Dr. John B. Barnwell has headed the medical staff since 1928. In this way the Hospital is sending out into practice in the state of Michigan, year after year, physicians who are especially trained in all of the modern phases of the treatment of tuberculosis. The Department of Surgery maintains a division of chest surgery under the leadership of Dr. John Alexander, who is directly responsible for the tuberculosis patients who are admitted primarily for surgical measures.
Instruction of medical students in regard to tuberculosis is carried out in the last three years of their course. In the second year, one or more groups are giving instruction in physical diagnosis. In the third year, groups may elect work in tuberculosis. All fourth-year students pass through the unit in small groups for discussion of diagnosis and treatment.
The Social Service Department of the University Hospital began with the passage of the Michigan Medical Care Acts, the first of which (Act No. 274), passed by the legislature in 1913, permitted judges of probate to send to the University Hospital children suffering from congenital defects or diseased conditions. Shortly afterward, a similar measure (Act No. 267) authorizing the care and hospitalization of adults, was passed by the legislature. These acts determined in large part the designation, number, and type of patients received for clinical teaching purposes. They came particularly from indigent or marginal groups for which such care was otherwise not available: children who were wards of the state, congenital cripples, psychopathic cases needing medical care or surgical treatment, children with curable maladies or deformities whose parents were unable to provide proper treatment, crippled children, sterilization cases, and tuberculosis cases.
These measures brought many new patients needing special services to the hospital. Efforts to provide some sort of social service for hospital patients had, as a matter of fact, begun almost with the opening of the old University Hospital. The University Hospital Circle of the King's Daughters was formed in 1892 to give assistance to patients. These efforts, however, were voluntary and not always continuous. Within the Hospital, moreover, the nurses' service in 1912 had designated a particular nurse to act as a part-time social worker.
Mary C. Merriweather was Supervisor of Social Service in 1918 and Imogene Poole in the years 1919-21. Offices were assigned the Social Service Department in 1919, and in 1920 Dr. Christopher Parnall, then Director of the Hospital, reported that the Rotary Clubs were interested in maintaining in the Hospital a social service worker who would care particularly for the welfare of children sent to the Hospital under Public Act 274. In 1921 Mrs. Elmie W. Mallory (Ph.B. Buchtel '97, A.M. Michigan '20) was made Supervisor of Social Service in the Homeopathic Hospital. When the
