San Francisco: Departments

Medicine
One of the nine branches of study within the new "medical department" of the University in 1873 was clinical medicine, under the chairmanship of Professor C. M. Bates. His aims were to impart to the student practical knowledge and to give a faithful description of diseases, their etiology, symptoms, diagnosis, prognosis, lesions, and treatment.

In 1875, a third year was added to the curriculum. In the Division of Medicine, lectures and clinics in clinical medicine and physical diagnosis were given in the second year. Courses in the theory and practice of medicine, clinical medicine, and physical diagnosis were offered in the third year. Early in the history of the school, one year of general or rotating internship was added to the medical curriculum, but purely medical internships were not adopted until the 1920's. The first mention of a resident program in the specialty of medicine is in the catalogue for 1910.

Many able men helped in the development of the Division of Medicine (later called the Department of Medicine). Dr. Herbert C. Moffitt joined the faculty in 1898 as professor of the principles and practice of medicine. He also served as dean of the school for many years. Under his stimulus the Division of Medicine soon expanded to include such distinguished physicians as Herbert Allen, George Ebright, LeRoy Briggs, Eugene Kilgore, Milton Lennon, Walter Alvarez, Ernest Falconer, and many others.

Dr. William Watt Kerr, who served as professor of medicine for 25 years until his death in 1917, was characterized as "one of the most inspiring men I ever met. He appeared to be a man of fabulous clinical ability and great personal charm." Dr. Kerr graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1915 and joined the Hooper Foundation staff in 1916. While there, he was invited by Moffitt to join the faculty of the Department of Medicine. Kerr rose rapidly from assistant in medicine to professor and chairman of the department in 1927. In 1939, Kerr inaugurated the Ceremony of the Gold-Headed Cane, reviving the tradition of the famous eighteenth-century British physicians who carried the renowned gold-headed cane now resting in the Royal College of Physicians in London.

Kerr retired in 1951, and subsequent chairmen of the department were Dr. Theodore Althausen (1951-56), Dr. Henry Brainerd (1956-64), and Dr. Lloyd Hollingsworth Smith, Jr.

From a faculty consisting of one professor in 1864, the department grew to include a full-time academic staff of over 30 and a visiting clinical staff of several hundred physicians. Many specialties came to prominence within the department which were unknown one hundred years ago--endocrinology, oncology, hematology, electrocardiography, etc., as well as the myriad laboratory diagnostic aids that enable the physician of the twentieth century to make an accurate diagnosis and institute effective treatment. source

Microbiology
When the first year and a half in medicine was taught on the Berkeley campus, courses offered by the Department of Bacteriology included academic students as well as medical students. In the fall of 1928 the Department of Bacteriology of the School of Medicine, derived from the Berkeley unit, became a separate department along with the Department of Pathology, leaving only the first medical year at Berkeley.

At that time the Affiliated Colleges in San Francisco were autonomous and the dental pharmacy, and nursing faculties managed their own courses in bacteriology. However, early in the 1930's, the Department of Bacteriology took over the teaching of its subject to pharmacy, dental, dental hygiene, and nursing students, thus serving all four schools on the campus. The School of Nursing changed its policies after two years, but the department continued to serve three schools on the San Francisco campus. The title, Department of Bacteriology, was changed to Department of Microbiology about 1950. A graduate program was initiated in 1962. In 1965-66 the department had 128 medical students, ten graduate students, 86 pharmacy students, and 104 professional students in the School of Dentistry.

During the 40 years of the department's existence radical developments have occurred in microbiology. New techniques in the 1930's brought about new approaches to the study of viruses. The discovery of antibiotics radically altered the status of infectious disease during the 1940's. Interests were heavily focused on the use of bacteria as tools in the study of genetics in the 1950's; and, currently, immunochemical techniques used as means for the study of chemical structure have spread to various departments. Along with other features of microbiology, these amplifications were significant in developments of the concept of "molecular biology," a viewpoint which considered all cells from a dynamic physicochemical point of view. source