Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/505

Rh versity, were probably the chief factors which led to a renewal of the effort which had failed before he came to the institution. There can be little question but that he furnished the initiative, as president of the university, for another and this time successful attempt to found a medical school. It will be noted that as professor of physiology, hygiene and microscopy, he was a member of the first faculty to actually give instruction to a medical class in Oregon. This first class was graduated in the spring of 1867.

The facilities for medical instruction at Salem at that time were of the most meager sort, and judged by present standards, did not exist. The entire equipment of the university, so-called, consisted of one building, in which were housed the college, the academy and all other departments, and which must now also provide space for the new Department of Medicine. As to clinical facilities, they may be judged by the fact that Salem numbered at the time about 1200 people, and all of Marion County about 7000. Portland itself, the metropolis, had a population of about 15,000, which, however, was rapidly increasing. One must admire the courage, not to say audacity, of the men who undertook to train physicians under such circumstances. Yet when one compares the standards, or rather lack of standards, which prevailed at the time in all but a very few schools in the east, the infant department at Salem would not suffer too much by comparison.

One cannot believe that the purpose of the founders was selfish or commercial, as was the case with so many other medical schools during this period of American history. It appears rather to have been in keeping with the missionary motive which inspired the founding of Willamette University as an institution of learning, and indicated a real desire to "promote the interests of the