The years 1920s have been called the boom years of Yale Medical School, the period in which the school emerged as one of the top medical schools in the country. The crowning achievement of the decade was the building of the Sterling Hall of Medicine and at the end of the decade, the Institute of Human Relations. John F. Fulton wrote of Dean Milton C. Winternitz with some exaggeration: "He is an amazing man; he has made the School what it is … Singlehanded he has planned, financed, and constructed this truly remarkable group of buildings, all in ten years."
Winternitz prepared this booklet describing the facilities, curriculum, and future needs of the Medical School, primarily for the benefit of Abraham Flexner and the General Education Board. He included this cartoon, drawn by longtime Medical School illustrator, Armin Hemberger, and previously sent to Flexner in 1920. It depicts the School of Medicine as a small craft rowed by two people in opposite directions, torpedoed on all sides, and saved only by the gift of a large sum of money from the General Education Board. By 1922, the School's fortunes had already changed. The G.E.B. had relieved the hospital of its immediate financial crisis, and Yale Corporation had agreed to build the Sterling Hall of Medicine using funds from the Sterling bequest. The Past, Present & Future of the Yale University School of Medicine and Affiliated Clinical Institutions including the New Haven Hospital, the New Haven Dispensary, the Connecticut Training School for Nurses. New Haven: Printed for the University, 1922. |