Access is granted in accordance with the Protocols for the University Archives and Records Center.

 

PROVENANCE

Donated by Susan Molofsky Todres in January 2007 (Accession 2007:02). They are probably the slides prepared for viewing at the class's fortieth reunion, held May 19 and 20, 1934.

 

ARRANGEMENT

The glass slides in this collection are arranged in their original order and housed in the wooden box designed for them.

 

HISTORY

The Medical Class of 1889 at the University of Pennsylvania included 197 students at various times during its three-year course of study. Just under 140 students were enrolled in any given year, and 128 members of the class earned their medical degrees in 1889. After graduation, members of the class continued to gather for class reunions every five or ten years until at least 1934.

The three-year course of study available to these students reflected the latest advances in medicine. These medical students benefited from a medical education that combined academic knowledge in basic and specialized areas of medicine with plenty of practical experience in the laboratory, dissection room, the patient's bedside and even the operating room. Opportunities for human dissection and lessons in hygiene were important parts of the curriculum.

The faculty teaching the Medical Class of 1889 included such prominent nineteenth century physicians as Alfred Stillé, D. Hayes Agnew, Richard A.F. Penrose, William Pepper Jr., J. William White, Horatio C. Wood, Joseph Leidy and William Osler. The Thomas Eakins' painting, "The Agnew Clinic," was commissioned by members of the Medical Class of 1889 in honor of D. Hayes Agnew at the time of his retirement from the University faculty. The art work, presented to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School at its 1889 graduation ceremonies, depicts not only Agnew and his assistants, but also many members of the Class of 1889.

After graduation, these students had a variety of experiences. As general practitioners, specialists, and educators they practiced medicine everywhere from Philadelphia to California to Cuba to Switzerland. Some served in the Spanish-American War or in World War I.

 

SCOPE AND CONTENT

These slides depict the members of the Medical Class of 1889 and their experiences as medical students and in later life. They provide documentation of teaching facilities at the University of Pennsylvania and of the evolution of medical education in the late nineteenth century.

Depictions of student days include individual and group portraits of students and faculty, course rosters, scenes of lecture halls, dissection rooms, and hospital buildings. There are also photographs of the four student medical societies (named after faculty members Agnew, Pepper, Stillé and Wood) and one informal shot of students in their private quarters. Images after graduation include reunion scenes, a few individual portraits and photographs of graduates working in foreign places.

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