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Two Hundred Years of Medicine at Dartmouth
By Barbara Blough and Dana Cook Grossman
Marsh Tenney, a 1944 graduate of DMS, was charged in 1956 with leading a major revitalization of his alma mater and is known as the School's "refounder." |
The refounding had restored the strength and vigor of Nathan Smith's vision but not yet the M.D. program. That was left to the next crisis, which was just around the corner. Once again, a nationwide change in medical education particularly affected Dartmouth.
For some 50 years, the graduates of the two-year program had enjoyed easy access to the M.D. schools of their choice. But now the four-year schools, in response to a nationwide shortage of physicians and government incentives to increase the size of their entering classes, no longer had room for transfers. At the same time, educators determined that students should be introduced to patients early in their training and that basic science teaching should be reinforced throughout the entire program. These curricular revisions also worked against third-year transfers. The well-trained Dartmouth students began to find it hard to get accepted at top schools. It was obvious that the two-year school had a doubtful future.
The DMS campus of the late 1960s (in the lower right of the image) shows the buildings constructed during the refounding.
Further construction came in succeeding years, and today's campus is complemented by additional research facilities near-by, including at the White River Junction VA Hospital, and by clinical training sites all over. |
Fortunately, changes in the surrounding community had been taking place as well. Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital had become a major referral center with over 400 beds, serving 8,000 square miles and 300,000 residents. (In fact, in 1955, the concept of the intensive care unit had been pioneered at Hitchcock by Dr. William Mosenthal, a surgeon who still teaches anatomy to DMS students.) The Veterans Administration Hospital in nearby White River Junction, Vt., affiliated with the Medical School since 1945, provided another 224 beds. The Hitchcock Clinic was recording over 144,000 outpatient visits annually. All of these developments made a full-scale medical school once again quite possible.
So in April of 1968, the College Trustees voted to reinstate the M.D. program, "subject only to the development of the necessary funding." With a speed and commitment reminiscent of Nathan Smith, then-Dean Carleton Chapman and the faculty undertook massive fund-raising, construction, and curriculum-planning programs. New departments were created, additional faculty recruited, an M.D. curriculum designed, and, with the help of several major donors, the physical plant further expanded. Also during this period, the Medical School, the Hospital, and the Clinic began planning the formation of an overarching governing mechanism, leading to the birth of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. In 1970, Dartmouth admitted its first M.D. candidates in 60 years and entered the modern era of its long history.
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