Rush Medical College

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Rush Medical College, Cook County Hospital
Life Span: 1876-2002
Location: Wood and Harrison Streets
Architect: Unknown

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1880

Rush Medical College.

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1899
Cook County Hospital.—W. Harrison, cor. S. Wood

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Cook County Hospital.—W. Harrison, cor. S. Wood

The “Old County Hospital” opened in 1866 in the same building, a three-story brick and limestone structure with “all the modern conveniences,” including a knife, saw, and chisel for autopsies.

From its beginning, the Cook County Hospital was a center for medical education. The first internship in the country was started there in 1866. Neither the interns, chosen by competitive examination, nor the attending physicians were paid, but they gained wide experience with every sort of disease.

Corrupt political appointees controlled hospital purchasing and personnel. The physical plant deteriorated and the building became infested with rats and roaches. As city population increased in the 1870s, the hospital became more crowded. Despite public indifference, physicians prevailed upon the county in 1876 to build a new 300-bed facility between Harrison, Polk, Lincoln, and Wood Streets. Political corruption worsened, and, after almost the entire medical staff resigned, the politicians appointed poorly qualified physicians. In 1886 newspaper articles described the patronage-ridden hospital as a “roadhouse” for politicians.

Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1876

The dedication of the new building designed for the use of Rush Medical College, and situated at the corner of Wood and Harrison streets, took place last evening. The lecture-room was well filled with a fine audience, largely composed of alumni of the College. L. C. P. Freer, President of the Board of Trustees, occupied the chair, and was supported by the following members of the Faculty, comprising both the regular and “spring” courses: Drs. Freer, Allen, Miller, Gunn, Powell, Ross, Holmes, Lyman, Etheridge, Parks, Strong, Danforth, Owens, Wadsworth, Ingals, Case, Hay, Johnson, Bridge, Hayes, Sawyer, and Knox. Dr. Burroughs, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, Bishop McLaren, and many distinguished personages, were also present.

After music by a very creditable orchestra, Bishop McLaren offered prayer, and Prof. J. P. Ross, on behalf of the Building Committee, presented the building to the Board of Trustees in a speech of some length, from which the following extracts are made:

Historical:

In the anatomical department no means have been spared. The rooms are of easy access, commodious, and high, and are supplied with all the modern conveniences and improvements. The physiological department is furnished with large and elegant rooms under the amphitheatre, for office and class work, for histological and microscopical demonstration and study. The chemical department has rooms connected with the lower a lecture room, a large laboratory for the Professor, and still larger one for students, which will be provided with every convenience for chemical study and experiment.

But in the clinical department of instruction we have the greatest reason to be proud of the provisions made. In the first place, we have associated with the college the “Central Free Dispensary, the entire first floor of this building.

In this connection I will give a brief financial history of our building enterprise. The old college on the North Side cost with the lot $65,000. This property was paid for with money obtained by the issue and sale of sixty-five $1,000 bonds bering interest at the rate of 10 per cent per annum. The great fire destroyed the building and the fire companies in which it was insured, and the financial panic depreciated the value of the value of the real estate to such an extent that when we finally sold it, $8,000 was all we were able to obtain for the old college site. We were also embarrassed by the fact that a number of the college bonds had been disposed of outside of the Faculty. In order to save time and trouble, and in order to have a clear record, we were obligated to buy in these bonds considerably above their real value, and in this way expended about $5, 500. Deducting this sum from the amount received for the lot, we had left only $2,500, and this amount was represented by sixty-five $1,000 bonds. Assets, $2,500; liabilities, $65,000. This is one picture. Let us look at the other.

Now we have a lot which constitutes one-fifth of this entire block, and which cost us $11,000, and an elegant building which has cost us $43,000, making the total cost of lot and building $54,000. Of this amount $33,500 was contributed by the members of the Regular Faculty of the College, from the Spring Faculty, $1,500 was paid in scholarships, and the remainder, $11,000, was loaned to the College by the “Central Dispensary” at 6 per cent per annum for ninety-nine years. We have also reduced our bonds from sixty-live to forty-four in number (all of which are held by the Faculty), and, with the exception of the loan from the Dispensary, are otherwise free from debt.

The accumulation of this elegant property in the unprecedented financial crisis, without debt, nay, with paying off $10, 000 of an we think, a reasonable success.

Gentlemen of the Faculty and Trustees of Rush Medical College, I desire, in behalf of the Building to return our thanks for your support and in all the labor of rebuilding. We thank the Faculty for the readiness with which, in you paid in your quota of funds as one man without a ripple of discord beginning to the end to push on the enterprise. We would also thank the Spring Faculty at an early stage of the work and assistance, and giving it so readily. and especially, do we desire to thans of the Board of Trustees for valuable and counsel.

In conclusion, having discharged the duties assigned in the name of the Building Committee, to you, as President of the Board of the key of this building.

In reply President Freer thanked the building on behalf of the Board of Trustees, the key and the building.

Dr. DeLaskie Miller, on behalf of the Faculty, and in a feeling speech made expression of the feelings of his associates.

After music, the President called on Gunn, and he in response beautiful marble bust of Brainerd, the founder of College. In a few well-chosen Gunn paid a feeling tribute to the had for a quarter of a centurv been the head of the college, but also the practitioner in the West-Prof.

Prof. F. Ingals, one of the oldest graduates institution, then responded for the and referred to the two crises through Colleee had passed—the cholera of 1866 and the fire of five years later.

The Address.
Adams Allen then delivered the address evening. He was received, and interrupted, with applause. His address of considerable length, but was with interest throughout its entire delivery. The Doctor contrasted the past of with the present, and commented on achievements accomplished period embraced between the of those ancient monuments, and Stonehenee, and the temples of religion and science. The noticed the progress of the Rush Medical from the period after the lire when to content itself with quarters in County-Hospital, then in the Eighteenth-Street Tabernacle, to the present, when it sees of its hopes in the erection of Medical College. Old things had and all things were become new. a time for everything, and the present time when they could mingle congratulations beneath the capstone of their new temple, superior to its predecessor. Dr. Allen the discouragements which had surrounded the College after the fire, and commented pleasantly upon the fact that the had no particular reason to be the benevolence of any one in the endowments. Vast sums of money were wasted in adding to the number of literary while a hundreth part of this, in alone, would have built a scientific unsurpassed in every way. The public notion that the art of medicine was means of earning one’s daily bread, same public forgot that it was interwoven every part of the fabric of societv. important for a few men to thoroughly understand the laws of health, and devote lives to spreading this knowledge than for thousands to acquire cost the ordinary academical, not collegiate, education. But now, that college was a fact, although, after much of various kinds, the chief consideration bow should it advance? Not by or dreamy theorizing, but from positive study of disease itself. The college curriculum should be the photograph of the a college without its hospital and like the play of “Hamlet” with the part of Hamlet left out. In Rush Medical College this was, fortunately, not the case. The medical dogmatist believed that there new under the sun in medicine, that there twere no discoveries to be made. In medicine complete. There was continual knowledge. Too much reliance was experimentation without sufficient reliance the higher mental processes. An might be wholly worthless, or, by use of the thinking faculty, might flaming torch of discovery. The experimenter, believing only in his scales, and his scalpel, became the practitioner, guided only by the chart the thermometer, the sperometer, or, possibly, the sphygmograph. Above all, medical students must learn of nature. Living matter was not to be treated as a rock or a stone.

The medical man must first have the elements of a preliminary education. He was then fitted for the medical college teaching, which was essentially that of “the university, instructing men and not boys. The text-book and recitation plan in vogue in the primary schools was altogether out of place in this university teaching. The government of a medical college should be most liberal. Every man should do what seemed best in Ids own eyes.

The Doctor was justly severe on the incorporated diploma-furnishing shops. A graduate of a medical college should be well grounded in the elements of medical science and art, and possess that reasonable amount of general education and culture which would enable nim to take an honorable position in the profession and in the community. The Doctor denied the truth of the statement that there are too many lectures given In our medical colleges, and said that variety was the condiment which would aid the student’s digestion Students need not attend all these lectures. The weakling need not attend more than one-third of the lectures. In short, students might grade to any course they ehose, and they would be treated well while they were about it.

The present teachers might die of old age in the meantime, but let the pupils be content. The corporation would live. The Doctor had a word to say in favor of the three-years’ course, and a word to say against the annual examinations. In his opinion, students were to be examined for their diplomas in order to ascertain what they knew wuen it came to the graduating-day, and not what they knew a year or two ago. The remainder of the Doctor’s remarks applied to the advantages at Rush College, the clinical teaching, the new hospital, the professional staff, the museum, library, and the address closed with a most pleasant welcome to the members of the class.

The exercises were concluded with the benediction.

The building thus dedicated to the uses of Rush College is finely and well constructed of brick, and is four stories in height. It is 78 by 83 feet in ground dimension, and an elegant-looking structure from the street. The ground floor is given up to the Central Dispensary, the second and third floors to the lecture-rooms, cabinets, museums, and Professors’ officers. The last flight is occupied by the lecture room, or amphitheatre, which is fifty feet high and will comfortably seat 500 people. The dissecting-room and other unfragrant apartments are also arranged in the best manner known to medical experience, and it is sufficient to say of the whole edifice that it is probably the best arranged college edifice of its kind in the West, if not in the country.

Marquis’ Hand-Book of Chicago, 1884:

Rush Medical College is the oldest medical college in Chicago, and was the first educational institution incorporated in the Northwest. It was started in embryo in 1836 by Dr. Daniel Brainard, who for many years led the medical faculty of the west. Dr. Brainard, with Dr. G. C. Goodhue, of Rockford, Ill., secured an act of incorporation which was approved in 1837, but owing to the prevailing financial depression, the college did not organize until 1843, when two sniall rooms were fitted up on Clark Street, and a course of lectures delivered by the faculty, consisting of Drs. Brainard, Knapp, Blaney and McLean. In 1844 some North Side citizens donated a lot on which was erected a building costing $3,500. In 1855 this was remodeled and enlarged to accommodate 250 students. In 1867 a new building was erected at a cost of about $100,000, but, on the fated 9th of October, 1871, the structure, with all its contents, disappeared in the flames. A temporary place was secured for lectures in the old County Hospital, and later a temporary structure was erected on Eighteenth Street.

In 1875, the present building, at the corner of Wood and Harrison Streets was finished and occupied. It is one of the most complete institutions of the kind on the continent. It has two lecture rooms, each with a seating capacity of over 500 and thoroughly equipped. There are anatomical, physiological, clinical and chemical departments. The Central Free Dispensary is connected with the clinical department, and 2,000 cases are treated annually in the County Hospital. The value of the college property is about $125,000. The number of graduates per annum is about 175.

The Presbyterian Hospital was erected by the college, and then transferred to the Presbyterian Hospital Society—the faculty remaining in professional charge of the patients. The faculty is composed of twelve members. J. Adams Allen, M. D., is president.

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