MEDICAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
The 130 th anniversary of the first graduation from the Medical School was celebrated at Commencement time with fitting ceremonies.
In 1798, Joseph Adams Gallup of Stonington, Conn., and Levi Sabin of Dudley, Mass., received the degree of Bachelor of Medicine, which was the professional degree granted for the first fourteen years of the existence of Dartmouth Medical School.
Dr. Gallup, who lived to the age of 80, and died in Woodstock, Vt., was, for fourteen years of his life, professor of the theory and practice of medicine and materia medica and president of Castleton Medical College, as well as a professor in the Vermont Medical College. Dr. Sabin died in Rockingham, Vt., in 1808.
In honor of this event a considerable number of graduates of the Medical School returned to Hanover, many of them accompanied by their wives and families, for the Commencement period.
The business meeting was held in the old Medical Hall, a place sacred in the memories of hundreds of medical alumni, on the afternoon of June 16. Dr. H. Sheridan Baketel '95, the president of the Association, presided, and the records were kept by Dr. W. M. Hunt 'l3, secretary. The alumni expressed themselves as heartily in sympathy with the oft-time expressed hope that the trustees of the College would, when the proper time arrives, re-establish the final two years in medicine. They recalled with great pride that for 116 years, from 1798 until 1914, the degree of Bachelor of Medicine or Doctor of Medicine had been awarded to medical graduates annually without interruption.
The feeling was made manifest that with the great shortage of physicians, which is particularly noticeable in the rural districts of the country, the demand for medical men is becoming so urgent that the re-establishment of the four-year course is an essential.
The College authorities were asked by resolution to preserve the benches in the old Medical Hall in the event they should ever be replaced. On the arms of these benches are to be found the carved names or initials of many of the alumni of the College,—a considerable percentage of whom have attained positions of distinction in the profession.
The alumni voted unanimously that the interests of the College warranted annual reunions, so that hereafter the medical alumni will have a reunion every June at the time of the College Commencement.
Matters of interest to the College and the alumni were discussed at considerable length, among them being the desfre, on the part of the alumni, to assist the College Records Office in keeping a complete biography of every graduate and non-graduate of the Medical School. During the past year, the president of the Association has been able to complete the records of a large number of non-graduates, and the members present agreed to assist to that end whenever possible.
It was also the sense of the meeting that all medical alumni should be subscribers to the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE.
The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: president, H. Sheridan Baketel '95 of Jersey City, N. J.; secretary and treasurer, John W. Bowler 'O6 of Hanover, N. H.; executive committee, Elmer H. Carleton '97 of Hanover, N. H., Alexander A. Beaton '9B of Franklin, N. H., Charles S. Little 96 of Thiells, N. Y.
The banquet was held in College Hall on the night of June 17, and the room was crowded.
At the post-prandial exercises, over which the president of the Association presided, the speakers were: Olney W. Phelps '7B of Warren, Mass.; John H. Henry 'Bl of Winchendon, Mass.; Prof. Howard N. Kingsford '9B of Hanover; Prof. Frederic P. Lord 03 of Hanover; Charles H. Dolloff 'O3, superintendent of the New Hampshire State Hospital at Concord; Prof. John W. Bowler 'O6 of Hanover; John F. Gile 'lB of Hanover.
On June 18, the members of the Alumni Association marched to the Athletic Field and cheered for Dartmouth in a successful game against Cornell.
Officers of the Association have already commenced their activities looking toward the reunion in June, 1929.
Annual reunion in Hanover each Commencement in June.
The following letter from the oldest living graduate of the Medical School is a fitting supplement to the report of the reunion: H. Sheridan Baketel, M. D., President, Dartmouth Medical Alumni Association, 40 East 41st St., New York City. Dear Doctor Baketel: Your very kind and cordial invitation to be present at the celebration of the 130 th anniversary of the first graduation from the Dartmouth Medical School was duly received, for which I thank you most heartily. To be able to be present at that meeting, and look into the faces of those men who, before the abolition of the graduate class, were graduates from the Dartmouth School, would be to me a great pleasure. I have a fraternal feeling toward them, the more keenly felt because that pleasure has never been my experience. My diploma from the Dartmouth Medical School is dated MDCCCLIX (1859), nearly sixty-eight years ago
Through the kindness of Dr. Conant of New York city, who was professor of surgery at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., where I went to school two years before, I was appointed assistant apothecary at Demilt Dispensary, corner of Second Ave. and Twenty-third St. I remained there a year, and received many advantages which I could not have had as a student but gained as a graduate, such as attending clinics and listening to lectures of eminent surgeons and physicians. President Lincoln was inaugurated when I was in New York city.
In the past, I have had some correspondence with Dr. Westley M. Hunt, secretary of alumni of Dartmouth Medical School, in regard to my experience in New York after leaving Dartmouth, and therefore anything which I might say here might be something like a repetition of what I have written Dr. Hunt. I am convinced that the abolition of the graduation term at Dartmouth and limiting medical studies there to the first two years was certainly in the best interest of both the student and of the College.
I shall be 95 years old August 23, 1928. I had been in the active practice of surgery and medicine nearly 55_ years, when my last active practice ended with my resignation as surgeon of the Wisconsin Veterans' Home for Civil War veterans and their widows, now a large state institution, July 1, 1913.
I regret to state that my physical condition prevents my journeying farther than a short distance from home: hence a trip of even 50 miles I cannot make, much less can I go as far as Hanover. Both vision and hearing are so poor that I do not attend any public gatherings, either here or elsewhere. Therefore I need not say that I never expect to again visit Dartmouth.
Again thanking you for your kind invitation to be present at the Commencement exercises and the gathering of the Alumni of the old Dartmouth Medical School, I am, dear Dr. Baketel, Very truly yours,
How the dedication appeared from the tower
