FEATURE
Fig. 4 The student Chemistry laboratory, which replaced the Dispensary amphitheater.
The arched doorway in the center led to the old building.
(continued from page 15)
state and national levels, with Louisville presenting a prime target.
The AMA Council on Medical Education began an inspection and
grading program to weed out weaker schools, and AMA Council on
Medical Education Chair, A.G. Bevan, MD, called Louisville “one
of five especially rotten spots” in the nation. The Kentucky State
Medical Association formed a “Committee to Merge the Regular
Medical Schools of Kentucky.” Louisville’s five regular medical
schools were all financially struggling to stay open. These pressures
caused a step-wise merger of the five schools between 1906 and
1908, which culminated in all folding into a single institution under
the UofL banner. In 1907, LMC merged with the Hospital College
of Medicine. Naming itself the Louisville and Hospital College of
Medicine, it chose the elegant LMC building as home (Fig. 2). The
following year, that institution merged with the UofL, Kentucky
University and the Kentucky School of Medicine, with the combined
institutions coming under the UofL name and trustees. Again, the
finest structure among them, the LMC building, was chosen as
home. Thus, UofL in the former LMC building would become the
sole site of Kentucky medical education for over half a century.
THE BUILDING BECOMES UOFL’S FORTRESS, BUT
STORMY TIMES PERSIST
The Medical School Building at First and Chestnut officially became
home to UofL with purchase and deed transfer to the President and
Trustees on March 1, 1909 for $65,000 (the original building and
property cost was $167,250). It would remain the UofL campus
until the move to a new campus nearby in 1970. A fuller story of
UofL as an institution over that time span can be found elsewhere
(Tobin GR, The History of the University of Louisville, serialized in
Louisville Medicine). However, herein will be described how changes
in the building structure reflected changes in medical education
and the UofL environment. The university years in the building
were characterized by mid-20 th Century Professor of Microbiology,
16
LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
Fig. 5 The UofL medical school, in mid-century, with the Pope neurosciences building
just to the west (two story building with chimneys). The corner of the old Pharmacy
school is visible at the far left.
Letitia Kimsey, MD, as “a relentless struggle for survival,” with the
school beset by “one disaster after another,” and the institution being
saved only by “strong leadership, dedicated faculty, unselfish staff
and loyal alumni.” External crises included two World Wars, the
Great Depression and a disastrous flood. Throughout these events,
a virtually continuous state of underfunding and overcrowding
relentlessly plagued the school and stressed its great building.
CONTINUOUS UNDERFUNDING AND RECURRING
OVERCROWDING
Although UofL alone supplied physicians to the entire state for half
a century (until 1960 when the University of Kentucky School of
Medicine opened in Lexington), it received funds from the City of
Louisville only after 1910, with State supplements only after 1948,
and these were marginally adequate. The first overcrowding crisis
came from the influx of students from the five schools absorbed in
the merger. This engulfed UofL with 700 students in 1908-9, making
it the largest me