“Winter” at Yale

The history of the Yale School of Medicine is illuminated by the names of many great men. A distinguished school is a living organism and the soul which inspires and guides it has been created by the dreams and the visions which have gone before. In the Yale School of Medicine, no one of our distinguished leaders has played a greater role in this creative process than Milton Winternitz. When "Winter" became our Dean, thirty-three years ago, there were but five men of professorial rank in the School (one of whom was resigning at the end of the year) with two professors from other departments of the University also giving courses to our students. There was but one modern building, the rest of the instruction being carried on in old and badly equipped structures scattered over the Yale campus. There were nineteen students in the graduating class of 1920. During the war years, there was a very popular pool in one department in which the faculty placed their bets on one of three future alternatives: continuation of a four-year school, reduction to a two-year school or entire abandonment of medical education at Yale. In 1922, two years after he became Dean, Winternitz prepared a report on the "Past, Present and Future of the Yale University School of Medicine" which has been described as "one of the remarkable documents in the history of medical education." This report visualized the complete reconstruction and centralization of the physical plant of School and Hospital; it laid the groundwork for raising the quality of the faculty and student body to the highest levels; and it envisioned the establishment of a School of Nursing on a true university basis. The ideals which should animate the new medical section of the University were outlined, essentially as follows: