University of Michigan. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

The history of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology parallels the history of the Medical School at the University of Michigan. Each dates from modest beginnings in 1850 and, after a series of travails in the nineteenth century, most fully realized their potential in the twentieth century. In the early years instruction was handled by Abram Sager and Alonzo Benjamin Palmer, each of whom taught other medical courses. As time passed medicine became more scientific and specialized, and the department came to offer more specific instruction. Edward Swift Dunster succeeded Sager in 1874 and oversaw the extension of Ob/Gyn lectures to a two-year course. Dunster saw his lectures as the basic foundation of medical education, but he was thwarted in his attempts to offer clinical instruction by the paucity of hospital births in Ann Arbor. James Nelson Martin, who came to head the department upon the death of Dunster in 1888, was similarly frustrated in his efforts to offer clinical experience to his interns.

It was not until the tenure of Reuben Peterson as chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (1901-1931) that clinical instruction came to be a meaningful, integral part of instruction to aspiring Ob/Gyns. The rise of this sort of clinical instruction at the University of Michigan postdates its general use in American medical education; this owes more to the small-town nature of Ann Arbor than to any hide-bound medical practices of medical professors. Even with Peterson's tireless lobbying for more clinical, hands-on experience in maternity wards, it was not until 1910 that the Ob/Gyn interns saw as many as 100 births in any one year. After establishing the importance of clinical instruction (and insuring its practical use), Peterson then worked to have the Maternity Hospital made safer from sepsis. He finally succeeded in 1925 when the Maternity Ward opened in the new University Hospital, thus temporarily fulfilling the department's long-standing needs.

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