During its initial 100 years the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has experienced its share of growing pains, advances, struggles and triumphs that have brought the school to its present place.

 

The timeline below touches upon some of the highlights.

 

Year Milestone
1875 Zoologist Edward Birge, the “father of medical education” at Wisconsin, sets up a laboratory in the basement of University Hall (later Bascom Hall) to support a course he offers for first-year biology students. In the 1880s, Birge builds a substantial curriculum to serve future students of medicine. Later he advises university leaders to recruit faculty to expand the “pre-medicine curriculum” that is based in the College of Letters and Science.

1904

 With the hiring of Charles Bardeen, the university acknowledges the need to incorporate more human-related studies of anatomy and physiology in the pre-medical biology program. Bardeen teaches anatomy, creates an anatomy department and conducts wide-ranging correspondences with medical educators and state boards of examiners across the country.
1907 The two-year College of Medicine, consisting of the departments of anatomy, physiology, physiological chemistry and bacteriology and hygiene, is created; Bardeen is appointed dean.
1910 In response to the typhoid epidemic and to encourage the development of clinical services in Madison, Bardeen creates the Department of Clinical Medicine (Student Health Service). Other small hospitals on campus follow.
1924 Construction on Wisconsin General Hospital is completed.
1926

The school expands its curriculum to a four-year program.

 

The “Wisconsin Preceptorial Plan,” which places students under the tutelage of physicians in Madison and across the state, begins “something new in medical education.” 
1928 Service Memorial Institute, abutting Wisconsin General Hospital, opens, serving as the School’s academic home. Scientific and clinical staff now work together collaboratively.
1930s Frederic Mohs develops a surgical technique to remove external tumors, such as mouth, lip and skin cancers, while sparing normal tissue.
1935

The cancer institute is formed. Later to become the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research led by Harold Rusch, it represents a new form of problem-oriented, multidisciplinary and institutionalized research.

 

William S. Middleton, who has been in charge of clinical work at the Student Health Service, Bradley Memorial and Wisconsin General Hospital, is appointed dean. A foremost teacher and clinician, he cultivates a local clinical capability needed to justify a full MD program and nurtures the school’s groundbreaking anesthesiology work and fledgling cancer research program.
1950s Teaching affiliations with Madison General and St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison are operational and the Veterans Hospital is now closely associated with the School. The Department of Medical Genetics, chaired by James Crow, is formed. It is the first such department in a U.S. medical school.
1957 Charles Heidelberger synthesizes the anti cancer drug fluorouracil, 5-FU, used extensively to treat a variety of cancers.
1960s In this era of “Big Medicine,” all parties agree that Wisconsin General Hospital is inadequate. Much political wrangling and internal debating ensues around whether to build across the street from Wisconsin General Hospital, on central campus, or to start from scratch on the west end of campus adjacent to the Veterans Hospital. A decision is finally made to head west.
1970s

The Department of Family Medicine is formed.

 

Charles Mistretta creates digital subtraction angiography, a powerful computerized method that has become the gold standard for visualizing blood vessels.
1975 Howard Temin is named co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering reverse transcriptase, the enzyme that explains how retroviruses cause cancer and AIDS.
1978-mid-1980s The new Clinical Sciences Center (UW Hospital and Clinics) on west campus is occupied. By far the largest construction project in the state’s history, it carries unprecedented opportunities for constituents of the Center for Health Sciences. Major remodeling follows on the central-campus Medical Science Center, which continues to house the basic science departments and the School’s pre-clinical education programs.
1987 Folkert Belzer and James Southard develop UW Solution to extend the time organs can be preserved for transplantation, they and their clinical colleagues become world leaders in organ transplant operations.
1995 UW Hospital is restructured as a public authority so that it can operate more freely. The clinical practice plan is restructured into the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation.
Late-1990s Addressing a third major facilities crisis since the school’s founding, Farrell uses the HealthStar initiative to raise funds for a new Center for Health Sciences building. Construction on the Health Sciences Learning Center, which will house instructional space, administrative offices and a combined health sciences library begins and is completed in 2004.
1998 James Thomson isolates human embryonic stem cells, opening the door for regenerative medicine studies aimed at treating multiple diseases by promoting new blood vessel or tissue growth.
2004 The School’s endowment grows from about $35 million to $435 million, including a $300 million gift from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The gift makes possible the creation of the Wisconsin Partnership Program.
2005

Groundbreaking for Interdisciplinary Research Complex, which will bring most researchers from central campus to the health sciences campus, takes place.

 

In preparation for a name change to UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the Department of Preventive Medicine becomes the Department of Population Health Sciences, with new master’s and PhD programs, the biostatistics and medical informatics department is created, a master’s in public health degree is begun.