US Medical Education Reformers Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) and Simon Flexner (1863-1946)
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 443 765 SO 031 860 AUTHOR Parker, Franklin; Parker, Betty J. TITLE U.S. Medical Education Reformers Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) and Simon Flexner (1863-1946). PUB DATE 2000-00-00 NOTE 12p. PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Biographies; *Educational Change; *Educational History; Higher Education; *Medical Education; *Professional Recognition; *Social History IDENTIFIERS *Flexner (Abraham); Johns Hopkins University MD; Reform Efforts ABSTRACT This paper (in the form of a dialogue) tells the stories of two members of a remarkable family of nine children, the Flexners of Louisville, Kentucky. The paper focuses on Abraham and Simon, who were reformers in the field of medical education in the United States. The dialogue takes Abraham Flexner through his undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins University, his founding of a school that specialized in educating wealthy (but underachieving) boys, and his marriage to Anne Laziere Crawford. Abraham and his colleague, Henry S. Pritchett, traveled around the country assessing 155 medical schools in hopes of professionalizing medical education. The travels culminated in a report on "Medical Education in the United States and Canada" (1910). Abraham capped his career by creating the first significant "think tank," the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The paper also profiles Simon Flexner, a pharmacist whose dream was to become a pathologist. Simon, too, gravitated to Johns Hopkins University where he became chief pathologist and wrote over 200 pathology and bacteriology reports between 1890-1909. He also helped organize the Peking Union Medical College in Peking, China, and was appointed Eastman Professor at Oxford University.(BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. d U.S. Medical Education Reformers Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) and Simon Flexner (1863-1946). By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker I IC) C.) 00 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND Office of Educational Research and Improvement DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION BEEN GRANTED BY CENTER (ERIC) ffriThis document has been reproducedas O received from the person or organization originating it. (ralnKi_in ParKee Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Points of view or opinions stated in this INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) document do not necessarily represent 1 official OERI position or policy. 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE 1 U. S. Medical Education Reformers Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) and Simon Flexner (1863-1946). By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker. P.O. Box 100, Pleasant Hill, Tenn. 38578, USA. Email: [email protected] BeU: We review first Abraham Flexner, An Autobiography (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 1960 revision of his I Remember, 1940). Frank, who were the Flexners? Frank: The Flexners of Louisville, Ky., were a remarkable family, nine children of immigrant German Jews, the father a peddler in the South. We focus on Abraham Flexner, later on Simon Flexner, each outstanding in medical education in the U.S. and beyond. We tell later how Abraham Flexner encouraged our own research 45 years ago.Betty, briefly characterize Abraham Flexner. Betty:Teacher, researcher, and philanthropic foundation executive, Abraham Flexner won early attention for his private Flexner preparatory school in Louisville, successful in getting lazy but wealthy boys into Ivy League colleges. His first critical book, The American College (NYC: Century Co., 1908), prompted a Carnegie foundation executive to ask him in 1908 to examine medical schools in the U.S. and Canada.His 1910 Flexner Report created a revolution, remade medical education in the U.S. and beyond, exposed medical quackery, made science, medicines, and supervised clinical training central in the professional preparation of physicians. He helped make medical doctors top professionals, highly esteemed, valued, and well paid. Frank: Abraham Flexner was at the center of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and other multimillion dollar foundations that tackled difficult problemseducational, social, racial, health, and othersfirst in the U.S. South, then nationally, and internationally. He created in 1930 the first significant U.S. think tank, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.As its first director he brought from Hitler's Germany Albert Einstein as mathematics professor, the Einstein Time magazine named "Man of the 20th Century." We tell later of Abraham's equally important brother, Simon Flexner. But first, Betty, tell of their immigrant father, Morris Flexner. Bet1v: The first Flexner in the U.S., Morris Flexner (1819-1882), grandson of the chief rabbi of Moravia and Bohemia, was born in Germany to an impoverished family. Because his parents had more children than they could feed, Morris was sent at age 13 to live with an uncle in Strasbourg, Alsace, on the French-German border.There he was a teacher for a time, very poor, hoping for a better life in the United States. He spent many days in steerage on a sailing ship to NYC, worked there two years among French-speaking Jews, and lived hand-to-mouth. Knowing of French-speaking Jewish countrymen in New Orleans, hoping to do better there, he arrived in New Orleans during a yellow fever epidemic. He was stricken and barely recovered at a charitable hospital run by Catholic nuns. An unknown French-speaking Samaritan fed him, heard him speak of a countryman living in Louisville, Ky., and paid his fare to Louisville. Etaak: He arrived in Louisville on crutches, recovered, and became, like his friend, a pack peddler selling goods house to house, store to store. Morris Flexner became adept at sharing news and gossip. Jovial and likable, he won customers and friends and was often asked to stay for meals and for the night. He bought a crippled horse for $4 and soon graduated to a better horse and 3 2 wagon. On his travels he stopped frequently in Louisville at a Jewish merchant's house, the Godshaw family. There he saw and was smitten by an immigrant French-speaking Jewish seamstress, Esther Abraham, whom he married. Betty, describe Esther Abraham. Betty: Esther Abraham (1834-1905) was born in Germany near the French border. Her father, a dealer in cattle and other items, sent her to school to age 13. When she was 16, an aunt in Paris with a lingerie shop took in Esther and her sister and trained them as seamstresses. Their Uncle Godshaw, the Louisville, Ky., merchant, visited them several times in Paris and sent them tickets for passage to America. After some weeks crossing the Atlantic the sisters were met in NYC in Sept. 1855 by a cousin and reached Louisville, where they lived with Uncle Godshaw's family. They successfully made and sold women's Paris fashions. Esther, who was popular socially, took to Morris Flexner. He was 34, she was 22, when they married on Sept. 15, 1856. Frank: A year later when the oldest of their nine children was born, Jacob (1857), Morris Flexner, with his family, went into business in Lawrenceburg, Ky. But Civil War raiders made that town unsafe. After six years in Lawrenceburg (1857-63), the enlarged Flexner family returned to Louisville. Morris sold hats wholesale on the road, traveling in Tenn., Ala., Ga., elsewhere in the South. But the Panic of 1873 mined him. From 1873 the family lived hand-to-mouth, dependent on first-born Jacob who, having been apprenticed to a druggist, had his own drugstore until the Panic of 1893 ruined him. The older children had to go to work to earn enough to pay the family bills. Betty, what of Abraham Flexner's early life? Betty: While he was a student at Louisville Male High School, Abraham Flexner worked in the private Louisville Library six days a week, 2:30 to 10 p.m., checking and shelving books, eating a cold supper behind the card catalog, earning $16 a month. Besides charging and shelving books, he read the classics and listened to adult conversations on politics, literature, religion, music, and art. In 1884, age 17, just graduated from high school, there came, he later wrote, "The decisive moment of my life." Oldest brother Jacob told Abraham: take this $1,000 I saved from my drugstore and go to college in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University (Abraham Flexner, An Autobiography, p. 24). Frank: Why Johns Hopkins University? Jacob had heard of its high reputation from a Louisville friend, a view confirmed by the medical doctors who came to his drugstore.Philanthropist Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) was a Baltimore Quaker, bachelor, merchant, and the largest stockholder of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In 1867, B&O RR Pres. John Work Garrett (1820-84), knowing that Johns Hopkins sought advice about his will, brought Hopkins together with visiting Massachusetts-born George Peabody (1795-1869), a former Baltimore merchant. Peabody was then a London-based banker and a well-known philanthropist. After dinner Hopkins asked Peabody why and how he came to give away his millions. Peabody told Hopkins: Like you, I wanted to be rich.I worked hard and succeeded.But when age and illness came upon me, I wanted to use my money for others.I found trustees who carried out my wishes for U.S. libraries, museums, and a music conservatory to serve people; and for low- cost housing for London's working poor (from 1862). Seeing the good my institutes did made 4 3 me happy. Johns Hopkins soon after recorded his will, leaving some $7 million to found Johns Hopkins University, Medical School, and Hospital. atu: Its first President Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908) made Johns Hopkins University the first graduate university in the U.S. It was based on the German university idea that a university creates new knowledge as well as educates new generations.