphia Convention of 1847 without dissenting vote, and since then considered one of the most significant accomplishments of the Association:[4]
It is only within a recent period that there have been anywhere manifestations of a disposition to change materially our National Code of Ethics, or to do away with any code. In 1882, at the annual meeting of the New York Medical Society, by a vote of 52 of 70 members in attendance at the meeting, a new code was summarily substituted for the Code of the American Medical Association. This precipitate and lamentable action has severed the New York State Society from its affiliation with our Association, and has resulted in a division of the members of the profession in the State of New York.
At the time of Dr. Flint's Presidential Address to the A. M. A. in 1884, a fierce battle was being waged between those physicians in New York and elsewhere who supported the "new code" and the majority of members of the A. M. A. who remained loyal to the original Code of Ethics. In reprisal against the "New Code men", as they were called, the loyalists sought to exclude them from the A. M. A. and all its activities. Herein lies the pretext for an attack by Dr. Cole upon the reputation of Dr. Lane.
Dr. Flint concluded his Address with the following suggestion: on an entirely different subject:[5]
Our efforts to facilitate and foster friendly intercourse between members of the medical profession, as well as to promote the development and diffusion of medical knowledge, should not be limited to our own country. As the means of union for these objects of the medical profession of all countries, the meetings of the Intentional Medical Congress claim a warm interest. The meeting of the Congress in London, in 1881, will ever be memorable in the retrospections of its members, and they who expect to attend the meeting at Copenhagen in August next, may anticipate much enjoyment as well as improvement.
It would prove, as I doubt not, a source of great gratification to the profession of our country if the meeting of the Congress in 1887 were to be held in the United States, and I suggest the propriety of action to be taken now with reference to this desirable end. Inasmuch as an invitation should be in behalf of the profession of the whole country, and not of any particular section, it appropriately should come from the American Medical Association. If the suggestion be favorably received, it seems to me advisable that a committee be appointed with instructions to convey an invitation from this Association through its delegates to the Congress in Copenhagen. The committee may also be empowered to designate the time and place of the meeting of the Congress in 1887, and to take such other preliminary steps as may appear to the committee to be requisite.
The A. M. A. delegates at the annual meeting of 1884 , to whom Dr. Flint addressed these remarks, followed his recommendations to the letter. They established a "Committee of Eight on the International Medical Congress" chaired by Dr. John S. Billings of the Surgeon-General's Office of the War Department, and including Dr. Flint. The Committee was authorized to invite the Congress to meet at Washington in 1887 and, upon acceptance of the invitation, "to proceed to act as an Executive Committee with full power to fix the time and to make all suitable and necessary arrangements for such Congress and to solicit funds for this purpose." The Committee was also empowered to elect its own officers, add to its membership and perfect its organization.
As ordered, the Billings Committee attended the meeting of the Congress in Copenhagen in August 1884 as a delegation from the A. M. A. Their invitation on behalf of the A. M. A. to hold the next meeting of the Congress in Washington, D. C., in 1887 was promptly accepted.
Trusting in the explicit delegation to it of responsibility "to make all suitable and necessary arrangements" for the Congress of 1887, the Billings Committee of Eight acted independently and so efficiently that it could publish in the J. A. M. A. on 11 April 1885 procedures for the organization and conduct of the Congress of 1887. Also published were the names of the officers of a General Committee on the Preliminary Organization of the Congress, and an extensive list of the many other distinguished American physicians and medical scientists who had agreed to participate in the planning and conduct of the scientific program. The Billings Committee clearly sought to place the Congress under the scientific auspices of the outstanding men in American Medicine and, as they soon learned, were all too successful in doing so.
Among the officers of the General Committee on the Preliminary Organization of the Congress were Dr. Austin Flint, Sr., as President; eleven Vice-Presidents including Dr. Levi C. Lane; and Dr. Billings as Secretary-General. Among the numerous physicians appointed to the nineteen Medical Sections under the General Committee were Dr. Henry Gibbons, Jr., as a member of the Council of the Section on Medical Education, Legislation, and Registration; Dr. Levi C. Lane as a member of the Council of the Section on Surgery; and Dr. John Scott of San Francisco as a member of the Council on Obstetrics. Drs. Gibbons, Lane and Scott were the only physicians from the State of California and the Far West in the entire organizational structure of the Congress. All three were members of the California State Medical Society. It seems a rather pointed omission that Dr. Scott was chosen as the consultant on Obstetrics rather than Dr. Beverly Cole, the most prominent obstetrician in West at the time.[6]
The next annual meeting of the A. M. A. was convened in New Orleans from 28 April through 1 May 1885. There were only two delegates from California in attendance. They were Dr. Beverly Cole, Dean of the Medical Department of the University of California; and Dr. Anabel McGaughey Stuart who graduated from the Medical College of the Pacific in 1878 and was the second woman to graduate from a Cooper school. Both Drs. Cole and Stuart were delegates from the California State Medical Society.
On the first day of the New Orleans meeting Dr. Billings was called upon to make a Progress Report on behalf of the Committee of Eight which had been appointed to invite the International Medical Congress to meet in the United States in 1887, and to make all suitable and necessary arrangements for the Congress. In his Report Dr. Billings described the various steps the Committee had taken during the past year to carry out its mandate from the Association He also provided the delegates with a copy of the policies and procedures for the Congress and a list of the many prominent physicians who had agreed to participate in planning and implementing the program.
Dr. Billings thought that he had every reason to be pleased with the remarkable progress made by the Committee to date, and concluded his verbal presentation of the Report by saying:[7]
It is anticipated that within the next six months these programmes for the Congress will be approximately completed and, about the 1st of May 1886, the arrangements for the Congress will be in an advanced and definite shape for presentation and publication.
When his Report on the International Medical Congress was taken up for discussion on the following day, Dr. Billings was stunned by a vigorous protest against the Report. In spite of Association records to the contrary, Delegates from several states insisted that Dr. Billings' original Committee of Eight was only a "committee on arrangements" and had no authority other than to secure acceptance from the International Medical Congress to hold its 1887 meeting in Washington D. C.
Finally, after much heated debate, the following Resolution was adopted:[8]
Resolved, That the committee appointed by this Association to arrange for the meeting of the International Medical Congress in America, in 1887, be enlarged by the addition of thirty-eight members, one from each state and territory, the army, navy, and marine hospital service, to be appointed by the chairman at this meeting, and that the committee thus enlarged shall proceed to at once review, alter, and amend the motions of the present committee as it may deem best.
The Resolution in effect rebuked the Billings Committee by imputing that it had grossly misinterpreted and exceeded its mandate. The reasons given for this controversial action were three. First, the dissidents claimed that the Billings Committee had included too many of its own members on the "General Committee on the Preliminary Organization of the Congress." Second, that some "New Code" men had been carelessly appointed to the General Committee. And third, that the Billings Committee in its zeal to involve the foremost physicians in the nation (these physicians being concentrated in the northeast sector of the country), had created a General Committee that did not reflect the geographic distribution of the A. M. A. membership.
Publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association began in Chicago with Volume 1 in 1883, and the ever-faithful Dr. Nathan S. Davis was elected as the first editor. In a lengthy editorial in the issue for 30 May 1885, Dr. Davis vigorously defended the decision of the delegates to enlarge and redirect the Billings Committee. He also spent an inordinate amount of his time during the ensuing year responding to editorial attacks on the A. M. A. in other medical journals for what was widely considered a politically motivated and egregious error by the Association. Word of the contention crossed the Atlantic and European physicians were highly critical of the unseemly bickering of the Americans. In brief, the Resolution and its aftermath were an international public relations disaster for the A. M. A.[9]
The discussion on the Resolution included the following substitute motion which was rejected by a vote of 88 to 129.
Resolved, That the actions of the International Congress Committee, so far as they have gone, be approved by this body, provided all new-code men be left out.
This attempt to exclude "all new-code men" was thus soundly defeated and Dr. Beverly Cole of California, who was one of the discussants of this failed motion, was therefore fully aware that the A. M. A. did not authorize exclusion of "new-code men" from participation in the Congress.
In accordance with the Resolution passed at the New Orleans meeting in April 1885, thirty-eight new members chosen on a geographic basis were added to the original Billings Committee to constitute a new body entitled "The General Committee on the Organization of the Ninth International Congress in 1887." The General Committee assembled at the Palmer House in Chicago on 24 June 1885 "to review, alter and amend the motions" of the Billings Committee. Dr. Beverly Cole was elected Chairman of the General Committee which proceeded to revise the work of the Billings Committee.[10]
Billings was present at the Palmer House meeting and promptly wrote to Dr. Lane informing him of certain actions taken by the General Committee:[11]
War Department
Surgeon-General's Office
Washington, June 29, 1885
Dear Doctor Lane,
You will see the doings of the Chicago
Committee in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It
made Cole, President of the Committee of Organization, and
Shoemaker, Secretary. All New Code men were dropped. You were
dropped at Cole's instance, as being New Code.
Drs. Hays, Browne, and myself have resigned from the committee. It's a bad piece of business.
Regretting the results of our efforts, I remain,
Yours
very sincerely,
John S. Billings
Dr. Lane reacted to Cole's arbitrary banishment of him from offices in the Congress by publishing two weeks later a pamphlet entitled Shadows in the Ethics of the International Medical Congress. The following excerpts from the pamphlet reflect his resentment at Dr. Cole's duplicity:[12]
I am not now, nor have I ever been, connected with the New Code movement, either here or elsewhere; in fact, the subject has never been a matter of division on this Coast. I am a member of the American Medical Association, and as a duly accredited delegate, I represented that body not long since in the British Medical Association, and my mission was not dishonored by ostentatious show there or elsewhere, during a sojourn of over two years, during which I met the leading men connected with the medical institutions of Great Britain, Sweden, Russia, France, and Germany.
But my offense was quite outside of the New Code. Four years ago I reorganized in this city the first medical school ever established on the Pacific Coast, and to increase its efficiency and permanency, I gave it a property of value greater than any sum ever before given by any physician in this country for the advancement of medical science. This school, by winnowing out improper material by an enforced preliminary examination; and by the thoroughness of the instruction given in it by an educated faculty working in harmony, has naturally become the rival of another medical school in this city, Dr. Cole being connected with the last-mentioned school. Would it not be distrusting the reader's acumen to add further words to connect this paragraph with the subject here in question?
Dr. Lane was particularly hurt by Dr. Cole's ingratitude. While en route to the International Medical Congress in London in 1881 Dr. Cole learned of the serious illness of his daughter's husband in San Francisco. He wired his daughter to request Dr. Lane to attend to her husband and Dr. Lane managed the case successfully. He wrote to Dr. Cole informing him that the patient had improved and received from Dr. Cole the following letter of thanks:[13]
London, September 30, 1881
My dear Doctor Lane,
Your kind letter of the 8th was
received but yesterday. You cannot imagine how much pleasure it
gave me to learn directly from you of the permanent improvement
of my son-in-law, as also your expression of approbation of the
conduct of my dear child in the case. A better child never lived,
and in my experience, good children make good wives, and I
believe she is one of the best.
It is needless, dear Doctor, to presume to attempt to express my gratitude for your unremitting attention. I feel, from what my child has so often repeated - as well as the patient - that you could not have done more had she been of your kin; and to venture to say all I would under the circumstances would result in utter failure, hence I will only request that you reverse our positions, and what you would feel I do feel! With kind remembrances to all mutual friends, in which Mrs. C. unites with me,
I remain, Dear Doctor,
Yours,
R. Beverly Cole
In addition to this letter, Dr. Lane received two others of similar tenor thanking him for his services, not only to Dr. Cole's son-in-law but also to his daughter. These services embraced a period of nearly three years, including nine months of almost daily visits. Besides these house calls, Dr. Cole's daughter and her husband were seen frequently in Dr. Lane's office where they always received preferred attention. Dr. Cole's daughter had actually been under Dr. Lane's care within the past few weeks.
Small wonder that Dr. Lane was astonished and bitter to learn that his colleague and presumed friend had, on a false pretense, stricken his name from the list of Vice Presidents on the Committee for the Preliminary Organization of the Ninth International Medical Congress, and from the Section of Surgery. In his frustration, Dr. Lane unleashed a personal attack on Dr. Cole that left little prospect that their relations could ever be repaired.[14][15]
One seeks in vain for words to describe such action (as that of Dr. Cole), since such action has been so nearly unheard of as to have rendered it unnecessary to create words for its expression.
The honors conferred on me by the original (Billings Committee) were given unasked for. I had already sketched out some work as a contribution on a topic of surgery, in which I have had much experience; besides, I was in negotiation with a man of wealth for the establishment of an international medical prize for researches upon typhoid fever. These facts are here mentioned to show that I had not entered on this labor with an idle hand.
But my retirement has the solace of most excellent company; retirement with such men as Drs. Hays, Browne, and Billings can be borne. The first, the worthy heir of an illustrious name in American medicine, is the editor of the veteran mouth-piece of American medicine, viz.: The American Journal of Medical Sciences. The second has long been an ornament to the Surgical Corps of the United States Navy - a body of men second to none in refined culture and scientific attainments. As to the third, he and Dr. Cole were both at the International Medical Congress in London, 1881. and while Dr. Cole, conspicuous in his livery of bombast, was bringing derision on himself and odium upon American medicine by his exaggerations and incredible statements; while he was squandering the golden moments of that learned body, in the parade of his vaginal mechanical jim-cracks, which adverse criticism has already consigned to the lumber-room of oblivion (where a lover of antiquities might have found them years ago) - while this man was strutting and filling the learned ears from all nations with his "sound and fury," there stood there another man of unpretending demeanor, whose learned escutcheon bore the simple inscription, Modesty; and whose able papers, besides partially atoning for his countryman's parade and superficiality, won for their author an enduring place in the literature of the Congress, as well as in the memories of those present, and caused him to be recognized as the tongue, voice, fame, and honor of American representation in that august assembly; and the man was - John Shaw Billings.
As planning for the International Congress continued, the international carping against the ousting of the Billings Committee by the A. M. A. gradually subsided, largely due to the constant explaining and coaxing of Dr. Davis's editorials in the JAMA. When Dr. Billings resigned, Dr. Davis succeeded him as Secretary-General of the Congress. When Dr. Flint died on 13 March 1886, Dr. Davis was made President of the Ninth International Medical Congress which he ultimately convened in Washington, D. C., 5-10 September 1887.[16][17]
Then the Congress was over Dr. Davis, who more than anyone else was responsible for its ultimate modest success, was obviously tired of the whole affair. He published an evaluation of the Congress in an editorial in the JAMA which consisted almost entirely of a reprint of a leading article from the London Lancet that bestowed faint praise on the Congress, and referred tastefully to the discord associated with it.[18]
London Lancet, 24 September 1887
pp. 617 and 627
The success of the Ninth international Medical Congress is a matter of thankfulness. The interruption of the series of Congresses would have been little less than a calamity and a disgrace for the profession in all nations. Any serious imperfection in the meeting, either as respects numbers or the character of the discussions would have been but little less unfortunate. But the Congress has been held under most honorable auspices; the famous hospitality of the Unites States has been fully realized; and those who went great distances to attend the Congress have been amply rewarded. . .
Those in the United States who have worked to this end, and in spite of much discouragement, well deserve the gratitude which was accorded to them by formal resolution. We have purposely abstained, in our allusions to the Congress, from pointedly referring to the domestic differences among our brethren in the States, which threatened to seriously mar the success of the Congress, if not to prevent it altogether. Those who persevered in spite of all opposition, and who have carried through the Congress so successfully, may well be satisfied. They have done a great service to their country and to their profession in all countries. It is not necessary for us to say that they committed no faults and made no mistakes. Such praise is not for mortals in a world so full of 'spilt saltpetre' as ours. But they have carried through the Congress, and we thank them.
There is no evidence that Dr. Lane's indignant reproof troubled Dr. Cole in the slightest. Lane was by nature austere, scholarly, upright - and thin of skin. Cole was not a scholar but he was gregarious, witty, and a consummate politician. Following his defection to the Toland College, he was completely devoted to the extinction of all future versions of the original Cooper School that he had helped to found. There can be no doubt that he was motivated in removing Lane from committees of the International Congress by jealousy of Lane's new building and the prosperity of the Cooper institution. Medical politics was Dr. Cole's element and he could not resist the opportunity it gave him to eject Dr. Lane from a position of national prominence.
Dr. Cole's major role in the populist coup against the Billings Committee was a significant achievement in national medical politics. It was also a hefty step on the ladder to the presidency of the A. M. A. to which he was elected in 1895. His fondest hope, however, was to someday have a building to overshadow the expanding medical complex of the obnoxious Cooper College that dared to challenge the hegemony of his State school. At last, in 1898, he literally took the high ground when the State of California fulfilled Toland's expectations of State support by funding construction of the Affiliated Colleges, including a medical school. These buildings, perched on the eminence of donor Adolph Sutro's Parnassian acres, looked west to the Pacific and the Farallones; looked east to the outskirts of San Francisco - and down on the red brick complex of the Cooper Medical Center.[19]
In Dr. Cole's few remaining years, failing health and his declining effectiveness in the deanship sidelined him to a sinecure as Coroner of San Francisco. He held this post until age took its toll. He died of a stroke at seventy-one on 15 January 1901. Dr. Cole's biographer, respected historian Frances T. Gardner, fancied that Dr. Lane relented in the end, and was seen at the last rites:[20]
Dr. Cole's funeral was a masterpiece of Masonic pomp and ceremony and to it came the great and small of the city in which he had lived so long. Even Lane appeared, strangely downcast that his future held no more zestful squabbles with his ingenious rival. Lane knew that this old pioneer was the symbol of an era that was gone, a period unique in its lusty loves and hates and active lives and sudden deaths. He sighed as he left the church and sighed again as he looked toward the heights where the proud young buildings of the Affiliated Colleges stood alone in the sand dunes. As he turned away again to enter the doors of his own red brick buildings across the city, he shook his head and said as though to himself, "In spite of everything, Cole, God go with you."
In another short year, Lane was to follow his old adversary to that far country from which no traveler returns.
Addition to the College Building in 1890
During the year 1890 the College received two valuable donations of land: (1) two fifty-vara lots from Professor Lane; and (2) a one fifty-vara lot valued at $ 28,000 from Captain James M. McDonald, friend of Dr. Cooper. (A vara is a 32 inch square unit of area.) As a result of these acquisitions, the total College property in 1890 consisted of two-thirds of a block of land on part of which the original College building, completed in 1882, was then standing.
Cooper Medical College Faculty Room
In 1890, as an extension of the original College building, Dr. Lane erected, entirely at his own expense, another handsome brick and stone structure of equal size and similar architecture. The enlarged College building then covered a lot fronting on Sacramento and Webster Streets, measuring 145 x 100 feet, and leaving nothing to be desired in style and accommodations.[22]
Cooper Medical College Building with Addition of 1890
The new addition contained on the first floor a large clinical lecture hall; on the second floor a large and handsomely appointed public lecture hall (Lane Hall) and gallery with seats for a thousand persons; on the third floor rooms for physiological and pathological laboratories, and for instruction in the use of the microscope; on the fourth floor a chemical laboratory and a large anatomical amphitheater to seat five hundred students.[23]
The new structure was dedicated at the Commencement exercises held In Lane Hall on 13 November 1890. In an address to the graduates on that occasion, Dr. Lane expressed his pride and confidence in the College he had so generously endowed - and lashed out at baseless rumors (to which we have previously referred) that the money for the College buildings was not his own:[24]
Eight years ago, in 1882, I delivered an address to the graduating students of this College. . . That occasion was a momentous one in the history of the institution since the original building of Cooper Medical College was just completed and was then donated by me for the purposes of medical education. The present time is a no less important one, since it is the occasion of the completion of an addition to the original building which greatly increases the capacity of the former one, and has been constructed at a cost of a greater sum of money. This structure, which, in its space and internal arrangements is equal to any edifice of the kind in the old or new world, has been built by me, wholly, through means earned in my profession; these means have not been derived from bequests, inheritance, or trust from the one whose name the institution bears, or from any one else; I make this public declaration since the contrary has been stated. Any doubt upon this matter will be silenced by a reference to the archives of the Probate Court of San Francisco. . . .[25]
It is a source of great satisfaction to the friends of Cooper Medical College, that since the original building was erected the school has been successful beyond anticipation, the attendance having doubled in numbers. And this is due to the excellent work which has been done by the several professors; they have done their parts with punctuality, industry and faithful earnestness; they have been free from jealously and forgetful of self; in brief, they have done their duty and still intend to do it. This work has been recognized by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the highest English-speaking authority; this learned body has recently given Cooper Medical College full recognition; an honor shared only by a few medical schools on this continent
The completion of the work which establishes Cooper Medical College on a sure basis has been the chief object of my life; it has been the animating inspiration of twenty-five years of professional labor. . . To Medical Science, which is inseparably linked to all other sciences, and to the Healing Art, the greatest of all arts, this property is now given by me as a perpetual dedication.
Dr. Edward R. Taylor then delivered an address commemorating the unveiling of a bust of Dr. Lane in Lane Hall:[26]
Eight years ago, with appropriate word, there was dedicated to the cause of Medicine the college edifice so well known to us all, and in which has been successfully carried on by Cooper Medical College the work of medical instruction. In fact, so successful has been that work, and so promising the future in connection with it, that the same self-sacrificing hand, which eight years ago reared the original structure, has now made an addition to it of such large proportions as to double its capacity. The college structure proper, as it now stands completed, whether considered from the standpoint of architectural beauty, or from the standpoint of adaptedness to purpose, is not surpassed by any Medical College building in America, and indeed there is perhaps but one which can be said in these respects, to at all equal it.. . .
Now Dr. Lane himself, not content with his former benefactions to the College in the shape of lands and buildings, has, in addition, made a deed of gift to the College of the two fifty vara lots which adjoin the college premises on the east. Thus this corporation, devoted solely to medical instruction, owns, by free gift, a piece of land two hundred and seventy-five feet square, fronting on three important streets, and a college edifice architecturally imposing and beautiful, and possessing every present facility and resource for a complete medical education. . .
The Faculty of Cooper Medical College have, more than others, as was natural, appreciated at their high value the great services rendered to medicine by their head. They have been his worthy and zealous coadjutors for years, and no word of appreciation to him is richer or weightier than theirs. But they have deemed it altogether fitting and appropriate to go beyond mere words, and to set up in this hall a lasting memorial to the friend they love to honor. To that end they have had his bust cut in the purest Carrara marble by an esteemed artist of Munich, and have had the same appropriately mounted upon a colored marble pedestal, and placed within a niche in this lecture hall, where it is to remain forever, the perpetual embodiment of the guardian spirit of this place.
Upon behalf of the Faculty, who have deputed me to perform this kindly office, it gives me one of the greatest pleasures of my life to speak for them on this deeply interesting occasion, and in their name to formally present this truly beautiful work of art to Cooper Medical College with the hope that "Time's effacing finger" may never mar its pristine beauty and purity. The artist seems to have been inspired by his subject, for he has here produced the living, breathing man in his habit as he lives, and with such power and delicacy as to leave nothing further to be desired. Art here joins hands lovingly and rejoicingly with Science and Beneficence, to crown with imperishable laurel this glorious son of Medicine. . .
And as we unveil this marble, and you look for the first time upon the work which Art has so perfectly achieved, there is no one here present but must deeply feel, that marble never served a nobler purpose and never shone with a richer luster; but while contemplating the sculptured form which shall thus be transmitted to future generations, our thought cannot but rise from the perishable stone to the character and life work of the man which may not perish but shall endure for ever more.
The estimated outlay for land and construction of the first phase of the Cooper Medical College building, opened in 1882, was at least $ 100, 000. The cost of the additional structure, dedicated in 1890 at the Commencement exercises just described, was about $ 150,000. The College building, as enlarged by the addition, was more than double its original size and its overall cost exceeded $ 250,000.
Revision of Faculty Bylaws
As we have seen, the Faculty of Cooper Medical College adopted the Bylaws of the Medical College of the Pacific in November 1882 at their first meeting after reorganization under Cooper Medical College. Now, eight years later, in November 1890, President Lane appointed Professors Cushing and Gibbons, Jr., as a committee to prepare a revised set of bylaws for consideration by the Faculty. The following is an abbreviated version of the Bylaws as adopted in February 1891.[27]
Bylaws of Faculty of Cooper Medical College
(Rules for Government of the Faculty as Adopted at the Meeting of 28 February 1891)
I. The Faculty for the transaction of business shall consist of all the active Professors holding chairs in the College. Each shall be entitled to one vote. When vacancies in the Faculty occur, recommendations shall be made to the Board of Directors. No one shall be recommended for a professorship or adjunct professorship without the unanimous consent of the entire Faculty.
No Professor or Adjunct shall be recommended for expulsion without a two-thirds vote of the entire Faculty.
Assistants at the clinics shall be appointed by the Faculty only upon unanimous consent, but may be dismissed by a majority vote.
II. Regular meetings shall be held once each month, and special meetings at the call of the President
III. The following officers and standing committees of the Faculty shall hold office for one year and until their successors are chosen, unless otherwise specified.
Officers
A President, Vice-President, Dean, Secretary, and Finance Committee of two members shall be elected at the last meeting in December.
Committees
Executive Committee (consisting of the President, Vice-President and Dean, ex-officio)
Clinic Committee (consisting of all those engaged in the college clinics)
Committees Appointed by the President (of three members each)
Museum Committee; Library Committee; Lane Lectures Committee; Thesis Committee; Special Examination in Arts Committee. The President shall be ex-officio Chairman of the Lane Lectures and Thesis Committees.
IV. Duties of Officers. The President shall preside at all meetings, appoint committees, call extra meetings when desirable, and perform such other duties as usually devolve upon a presiding officer.
The Vice President shall act for the President in his absence.
The Dean is the executive officer of the Faculty, and shall have general management of its affairs under direction of the Faculty.
The Secretary shall keep a record of the meetings of the Faculty, assist the Dean in the performance of his duties, and attend in his absence to such duties as the Faculty may determine.
The Executive Committee shall attend to all business of the Faculty in the intervals between Faculty meetings, and to such matters as may be referred to it by the Faculty.
These Faculty Bylaws of 1891 served until a Plan of Organization of the Medical Department of Leland Stanford Jr. University was adopted by the Board of Trustees of the University on 26 March 1909.
Faculty Affairs (Castor and Pollux)
Rixford, Emmet (1865-1938) with Dr. Stillman
Dr. Lane was fortunate in being able to recognize promising young physicians on whom he could depend to pursue his goals for the College. His practice of taking two junior medical students into his office at 652 Mission Street for a year or two during which they served as his assistants was an effective means of identifying and developing candidates for the faculty. Two of these students, Stanley Stillman and Emmet Rixford, later became Professors of Surgery at Cooper Medical College and Stanford Medical School, and both made significant contributions.[28][29]
Stanley Stillman (1861-1934) was born in Sacramento on the 23rd of August. His father was Dr. J. D. B. Stillman with whom we are well acquainted. John Maxon Stillman, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford, to whom we have previously referred, was one of his three brothers all of whom had distinguished careers.
He attended the Boys' High School in San Francisco and then entered the University of California in the class of 1882. He did not graduate for at the end of his second year his strong-willed father took him out of school and put him in charge of the family vineyard in Redlands, California. After three years of pruning and cultivating grapevines; driving a four-horse team and ranching; he broke away and, much against his father's wishes, entered Cooper Medical College in 1887. He was a Student Assistant in Dr. Lane's Office, probably in 1888 and '89. He received his M. D. degree in 1889, the year that Emmet Rixford entered the College and during which their life-long friendship began.
When Dr. Stillman died in 1934, the San Francisco County Medical Society called upon Dr. Rixford to prepare an obituary:
I find it doubly hard to write of Stillman in any objective way, for I knew him intimately for more than forty years - nearly fifty. In fact, we grew up together professionally.
When, not long since, Dr. Leo Newmark wrote me asking for Stillman's address, saying that when one wishes to know about Castor, he naturally calls on Pollux, I could only reply that my relation with Stillman was not that of Pollux to Castor, but rather that of Chauvin to Napoleon; that I had followed him about for years with admiration and devotion comparable only to Chauvin's.
Stillman's nature was a complex of qualities not easily to find duplicated - proud, independent, critical, even irascible; yet kindly, sensitive as a woman. . . As a surgeon, he was not merely competent and skillful, but was gifted with an extraordinary human understanding, as honest, too, with himself as in his professional relations. . . .As a teacher, he had a great knack of painting word pictures which have become almost proverbial in his students' memories. His students adored him, even when savagely critical, as he sometimes was, for they could not but rise to his sterling honesty and his uncanny instinct which dictated his action and his words. (Trenchant qualities not unlike those of his father.). . . .
It is a pity that he contributed so little to the surgical literature, for with a mental makeup peculiar to himself he could have reached a far wider audience than that of the classroom, and his message would have been worth while.
In 1893, both Stillman and Rixford were appointed as Adjuncts to the Chair of Surgery. In 1898, both were promoted to the rank of Professor of Surgery. In 1909, Stanford University organized its medical faculty and Stillman was made Professor of Surgery and Executive Head of the Surgical Department. He continued in that position until 1926 when he reached the age of sixty-five and retired in accordance with University policy. When he died of bronchial pneumonia on 13 October 1934, it was written that "California's best beloved surgeon has gone."
Emmet Rixford (1865-1938) entered Cooper Medical College in 1889 and received an M. D. degree in 1891 upon completion of the three-year course of lectures required at the time. During 1890 and 1891 he served as a Student Assistant to Dr. Lane who regarded him with a confidence and affection that were not misplaced. Following graduation and some travels to study in other institutions, Dr. Rixford returned to assist Dr. Lane in his practice. Looking back over those years, it would seem that Dr. Lane favored the young Rixford as he might have an only son.
Rixford, Emmet (1865-1938)
Emmet Rixford was born 14 February 1865, in Bedford, a small town in Canada near the Vermont border. His father, an engineer, was a Vermonter and his mother a Canadian. The family business was the making of axes and scythes in two factories, one in Vermont and the other in Canada. In 1867, when he was two years old, his parents set out for California. They followed the path chosen by Elias Cooper twelve years earlier - down the east coast in a side-wheeler, across Nicaragua, then up the west coast in another side-wheeler to San Francisco. His father, who became city editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, was also a State Horticultural Commissioner as well as an avid gardener. It has been suggested that Dr. Rixford's love of the outdoors, especially mountain climbing and sailing, was a legacy from his father.[30][31]
Rixford attended public schools in San Francisco and entered the University of California as a student of engineering, graduating in 1887. He often said that his engineering studies stood him in good stead during his practice of surgery, and helped him especially to understand the mechanics of fractures, a subject to which he gave particular attention. After he graduated in engineering he decided to become a doctor and enrolled in Cooper Medical College in 1889.
Dr. Rixford's recollections of his tutelage under Dr. Lane, and his account of postdoctoral travels in the East, provide a glimpse of the standards of practice at the time:[32][33]
In my second year in medicine I was fortunate to be given a place in Dr. Lane's office where two of us spent alternate afternoons in routine office work, assisting in operations in the morning. We had the duties of operating room nurse; got the long, low and wide kitchen table out of the back hall into the patient's room where the operation was to be performed; cleaned a number of large white basins; got a quantity of hot water ready, towels, sheets, etc.; sponged off Dr. Lane's old oil cloth apron with its generations of pus and blood and his rubber cloth over-sleeves with elastic puckering strings which he used to protect his cuffs and shirt sleeves; sharpened the knives; got out the instruments, prepared sutures, etc.
One of us gave the anesthetic, the other assisted in the operation. Generally the slower of the externs was stuck, as we said, to give the anesthetic. In this way, I had personally a very large experience in administering anesthetics, and since the anesthetic used was the A. C. E. mixture of Billroth (alcohol, chloroform and ether), I had a large experience in artificial respiration. When the operation was over and the patient in bed, instruments cleaned, paraphernalia put away, the table carried downstairs, one of us would be assigned to watch the patient as nurse. Many a night I have sat up all night listening for the first rumble of the wheels of the vegetable wagons as they came in slow procession down Mission Street at two or three in the morning. This was always the sign of approaching day. . . .
On Sunday afternoon when practice was quiet, Dr. Lane would often call his students into his office and read us a chapter from Hippocrates or Lucian or Tacitus, translating as he went along.
When I was graduated in December 1891 I consulted Dr. Lane, said that I would like an internship. His reply was that I had learned most of the tricks of his faculty, that I would do best to go East, and he gave me a number of cards of introduction, but took occasion to say that I would be disappointed.
Dr. Rixford set out on his tour of the eastern medical centers in the winter of 1892. He stopped first in Chicago where he attended some clinics and operations at Rush Medical College and Cook County Hospital. He found surgical practice at much the same level as in San Francisco.
He spent several months in the spring in New York, principally at the New York Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled. He divided his time between the very busy hernia clinic of W. B. Coley (4000 patients a year with very discouraging results in inguinal cases), and the orthopedic service.
Next he stopped briefly at Jefferson in Philadelphia. "It seemed that all the students chewed tobacco for in the operating room the floors below the benches were running with tobacco juice and one had to walk carefully to avoid skidding."
He finally arrived at Baltimore in the summer of 1892, a year before Miss Garrett gave the money which permitted the organization of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. But the pathologists were active and he was given the great privilege of assisting in the laboratory at the elbow of Simon Flexner. Dr. Welch came in every day or two to look over Dr. Rixford's work. It was practically private instruction for him from that great teacher.
Another privilege at Hopkins was to go through the wards on occasion with Professor Osler, and to observe in the operating department where Dr. Halsted had introduced many innovations, including the first use of rubber gloves.
In Washington, the final stop on his tour, there was not so much to attract the casual medical visitor, but there was the Surgeon-General's Library where he met Doctor John Shaw Billings and his associate, Dr. Robert Fletcher. They were interested in the efforts at developing a library in Cooper Medical College and gave him carte blanche to select books from their collection of duplicates in the basement. Dr. Rixford was tempted to take the whole collection, because the College library was so small that there was little chance of duplication. He afterwards regretted that his modesty curtailed his enthusiasm, for he took only half a dozen or so large cases of books which on their arrival in San Francisco made a very important addition to the College library.
After his return to San Francisco in 1893, Dr. Rixford entered the office of Dr. Lane and in December 1893 was appointed as Adjunct to the Chair of Surgery. As already mentioned, both Stillman and Rixford were promoted to the rank of Professor of Surgery in 1898. They continued in that rank after Cooper Medical College completed its merge with Stanford in 1912.
Dr. Hans Barkan (A. B. Stanford, 1905; M. D. Harvard, 1910), son of the distinguished Professor Adolph Barkan, joined the Stanford Division of Surgery as an Assistant in 1914. Having advanced over the intervening years to the rank of Emeritus Clinical Professor of Surgery (Ophthalmology), Dr. Hans Barkan wrote an "Historical Sketch of Cooper Medical College" which was published in the Stanford Medical Bulletin in 1954. The "Sketch," based on his personal recollections of Cooper Medical College and its succession to Stanford, is one of the most valuable sources of information on the school's transition from proprietary medical college to university department. He has not only provided intimate views of the faculty and issues of the period, but has also transcribed minutes of critical faculty proceedings, the originals of which have since been lost. He had fond memories of Drs. Stillman and Rixford:[34]
From Lane's school arose an excellent group of surgeons. . . Of them all, two men, great contrasts in character, both ruling the surgical profession for many years, stand out in highlight: Stanley Stillman and Emmet Rixford, as surgeons the peer of any and the superior of almost all. I remember them when they were young assistants of Lane and I perhaps ten or twelve. A vivid picture to me still is the old-fashioned but comfortable living room of my parents, with my mother at the piano, Rixford singing Schubert songs, and Stillman puffing a cigarette in the bow window, with my father offering occasional musical suggestions, which were really commands. He had a great regard for both of them and with Lane recognized early that they were the coming men. Stillman served a year as my father's office assistant, and then one day suddenly, as was his wont, father told him that he was cut out for a big surgeon, and provided him with some funds to study. With whom and where I do not remember.
Stillman finally was in charge of all surgery and teaching at the Cooper school and later, as was Rixford, a Stanford professor. Rixford held the same position at the San Francisco Hospital. Both Stillman and Rixford were hard workers; Stillman inclined to growl about it, Rixford always patient. They were impatient with each other often; Stillman arguing the matter with passion, Rixford shaking his head in negation - both great surgeons, great personalities, and great friends.
Rixford was much more the student of the two, deeply versed in medical literature as well as general literature. He was a collector of many things; his collection, especially, of sea shells found at higher altitudes in the Sierra was a remarkable one. Among his favorite subjects was the rose, its development and growth. He was a mountaineer and a good sailor, and his yacht was well known on the bay. (It had originally been the ship on which "Boss" Tweed escaped from New York and took refuge in Cuba.)
Rixford had an even disposition, whereas Stillman had a fiery temper. Many had to suffer by some outrageous remark or act of his in the operating room. But he had a wonderful quality of self-condemnation and would meet you in the hall afterward, stop dead in his tracks, put his hand on your shoulder, with his blue eyes shining affection at you, and say, "Now, my boy, you know I didn't mean that." If that ever happened to you once with him, you forgave him all and would do anything for him after that.
On one occasion, at a banquet in his honor he was teased about this temper of his and told the following story:
"My father had a canary and, when he was tired of hearing him sing, would throw a cloth over the cage. One day the bird continued to sing in spite of the cloth. My father, in a rage, reached into the cage, broke the canary's neck and threw him out of the window." Then Dr. Stillman said, with his charming smile, "Now, what in hell do you expect from a man with an ancestry like that?"
Progress Report
There were two other developments of interest in the 1890's.
Curriculum
The duration of the medical course was increased from three to four years effective 1 January 1894. The significance of adding one year to the course was watered down by provisions for avoiding the first year. For example, the student could skip the first year if he had a B. A. degree; or if he had a high school diploma accompanied by evidence that the curriculum pursued included the following subjects: Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry and one of the following optional subjects: Pharmacy, Botany, Biology, Histology or Bacteriology; or if the student studied first year subjects privately and passed an examination on these by the Faculty. Another means of avoiding the first year was one year's pupilage with a physician whose standing and facilities for imparting instruction were acceptable to the Cooper Faculty - the old apprenticeship resurrected. Such loopholes served to depress the quality of students entering the medical school, and perpetuated a fundamental flaw in American medical education of the day - that of admitting poorly qualified students to the study of medicine.[35]
Library
At a meeting of the Faculty of Cooper Medical College on 17 June 1895, Dr. Rixford was appointed Chairman of the Lane Library Committee, in other words he was made the Librarian. There were some 300 volumes on the shelves at the time. Dr. Rixford's appointment was especially noteworthy for his tireless efforts were crucial to the future growth and development of the Library which he called "my most beloved hobby."[36][37]
The Founding of Stanford University
Paralleling these medical events during the 1880's and early 1890's was a development destined to have the profoundest influence on Cooper Medical College. This was the founding of Leland Stanford Junior University by Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Junior.
Founding of the University was accomplished by a Grant of Endowment by Senator and Mrs. Stanford, dated 11 November 1885. To make the Grant legal under the constitution and statutes of the State of California, Senator Stanford procured passage on 9 March 1885 of an enabling act by the State legislature.[38]
Senator Leland Stanford (1824-1893), as we have already mentioned, moved from Wisconsin to California during the height of the Gold Rush in 1852 and opened a store in Cold Springs, Eldorado County. He had married Jane Lathrop (1828-1905) in 1850, but left her behind until he was able to bring her out to Sacramento in 1855 where he bought out a store from his brothers. He prospered materially and politically and on 10 January 1862, not yet thirty-eight years of age, was inaugurated as Governor of the State of California. He did not seek reelection as Governor but, instead, devoted his energies to the presidency of the Central Pacific Railroad which began laying track toward the east in 1863. The Union Pacific, laying track toward the west, met the Central Pacific at Ogden, Utah, on 10 May 1869 to complete the first transcontinental railroad.
In 1876 Governor Stanford purchased a large tract of land near a tall and time-worn Sequoia sempervirens thirty-five miles down the peninsula from San Francisco. This property, 8, 400 acres in extent and named "The Palo Alto Farm," is now the site of Stanford University. We have already referred to Governor Stanford's interest in horses and his friendship and collaboration with J. D. B. Stillman in a study of the "Horse in Motion" conducted at the Farm and published in 1882.
During the final decade of his life, Governor Stanford was immensely popular in the Republican Party. Not only was he elected U. S. Senator from California in 1885 and reelected in 1891, he was widely solicited to run for President. However, because of progressive illness he was unable to complete his second term in the Senate, and died in his sleep on the night of 20 June 1893 at the age of sixty-nine.[39][40][41]
The Stanfords' only child, to whom they were utterly devoted, was a son, Leland Jr. He was born 14 May 1868 in Sacramento. The tragic, defining moment of their lives occurred on 13 March 1884. On that date Mrs. Mark Hopkins, close personal friend of the Stanfords in San Francisco, received the following cablegram from Florence, Italy:
OUR DARLING BOY WAS TAKEN FROM US THIS MORNING AFTER AN ILLNESS
OF THREE WEEKS WITH TYPHOID FEVER. PRAY FOR US.
LELAND AND
JANE STANFORD
The Stanfords were prostrate with grief. The burden of their sorrow seemed unbearable until one troubled night, as vividly recalled by Governor Stanford, his son came to him in a dream, urging him not to despair of life but to "live for humanity." From that moment he resolved that he would build a university and that "the children of California shall be my children."
Governor and Mrs. Stanford never doubted the import of the revelation and on their journey back to San Francisco with the remains of their son they sought advice on the founding of a university from Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and perhaps others. Following these consultations the Stanfords, their determination undiminished, legalized the grant of endowment on 11 November 1885, less than two years after Leland Jr.'s death. The construction of the University began with the laying of the cornerstone on 14 May 1887, Leland Jr.'s nineteenth birthday and three years after his death.
Opening exercises for the University were scheduled for 1 October 1891. As Opening Day drew nearer and a University President had not yet been chosen, Mr. Stanford, now a. U. S. Senator, and Mrs. Stanford sought urgently to fill this vital position.
David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) was recommended to the Stanfords for the presidency of the new university by Andrew D. White, retired president of Cornell University at Ithaca, N. Y. The circumstances were these. In early March of 1891, the Stanfords traveled to Ithaca to ask President White to accept the presidency of Stanford University. He declined. When asked whether there was anyone he would suggest, he advised that David Starr Jordan, one of his former students and now President of Indiana University, be offered the position.
That same day, after the meeting with President White, the Stanfords headed in their private car for Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. When they arrived Jordan had gone to the University of Illinois in Urbana to give an address. Upon his return to Bloomington at five on Sunday morning, he was met on the street by one of the Trustees of Indiana University who informed him that Senator and Mrs. Stanford had arrived in their private car on the previous day and were waiting to see him at the National Hotel. Jordan recalled their meeting and his momentous decision:[42][43]
My first impressions of Leland Stanford were extremely favorable, for even on such slight acquaintance he revealed an unusually attractive personality. His errand he explained directly and clearly. He hoped to develop in California a university of the highest order, a center of invention and research, where students should be trained for "usefulness in life." His educational ideas, it appeared, corresponded very closely with my own. Indeed, from President White he had been assured that I was the man to organize the institution he contemplated.
The Senator then went on to explain that since the formal founding of Leland Stanford Junior University in 1886, only buildings and land had been given, but that practically all the joint property of himself and wife, valued at more than $ 30,000,000, would ultimately form the endowment. Should Mrs. Stanford outlive him the bulk of the property would be willed to her, that she might still have the honor and enjoyment of giving, and not sit idly by while others administered the finances. I refer specifically to this chivalrous attitude on the part of Mr. Stanford, as it shaped the early history of the University endowment. He further stated that the board of trustees, already appointed, would remain without function during the lifetime of either founder, unless specially called upon to serve.
In conclusion he offered me the presidency of the institution at a salary of $10,000.
While I went home to discuss the matter, Mrs. Stanford and her faithful secretary, Miss Bertha Berner, attended service in a neighboring church. There a student preacher discoursed somewhat vigorously on the wrath of God. At the end, he approached the two ladies to ask if the five-dollar goldpiece Mrs. Stanford had put into the contribution basket was perhaps dropped by mistake. She reassured him on this point, but said she was not acquainted with the God he had talked about; the One she knew was "a God of Love, who pities them that fear him, even as a father pitieth his children."
After a short consultation with Mrs. Jordan, I decided with some enthusiasm to accept Mr. Stanford's offer.
David Starr Jordan was born on 19 January 1851 to a family of limited means on a farm one mile from Gainesville, N. Y. , and 50 miles south of Rochester. He was a precocious, well-adjusted boy, blessed with intelligent and understanding parents and a wholesome family life. Duties on the farm were balanced with pursuit of early "scientific" interests in the stars and geography. In later life he was to say that "my very early education I received at home, and I cannot remember when I did not know how to read. . . I remember nothing which I can fairly count as an obstacle." His primary and secondary education was in a variety of local schools where devoted teachers and an eager pupil made up for sparse resources.
While engaged in a stint of teaching school in South Warsaw, N. Y., in 1868, Jordan's preparation for college was put to the test. He decided to compete for a free scholarship to Cornell University which had been founded in Ithaca, N. Y., in 1865. Leaving one of the older boys in temporary charge of the school, he took the scholarship examination that was being held in Warsaw. He won the scholarship over three other competitors and in March 1869, full of hope and ambition, entered the new University. Prior to entering , he wrote ahead to the registrar:[44]
With youthful naiveté, I explained that I was eighteen years old, six feet tall, and weighed 180 pounds!. At that time I was a strong, muscular, though sparely built and somewhat round-shouldered, young fellow; and a good athlete, especially in sprinting and high jumping.
Entering the University in March, 1869, as a belated freshman, Jordan was able in June to pass all the prescribed first-year work except that in Physiology - which he had never studied - so that upon his return in the fall of 1869 he was admitted as a regular member of the sophomore class. During the three years which followed he completed all requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science, besides about two years of advanced work in Botany. Taking this last into consideration, the faculty conferred upon him at graduation in June, 1872, the advanced degree of Master of Science instead of the conventional Bachelor's Degree received by the rest of the class. (We can interpose here the information that in 1886 Jordan was the recipient of the degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred simultaneously on him and retired President Andrew White by Cornell University. )[45]
During the latter portion of his undergraduate years at Cornell, Jordan came to feel that he wanted to be a teacher of science and that the field of Vertebrate Zoology was his primary interest. With this ultimate goal in mind, at twenty-one years of age he accepted a Professorship of Natural Science at Lombard University in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1872. He resigned from Lombard in 1873 after one year of teaching which was marred by differences of scientific opinion with the outdated old guard of the institution.[46]
From Galesburg Jordan went directly to Penikese Island, a little forgotten speck on the ocean about eighteen miles from New Bedford, Massachusetts, off the heel of Cape Cod. He was one of those chosen by Professor Luis Agassiz of Harvard to constitute the first class in his proposed Summer School of Science, a program designed to improve the information and methods of teaching of American teachers of Zoology. Fifty teachers (35 men and 15 women) were chosen from hundreds of applicants for this first class of Professor Agassiz's experimental program of teaching teachers of Zoology.
During this summer of 1873, Jordan so impressed Professor Agassiz that he offered him an appointment as curator of fossil vertebrates in the Harvard Museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Meanwhile Professor Agassiz received a letter from the Appleton Collegiate Institute of Appleton, Wisconsin, a preparatory school emphasizing the teaching of science, requesting him to send one of his students to be Principal of the Institute. Jordan was strongly recommended, was promptly appointed, and at once set out for Appleton to undertake his new duties.
Unfortunately, the Institute was forced to close in June 1874 for financial reasons. Jordan was once more without a position and Professor Aggassiz was not to conduct another summer session on Penikese Island - he died in December 1873.
Jordan returned to Penikese in the summer of 1874. In the absence of Professor Agassiz, the program was under the direction of his noted son, Alexander Agassiz, and Professor Burt G. Wilder of Cornell. This was the school's last session, following which it closed forever.
At the end of this second and final summer of the Penikese school, Jordan's resources, and perhaps his spirits also, were running low. He was therefore pleased to receive a telegram from Superintendent George P. Brown of Indianapolis, Indiana, asking him to take up the teaching of science in the High School there in the fall of 1874. He gladly accepted the position.[47]
While engaged with his work in the Indianapolis High School, he was also able to spend some time in the near-by Indiana Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875 (less than a year from his arrival in Indianapolis), he received the scarcely-earned degree of Doctor of Medicine. Though it had not at all been his intention to enter that profession, he thought that a certain amount of medical knowledge would enable him to teach Physiology better. The next year he gave a course of lectures on Comparative Anatomy in the Medical College. So much for the standards of medical education in Indiana in 1875.[48]
On 10 March 1875, Jordan was married in Peru, Massachusetts, to Susan Bowen whom he met at the first summer session of the Agassiz school on Penikese. After ten years of married life, she died in Bloomington, Indiana, on 15 November 1885, leaving three children. She was a woman at once gentle and enthusiastic, always hopeful, and of the type for which the word "beloved" is naturally employed.[49]
Late in 1875, at the end of one year as high school teacher in Indianapolis, Jordan found himself unexpectedly elected to the professorship of Biology in Northwestern Christian University. This school was, at the time, in the process of being moved from Indianapolis to Irvington, a suburb five miles distant and since included within the city of Indianapolis. Coincident with the move, the burdensome original name was changed to "Butler University" and later to Butler College.
With respect to Jordan's scientific work during the period from 1874 to 1876, he made large collections of birds in Wisconsin and Indiana and prepared a series of descriptions for his first real contribution to science: A Manual of Vertebrates of the Eastern United States, published in 1876. In the summer of 1876 and in the following years he conducted regional research on fish and other fauna. These studies were the basis for his growing reputation as an ichthyologist.[50]
The academic year of 1878-79 proved to be his last at Butler where faculty dissension over the religious affiliation of the professors led Jordan to resign on short notice in protest. He was then offered the professorship of Natural History (which meant zoology, geology, botany, and physiology) in Indiana University in Bloomington in the fall of 1879.
Almost immediately he was approached by the Fish Commission under the United States Census Bureau to take charge of an investigation of the marine industries on the entire west coast. Making arrangement for his collegiate work to be taken over temporarily by someone else, he entered upon the assignment in December 1879.
Having completed this important work, he returned to the University in the early fall of 1880. Thereafter he addressed the needs of the students in his Department of Natural History, while continuing his regional research to such good effect that on 1 January 1885 he was unanimously elected President of Indiana University. At that time the University contained 135 collegiate students, with about 150 in the preparatory department, which served as a high school for Bloomington.[51]
By 1891, Jordan had served as President of Indiana University for six years. Other noteworthy features of his career to date included the following. He discharged his duties as President of Indiana University so ably that, when offered the presidency of the University of Iowa in the spring of 1886, he was induced to decline the offer by the unanimous appeal of the Indiana Trustees. He married Miss Jessie Knight of Worcester, Massachusetts, on 10 August 1887. By this time he had personally visited every considerable river basin in the United States in connection with his highly-regarded studies of fish, and had received significant national recognition as an investigator, educator and academic executive.
It was at this juncture that Jordan met on Sunday morning 22 March 1891 with Senator and Mrs. Stanford. They offered him the presidency of Stanford University which he formally accepted the following day - fortunately for the future of Cooper Medical College and medical education in the West.[52][53]
Opening of the University
Dr. Jordan retained his presidency of Indiana University until the June Commencement in 1891, and his salary as President of Stanford University did not begin until 20 May . Nevertheless, immediately upon receiving his Stanford appointment, he began an intensive search for faculty, a campaign unprecedented in scope at the time in American higher education. By the end of the summer he had engaged a faculty and staff of twenty-five: fifteen professors (including President Jordan); four non-resident professors; two assistant professors; one instructor; and three staff.[54]
Faculty of the new university began to arrive at the campus in June 1891. The town of Palo Alto was not yet established and only a dusty dirt road connected the Quadrangle of the University with the railroad tracks beyond which was the prospective town of Palo Alto then known as University Park. Living accommodations were virtually non-existent on the campus for faculty and their families. They had to seek out small-town hotels and boarding houses in Menlo Park and other nearby communities until, months later, small cottages were completed on campus. Meanwhile construction of university buildings and student dormitories continued at a hectic pace to meet the deadline of October first for opening ceremonies.
President Jordan was in his element. His infectious energy and good humor lifted the spirits of faculty colleagues who responded to the pioneering living conditions by setting to work with enthusiasm on the new curriculum they were soon to introduce. President Jordan was later to refer to them as "A handful of young idealists. . . We did not mind the primitive conditions of our material existence, and accepted without a murmur the penury of books and apparatus, for poetry was in the air we breathed, hope was in every heart, and the presiding spirit of Freedom prompted us to dare greatly."[55]
Senator and Mrs. Stanford spent the summer in their home on the campus, participating in all major decisions and immensely gratified by the remarkable progress of construction, and the inspiring, irresistible leadership of their new President.
Dr. Orrin Leslie Elliott, first Registrar of the University, was present on Opening Day:[56]
On the first day of October 1891 the breath of life was breathed into the fashioned clay. More than four hundred students appeared for registration on this opening day. The event of the occasion was the ceremony of dedication, which was held in the open court of the Inner Quadrangle. A stand for the speakers had been erected in front of the Spanish arch at the west end of the court, and the surrounding arches were profusely decorated with California's choicest flowers and shrubs. The western half of the court was filled with a great gathering of people from far and near. Here Mr. Stanford for the Founders, Judge Shafter for the Trustees, President Kellogg for the State University, and President Jordan gave appropriate expression to the feelings which the occasion called forth and to the aims and anticipations and hopes for the development of the institution for which such long and costly preparation had been made.
"For Mrs. Stanford and myself, " Mr. Stanford said, "this ceremony marks an epoch in our lives, for we see in part the realization of the hopes and efforts of years. . . You, students, are the most important factor in the university. It is for your benefit that it has been established. To you our hearts go out especially, and in each individual student we feel a parental interest. All that we can do for you is to place the opportunities within your reach. Remember that life is, above all, practical; that you are here to fit yourselves for a useful career; also, that learning should not only make you wise in the arts and sciences, but should fully develop your moral and religious natures."
It was for Dr. Jordan to speak directly of the task and ideals of the University. . ."It is the personal contact of young men and women with scholars and investigators which constitutes the life of the University. Ours is the youngest of the universities, but is heir to the wisdom of all the ages. . . We hope to give our students the priceless legacy of the educated man, the power of knowing what really is. Every influence which goes out from these halls should emphasize the value of truth. . . The University has its origin in the shadow of a great sorrow, and its purpose is the wish to satisfy for the coming generation the hunger and thirst after knowledge - that undying curiosity which is the best gift of God to man. The influence of the boy, to the nobility of whose short life the Leland Stanford Junior University is a tribute and a remembrance, will never be lost in our country. The Golden Age of California begins when its gold is used for purposes like this.. . . "
Unfounded Rumors and Friendly Relations
As early as September 1891, Senator Stanford stated in reply to an inquiry from a newspaper correspondent that he intended at some future time to establish a department of medicine in the University. A year later a story appeared in the San Francisco Examiner to the effect that the University of California and Stanford University "are both striving by every possible means to secure the Cooper Medical College." This statement had no basis in fact as far as Stanford was concerned, and President Jordan wrote, "There is nothing as yet in the discussion of the union of Cooper Medical College. It seems to have started in the City without any provocation on our part. . . I do not think Mr. Stanford wishes to extend the University in the direction of medicine for the present." Any further speculation on this subject was completely stopped by the death of Mr. Stanford in June 1893 and the financial reverses for the University which followed.[57]
In any case, interactions between Stanford and Cooper Medical College were likely to occur eventually in view of their common interest in higher education and the mutual respect tending over time to develop between President Jordan, eminent Natural Scientist, and Dr. Lane, foremost physician-scholar in the West.
The Faculty of the College took the initiative. At its Regular Meeting on 19 September 1892, Dr. Lane being present, it was voted to invite President Jordan to be the Orator at the Commencement Exercises of the College on the evening of 6 December 1892.
The Exercises were held in Lane Hall where fully one thousand people assembled to witness the conferring of M. D. degrees to thirty-eight graduates of Cooper Medical College. Punctually at eight o'clock the orchestra struck up a sprightly overture and shortly afterwards the graduates marched to their respective seats two by two with the Faculty at their head. The ceremonies were opened by Reverend Hirst who invoked the blessings of the divine healer upon those on the threshold of their professional careers. Professor Lane then conferred the degrees and Dean Gibbons gave a lengthy Valedictory Address in which he congratulated the students and paid glowing tribute to Dr. Edward R. Taylor who had drafted California's legislation against quacks and empirics that led to establishment of the State's Official Register of Physicians and Surgeons.[58][59]
President Jordan was the last of the several speakers, choosing as his subject "The General Training of the Physician:" He spoke bluntly of the current status of American medicine and of the need for premedical education to improve the quality of candidates for medical studies.[60]
The medical colleges have made the preliminary training a matter of luxury rather than of necessity, by putting into the same classes under the same instruction the graduates of colleges and persons who come from the country district school. If general culture be essential to professional success, the medical college should say so to those who would enter its doors. So far as any official action in most of our medical colleges is concerned, the illiterate boor, if he can sign the matriculation book, is as ready for medical education as the most accomplished college graduate.
The physicians of our country say the same thing, for the number of college-bred men in medicine is lower than in almost any other profession. Statistics show that in the United States at present, about one clergyman in four, one lawyer in five, and one physician in twelve, has had a college education. Taking the country over, of all classes of students, those in medicine are as a rule (though such a rule admits of many individual exceptions) the most reckless in their mode of life and the most careless of the laws of hygiene and of decencies in general of any class of students whatsoever. This is not so true now as it was a few years ago. In the Cooper Medical College it is doubtless not true at all. For this change the rising standards of our medical schools are certainly responsible. This change results directly from making it more difficult for uncultivated men to win the doctor's degree, and indirectly from bringing better men into the field as competitors. Already there is a good deal of crowding at the bottom of the stairs in the profession, and in view of this fact the scramble for the name of doctor is somewhat abating.
It was my fortune some three years ago to meet that which in Europe is regarded as a typical American physician, one who was taught by nature and not by schools. He was, therefore, regarded by the people of rural England with a reverence which the man of training often fails to inspire. It was in the solemn and decorous village of Stratford-on-Avon that I met this physician. Riding on a gilded circus wagon attired in a cowboy's splendid uniform, with a band of musicians dressed as cowboys and stained as Indians, this man was going through England selling from the wagon, that famous remedy of the Kickapoo Indians, known as August Flower. It cures every disease known to that country-side by the simple purification of the blood. In one day in Stratford-on-Avon he won back for America all the money the Americans have spent on the shrine of Shakespeare within the past 300 years; and on Sunday evening I saw him installed in the famous parlors in the ancient Red Horse Inn at Stratford, sacred to the memory of Washington Irving, as the one American there worthy to dine within its historic walls.
A concerted effort is now being made to raise the standard of the profession of medicine by raising the general culture of physicians. Its purpose is to make medicine a worthy branch of applied science, and its votaries men to whom the word science is not an empty name. It has been a frequent reproach to the medical profession that physicians are not doing their part in this age of scientific investigation and discovery, in a time when the boundaries of knowledge are widening in every direction at a rate of progress never before known. . . .
If our physicians are deficient in general culture, and if it be true that they are not taking their share in the progress of science, may not these facts be associated? May we not have here the relation of cause and effect? What then is the remedy? Is it not this? Bring in better men; shut out from the medical profession the ignorant, trifling and unambitious, the tinker and the job-worker, and reserve the training of our medical schools for those who can bring to their work the instincts, the traditions, and the outlook of the scholar.
This condition of things, I believe, has two causes - the one discreditable to the profession, the other to the colleges. In the first place most of our medical schools are scantily endowed, or else are purely private ventures. It has been for them a business necessity to demand not the preparation they want, but that which they can get. In other words, they have been forced to cater to the desire of ignorance and impatience to take part in the honor and emoluments of the medical profession. For the same reason the standard of graduation has been kept low. A high standard would diminish the sale of the lecture tickets. The character of the profession has been lowered that the medical college may be self-supporting, for not to support itself in part at least means to close its doors. I do not mean to depreciate this class of medical schools, for many of our best teachers of medicine have belonged to them and have given their instruction in the intervals of an active practice.
But this is not the ideal medical school, for no school can be effective until it exists for its work alone - instruction and investigation with no ulterior end whatever. Its teachers should never have to look to the interests of the cash account, and its examiners should never be forced to say that black is white at the demand of an empty treasury. The medical schools of the future will be sustained as necessary parts of university work, and the freedom of the university professor will be the right of the teacher of medicine. The medical school has the same claim for support that other professional schools should have. They have the same claim on the interests of the wealthy friends of education. In the West and in the South, where colleges and the lower schools are alike maintained at the public expense, the medical schools have the same claim for State support that is awarded to other parts of the public school system.
Such a course of study as is here contemplated is actually provided in the undergraduate department of several of our universities, notably at Cornell and Johns Hopkins, in both of which colleges it is known as the medical preparatory course. It is, however, a course of general culture not a technical or professional course. This course, or its equivalent, is to be recognized as a condition of entrance in the new medical school of Johns Hopkins University. No more important movement has been taken toward raising the standard of medical education in America than this recognition by Johns Hopkins University of the necessity of scientific and literary culture as a requisite for professional training.
As the first president of a new university in the West, now in only its second academic year, Jordan's harsh criticism and proposed reforms of the American medical profession and medical education must have seemed brash to Dr. Lane and the Cooper Medical Faculty. Such was Jordan's refreshingly outspoken nature and, furthermore, he had previously given much thought to the issues involved and welcomed the opportunity in the Commencement Address to expound his philosophy of medical education which he later summarized in his autobiography as follows:[61]
As a university president, one of the aims I had long cherished was the development of a medical school on a modern foundation, and even before Johns Hopkins was established I worked out a plan quite in harmony with that adopted by President Gilman and his associates. For medicine always seemed to me essentially a university subject - the application of certain sciences to bodily welfare. Its methods of instruction, therefore, ought to be those of the scientific laboratory; its teachers should be devoted to the extension and diffusion of knowledge, and placed accordingly on the same basis as other university professors. They must, of course, have opportunity, through hospital service and advisory work, to keep abreast of modern methods as well as of research, but they should not have to practice medicine to make a living, nor use their positions for self-advertising.
There were already rumors that Stanford had designs on Cooper Medical College and eventual union of the two institutions had about it an inexorable logic. Let us assume that an intuitive President Jordan seized the opportunity with his Commencement Address to establish the guiding principles of the inevitable courtship and union yet to come. These principles were simple and specific: medical schools of the future will be an integral part of a university; three to four years of college preparation will be required for admission (as already planned at Johns Hopkins University); and core medical faculty will be university faculty and chosen on the same basis.
President Jordan, who had impending financial problems at Stanford, was in no hurry to effect a merger with Cooper Medical College which would be an added expense. Furthermore, the University of California was the only other university option available to the College, and that institution was anathema to Lane.
Time was on Stanford's side. The University could afford to wait until its finances were in better order, and until the College showed interest in a merger on Stanford's terms.
The Pledge
We do not know what the Faculty thought of President Jordan's Commencement address for there is no mention of it in existing College records except that the Minutes of the Faculty meeting on 19 December 1892 report a unanimous vote of thanks to him for his participation in the Commencement exercises.[62]
From Dr. Lane's viewpoint, the persistent and probably malicious rumors of a merger between Cooper Medical College and either the University of California or Stanford were quite disturbing for they implied instability of the College and undermined the confidence of Faculty and students in the permanence of the school.
Now President Jordan had made matters worse by predicting in his Commencement Address that "the medical schools of the future will be sustained as necessary parts of University work." Dr. Lane was firmly opposed to this outcome for his school and felt that he must act promptly to define the long range policy of Cooper Medical College with respect to University affiliation.
At the regular meeting of the College Faculty on 20 February 1893, less than three months after the Jordan Address, Dr. Lane recommended that "the College should never be made the medical department of any literary or scientific school or educational institution," and the proposal was unanimously endorsed by the Cooper Faculty.[63]
Six months later, on 28 August 1893, he brought the subject to a meeting of the Board of Directors which took the action described in the following Minutes:[64]
The President made a few remarks upon the subject of the prosperity and perpetuity of Cooper Medical College, to the founding of which he had devoted so much of the energy and earnings of his life, and presented a paper embodying his wishes and requests concerning the future government of the corporation. Director Ellinwood then offered the following preamble and resolution which was seconded by Director Gibbons and unanimously approved:
Whereas, Dr. L. C. Lane has heretofore given a large amount of property to this corporation, which said property is elsewhere described in this book of minutes; and whereas, the wishes of said donor in regard to said property are as herein below set out; and whereas, the carrying out of said wishes are in the opinion of this Board of paramount importance to the welfare and perpetuity of said college; Now Therefore, Be it Resolved, that it is the sense of this Board that said wishes should be faithfully and punctiliously carried out, and to that end that all those who are now, or who shall be members of this corporation, or members of the faculty thereof, shall severally subscribe their names thereto.
Said wishes are as follows, to wit:
1. The College shall never be affiliated with, or become the department of any other educational institution; but it shall remain an independent school in which Medicine and its Kindred Sciences shall be taught.
2. No Father or Father-in-law, Son or Son-in-law, Brother or Brother-in-law, of any Professor in this College, shall be elected a Professor in the College during the life time of said Professor.
3. A course of ten lectures, now known as the Lane Lectures, upon Public Health, Natural History, or other subjects akin to Medicine, shall be given annually in Cooper College by the Faculty or by persons chosen by the Faculty.
4. The subscribers will not sell, nor permit to be sold, any portion of the property now possessed by the corporation of Cooper Medical College in Block 270, Western Addition in the City of San Francisco, nor will they permit the same to be diverted from the purposes of a medical college, hospital and dispensary for the treatment of the sick, for which the buildings erected by the Donor were intended.
5. When the period expires, viz. 1932, for which the corporation of Cooper Medical College was established, the subscribers then living pledge themselves to the renewal and continuance of the corporation in accordance with the conditions embodied in these wishes and requests of Dr. L. C. Lane.
6. No one shall become a member of the corporation or Faculty of Cooper Medical College until he has subscribed his name to these articles of request; and any member of either of said bodies who shall overtly or covertly violate any of the wishes of the Donor Dr. L. C. Lane contained in any of the preceding sections, shall thereby immediately forfeit his position in, and connection with, Cooper Medical College.
The Secretary was then instructed to copy the preamble, resolution and requests into the back of the book of bylaws, where all present and future members of the corporation and faculty shall sign it.
It is clear that President Jordan's Commencement Address did not persuade Dr. Lane of the value of a university affiliation. On the contrary, the prospect so alarmed him that he sought permanently to forestall any movement in that direction by requiring all present and future Directors and Faculty to sign the above pledge that "The College shall never be affiliated with, or become the department of any other educational institution."
It should not pass without notice that Dr. Lane chose Professor C. N. Ellinwood to introduce the above important resolutions to which members of the Board of Directors and Faculty were thereafter required to affix their signatures. During the next decade he grew so in the favor of Dr. and Mrs. Lane that he became their confidante and personal physician, with consequences to which we shall later refer.
Endnotes
- Fielding H. Garrison , An introduction to the History of Medicine, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1929), p. 632. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Austin Flint, Sr. , "Annual Address as President of the American Medical Association for 1884," J. A. M. A. 2, no. 10 (May 10, 1884): 505-513.
- Austin Flint, Sr. , "Annual Address as President of the American Medical Association for 1884," J. A. M. A. 2, no. 10 (May 10, 1884): 506.
- Austin Flint, Sr. , "Annual Address as President of the American Medical Association for 1884," J. A. M. A. 2, no. 10 (May 10, 1884): 509-510.
- Austin Flint, Sr. , "Annual Address as President of the American Medical Association for 1884," J. A. M. A. 2, no. 10 (May 10, 1884): 512.
- "Miscellaneous: International Medical Congress," J. A. M. A. 4, no. 15 (April 11, 1885): 415-419.
- "Official Record of the Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held on April 28, 29, 30, and May 1, 1885," J. A. M. A. 4, no. 20 (May 16, 1885): 549-550.
- "Official Record of the Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held on April 28, 29, 30, and May 1, 1885," J. A. M. A. 4, no. 20 (May 16, 1885): 551.
- "Action of the American Medical Association Regarding the Arrangements for the International Congress of 1887," J. A. M. A. 4, no. 22 (May 30, 1885): 605-607.
- "The International Congress of 1887," J. A. M. A. 5, no. 1 (Jul 4, 1885): 15-16.
- Levi Cooper Lane , Shadows in the Ethics of the International Medical Congress (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Co., Printers, 1885), pp. 7-8. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Levi Cooper Lane , Shadows in the Ethics of the International Medical Congress (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Co., Printers, 1885), 12 pp. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Levi Cooper Lane , Shadows in the Ethics of the International Medical Congress (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Co., Printers, 1885), pp. 9-10. Lane Library Catalog Record
- "Editorial: Correct List of Officers of Preliminary Organization of Ninth International Medical Congress," J. A. M. A. 6, no. 22 (May 29, 1886): 599-600.
- Levi Cooper Lane , Shadows in the Ethics of the International Medical Congress (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Co., Printers, 1885), pp. 11-12. Lane Library Catalog Record
- "Necrology: Austin Flint," JAMA 6, no. 13 (Mar 27, 1886): 361-364.
- "Editorial: Correct List of Officers of Preliminary Organization of Ninth International Medical Congress," JAMA 6, no. 22 (May 29, 1886): 529.
- Nathan S. Davis , "Editorial: The Ninth international Medical Congress," JAMA 9, no. 16 (Oct 15, 1887): 497-498.
- Frances T. Gardner , "King Cole of California," Part III, Annals of Medical History, Third Series, 2, no. 5 (Sep 1940): 432-439. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Frances T. Gardner , "King Cole of California," Part III, Annals of Medical History, Third Series, 2, no. 5 (Sep 1940): 440. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Minutes, Meeting of Board of Directors, 12 April 1890, pp. 68-69, Minutes of Cooper Medical College, 14 Oct. 1882 - 14 Aug 1899 - Box 5.1, Cooper Medical College Collection of publications, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Illustration
- Illustration - Floor Plan of Addition
- Levi C. Lane , "An Address delivered to the graduating class of Cooper Medical College, Nov. 13, 1890," in Cooper Medical College and Toland Medical College, Addresses, Misc., 1861-1896. Lane Library Catalog Record
- "Deposition of J. W. Reay, Subscribed and Sworn to before John P. Poole, Notary Public, City and County of San Francisco, 18 December 1893. Historical Items from Dr. Hans Barkan. Cooper Medical College (Valuable Manuscript Material) Lane Medical Library. Lane Medical Archives MSS H747.6H C73
- Edward Robeson Taylor, "Address delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of the bust of Dr. L.C. Lane, at Cooper Medical College, Nov. 13, 1890," in Cooper Medical College and Toland Medical College, Addresses, Misc., 1861-1896. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Minutes of the Faculty of Cooper Medical College 11/3/1882 - 2/20/1893, pp. 199-204 - Box 6.1, Cooper Medical College Collection of publications, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Emmet Rixford , "Stanley Stillman," Bulletin of San Francisco Medical Society 7, no. 11 (Nov, 1934): 10-11. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Gunther W. Nagel , A Stanford Heritage (Stanford, CA: Stanford Medical Alumni Association, 1970), pp. 49-58. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Gunther W. Nagel , A Stanford Heritage (Stanford, CA: Stanford Medical Alumni Association, 1970), pp. 59-66. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Leo Eloesser , "Memoirs of Emmet Rixford, 1865-1938," Annals of Surgery 110, no. 4 (Oct 1939): 786-789.
- Emmet Rixford , "Then and Now - Personal Recollections. Division 2," Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology 41, no. 8 (Aug 1933): 469-470; 472-476. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Levi C. Lane , "Levi Cooper Lane, M. D. The Lane Popular Lectures," Part 2, California and Western Medicine 38, no. 1 (Jan 1933): 37. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Hans Barkan , "Cooper Medical College, Founded by Levi Cooper Lane: An Historical Sketch," Stanford Medical Bulletin 12, no. 3 (Aug 1954): 161-162. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Annual Announcement of Cooper Medical College, Session of 1895, p. 10. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Minutes of the Meeting of the Faculty of Cooper Medical College on 17 June 1895, p. 87, Minutes of the Faculty of Cooper Medical College, Vol. 2 - Box 6.2, Cooper Medical College Collection of publications, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Emmet Rixford , A Brief Account of the History of the Lane Medical Library and of Cooper Medical College: Address at Dedication of Lane Medical Library, 3 November 1912, Leland Stanford Junior University Publications. Trustees Series, No 22 (Stanford California: Stanford University, 1912), pp. 6-7. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Stanford University: The Founding Grant with Amendments, Legislation, and Court Decrees (Stanford, CA, Published by the University, 1973). pp. 1-11.
- Stanford University: The Founding Grant with Amendments, Legislation, and Court Decrees (Stanford, CA: Published by Stanford University, 1971), p. 1.
- Norman E. Tutorow , Leland Stanford: Man of Many Careers (Menlo Park, CA: Pacific Coast Publishers, 1971), pp. xxiii, xxiv, xxv and xxvi; and p. 290. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Gunther W. Nagel , Jane Stanford: Her Life and Letters (Stanford, CA: Stanford Alumni Association, 1975), pp. 11; 15; 24-26; and 30-31. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Gunther W. Nagel , A Stanford Heritage: Sketches of ten teacher-physicians whose standards of excellence became the hallmark of a School of Medicine (Stanford, CA: Stanford Medical Alumni Association, 1970), p. 9. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), pp. 353-355. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), pp. 10-50 and p. 51. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), pp. 96-97. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), pp. 104-128. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), pp. 129-144. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), pp. 145-146. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), p. 132. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on- Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), p. 131 and p. 154-180. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , The Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy, (Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book Company, 1922), vol. 1, pp.185-289; p. 293 Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , The Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book Company, 1922), Vol. 1, pp. 287, 325 and 319. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Orrin Leslie Elliott , Stanford University: The First Twenty-Five Years (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1937), pp. 50 and 54. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Orrin Leslie Elliott , Stanford University: The First Twenty-Five Years (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1937), pp. 58-59. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Orrin Leslie Elliott , Stanford University: The First Twenty-Five Years (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1937), pp. 86-87. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Orrin Leslie Elliott , Stanford University: The First Twenty-Five Years (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1937), pp. 81-86 and 87-90. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Orrin Leslie Elliott , Stanford University: The First Twenty-Five Years (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1937), p. 534. Lane Library Catalog Record
- "Editorial: Cooper Medical College," Pacific Medical Journal 36, no. 1 (Jan 1893): 47-49. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Henry Gibbons, Jr. , "Valedictory Address at Commencement of Cooper Medical College," Occidental Medical Times 7, no. 1 (Jan 1893): 10-19. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , "The General Training of the Physician," Occidental Medical Times 7, no. 1 (Jan 1893): 1-10. Lane Library Catalog Record
- David Starr Jordan , The Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy(Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book Company, 1922), 1:280-281. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Minutes of Faculty Meeting on 19 December 1892, pp. 272, Minutes of Faculty of Cooper Medical College, v. 1 - Box 6.1, Cooper Medical College Collection of publications, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Minutes of Faculty Meeting on 20 February 1893, pp. 276-277, Minutes of Faculty of Cooper Medical College v. 1 - Box 6.1, Cooper Medical College Collection of publications, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford. Lane Library Catalog Record
- Minutes of Cooper Medical College, 28 Aug 1893, v. 1, pp. 137-140, Cooper Medical College Collection of publications, Lane Medical Archives, Stanford. Lane Library Catalog Record