with the growth of the department and of its cost of operation, the possibility of obtaining continuous support for research or for other special projects from this source steadily declined. The result of the new policy was, therefore, that the department did not actually benefit from the money. In fact, within a few years the gift became more of a handicap than a benefit, for, while the other clinical departments expanded and were granted successively larger budgets, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology was retarded because the Regents refused to appropriate anything for it except the income from the Bates fund. As the principal professorship of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology was named in honor of Dr. Bates, her bequest should have been devoted to ways of increasing the efficiency of that department. In justice to the Regents it may be stated that they acted in good faith and thought that under the provisions of the will no action except the one which they took was feasible. It would seem that a donor should specify more definitely the purpose of a bequest and yet give the governing board the greatest possible freedom in its administration.
Martin was aided continuously after the summer of 1888 by James Gifford Lynds ('88m), who was promoted in 1892 from an assistantship to the position of Demonstrator of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women. During the year 1897-98 he was Acting Professor of Gynecology. Other assistants, each of whom served under Martin for a briefer period, were Casper K. Lahuis ('96m), Dr. Clara A. O. Dedrick, and John J. Mersen (Hope '95, A.M. ibid. '98, Michigan '99m).
Neither Martin nor Lynds had any national affiliations. Their work was confined to the state. One of the reasons, probably, for Martin's breakdown in health was his custom of operating in private houses in towns in the neighborhood of Ann Arbor, and then riding through the night in order to keep his University obligations the next day. In 1895 he was granted a leave of absence on account of blood poisoning contracted from operating on a septic case. Another year's leave of absence in 1897-98 was also granted because of ill-health. In 1900, a year before his resignation, he manifested distinct signs of mental instability and these symptoms grew worse until the time of his death in 1913. Lynds resigned with Martin, in February, 1901, and on October 1 of that year Reuben Peterson (Harvard '85, M.D. ibid. '89, Sc.D. hon. Michigan '36) became Bates Professor of the Diseases of Women and Children.
Peterson was born in Boston in 1862. After graduating from Harvard University and interning in three Boston hospitals, he came to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1890 and established a general practice. Because of his hospital training and inclinations, Peterson, even when engaged in general practice, devoted more and more of his attention to obstetrics and gynecology and in 1897 was elected to membership in the American Gynecological Society. In 1898 he went to the Chicago Post-Graduate Medical School as a professor of gynecology, and a year later he accepted an assistant professorship of obstetrics and gynecology at Rush Medical College.
In the early and middle nineties, instruction in gynecological diagnosis and treatment, as well as in obstetrics, had been given to small groups of students at Michigan. The effort to increase the individualization of instruction was perhaps relinquished to some extent after Martin's illness in 1897; at any rate, as late as 1900, patients were operated on before large classes, while the students sat on hard benches during long, prescribed hours and watched, seeing little and
