University of Michigan. Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases

When the University’s Medical Department opened in 1850, it included a professor of the diseases of women and children. In 1858, Alonzo Palmer, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, Pathology and Materia Medica, prepared a report for the State Medical Society emphasizing the importance of separately studying the diseases of children. He cited the infant mortality rate as twenty-five percent for children under one year and over fifty percent for children under five. Children were patients in the University Hospital and used in clinical demonstrations and in 1886 a group of women opened the Children’s Free Hospital in Detroit for their care.

In 1898, Dr. Elizabeth Bates left in her will $100,000 to the University of Michigan’s Medical School for the purpose of an endowed professorship to be known as the Bates Professorship of the Diseases of Women and Children first held by James N. Martin. Despite Martin’s title, the instruction of pediatrics remained in the hands of George Dock who had been Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine since 1891, and had an interest in the infectious diseases of children. The Bates professorship, in 1923, was officially linked to the Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

But there were no children’s hospital facilities in Ann Arbor until the Palmer Ward was opened in 1901 with one floor dedicated to pediatrics. The entire building housed children by 1913. In 1905, a pediatrics division within the Department of Internal Medicine was formed with David Murray Cowie as instructor. But the Department of Pediatrics did not really begin to grow until the adoption by the state of the Children’s Hospital Law in 1913, which allowed any indigent sick child to be cared for for free at the University Hospital. In 1920, the division was separated out into the Department of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases.

Cowie died in 1940, and Charles F. McKhann Jr. took the chair of the department. The Kellogg Foundation had promised a new Children’s Hospital, and McKhann’s first duties at the University of Michigan involved the plans for it. Unfortunately, three years later, he brought up the touchy subject of Detroit to the medical faculty. These were unsuccessful and he resigned.

James Leroy Wilson was appointed to chair the department in 1944. Both McKhann and Wilson played key roles in the development of the iron lung. Wilson remained in the chair until 1967, when he was replaced by William J. Oliver. Oliver began expanding and revitalizing the department along subspecialty lines almost as soon as he took over. Oliver also oversaw the planning and construction of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, which opened in 1969.

When Oliver resigned in 1979, Robert P. Kelch was asked to serve as interim chair. A year later, Robert C. Kelsch began his term as interim chair (the similarity in their names was the source of much confusion) and in 1981, Robert P. Kelch was appointed to the permanent position.

Kelch retired in 1995 and Janet Gilsdorf served as interim chair until Jean E. Robillard was appointed in 1996.

From the guide to the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases (University of Michigan) publications, 1959-1993, 1982-1993, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)