Web site adds medical milestones

Nurses attend a patient at KU’s Bell Memorial Hospital in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan., in the 1930s. The photo is included in new content at KUhistory.com. University Archives, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries

KUhistory.com details medical school’s past

The first installment of an electronic history of the KU School of Medicine is now online at KUhistory.com. This latest content enhancement to the KU History Project Web site marks the centennial of the formal establishment of the medical school.

The initial collection of stories, located at www.kuhistory.com, comprises a baker’s dozen of original articles prepared especially for the Web. They focus largely on the School of Medicine’s early years from 1905 through the 1920s and demonstrate the difficult and modest beginnings from which the present-day KU School of Medicine evolved.

“ By presenting these narratives of struggle and achievement on KUhistory.com, we are demonstrating to a worldwide audience that the history of the KU School of Medicine reflects our state’s motto—Ad astra per aspera, or ‘to the stars through difficulty,’” said Barbara Atkinson, executive vice chancellor of the KU Medical Center and executive dean of the School of Medicine.

Additional pieces in this set examine the deanship of Franklin D. Murphy—who later became KU’s ninth chancellor—and the mid-20th-century Rural Health Program for Kansas, a KU School of Medicine initiative that helped address the Sunflower State’s rural physician shortage.

Forthcoming articles will concentrate on scientific breakthroughs of the School of Medicine’s physician-scientists, its near-frontline service during World War II, the 1950s-era deanship of W. Clarke Wescoe—who became KU’s 10th chancellor—and the establishment of the School of Medicine’s Wichita branch. More articles will interpret the histories of the School of Nursing and the University of Kansas Hospital, both of which will mark their formal centennials in 2006.

“This new body of content solidly demonstrates the validity of the one-university concept from a historical standpoint,” said Henry Fortunato, project director and editor-in-chief of KUhistory.com. “As a group, the Medical Center stories are among the best we have ever done and add further resonance to the shared identity that unifies the University of Kansas.”

KUhistory.com is an electronic history undertaking of the KU Memorial Unions. Initiated in January 2001, the project went live in November 2002 with 123 articles. The site added 25 more articles about KU student housing history, KU architectural history, and notable KU firsts in December 2004.

The KU School of Medicine, the KU School of Nursing, the University of Kansas Hospital, the Executive Vice Chancellor’s Office of the KU Medical Center, and the KU School of Medicine-Wichita are underwriting the Medical Milestones series.