Category: History Blog

Murphy’s Sign

In a little-known event in U.S. history, sitting U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was treated at Northwestern after an assassination attempt in 1912.
Galter Library Film Project Preserves Medical History

by Nora Dunne A gift from the family of Raymond McNealy, MD, a leading surgeon in the first half of the 20th century and chief of Surgery at Wesley Memorial Hospital (a predecessor to Northwestern Memorial Hospital), has enabled the Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center to restore teaching films that show the evolution…
1895 – 1973 | The Chicago Maternity Center: An Important Chapter in Obstetrics

The Chicago Maternity Center — which operated from 1895 until 1973 on the near-west side of Chicago — was the only obstetrical home delivery program in the nation and the brainchild of Joseph DeLee, 1891 MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics at Northwestern from 1896 until 1929. An advocate of specialized maternity hospitals, DeLee…
1884-1968 | Outside-the-Box Thinker

The Northwestern surgeon who, 75 years ago, started the innovative concept of academic partnerships with the VA Former chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Paul B. Magnuson, MD, played significant roles in the advancement of medicine‚ and it all stems back to when he was seven-years-old, assisting the family’s doctor in lancing an abscess…
1890s | A Hero in Medicine: Immense Contributions to the Medical Field

Daniel Hale Williams, MD, Feinberg’s first African-American graduate and faculty member, was the kind of physician who inspires the best in people, both in the medical field and beyond. He founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first Black-owned and -operated interracial hospital and nurse training school in the country in 1891, at a time when the…
Ward Rounds | 1885 & 2020 | Learning Then and Now

Evolution of Medical Education Northwestern has come a long way since the days of lecture halls filled with male students clad in black suits. The contrast could not be more stark between this Feinberg anatomy class from 1885 and Feinberg’s new Premier Active Learning Environment (pictured at right), which opened late last year in the…
Equality Advocate

Against all odds, Emma Reynolds pursues medicine and social reform Emma Reynolds took a winding but determined path to earn her Doctor of Medicine degree from Northwestern University Woman’s Medical School in 1895, becoming the first black woman to be awarded an MD from the university. Born in 1862 near Frankfort, Kentucky, Reynolds had always…
Ward Rounds | 1925 | The Montgomery Ward Memorial Building

The Rise of Northwestern’s Medical Center Nearly a century ago, Northwestern began construction on the Montgomery Ward Memorial Building, marking the medical school’s move to its present location. Elizabeth Ward, who gifted more than $8 million in memory of her late husband, the Chicago merchant A. Montgomery Ward, is pictured above during the ground-breaking ceremonies…