When the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeonswas founded in 1893, and the Milwaukee Medical College in the late-1890s, newmedical students were armed with a valuable piece of information: Only twodecades earlier Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch established the germ theory ofdisease, a cornerstone of modern medicine which proposes that microorganismsare the cause of many diseases.
Marquette University took control of the Milwaukee Medical College in 1907, whichled to the Marquette University Department of Medicine/Milwaukee MedicalCollege. Because of growing concerns regarding a lack of standardization amongmedical schools, the Association of American Medical Colleges commissioned areview of all U.S.medical schools in 1910. The resulting report inspired medical schools acrossthe country to reorganize in order to improve the quality of the education theyoffered.
Marquetteresponded by acquiring the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1913and merging it with its Department of Medicine/Milwaukee Medical College,creating a brand-new institution: the Marquette University School of Medicine.Most of the faculty consisted of community physicians who volunteered to teachthe medical school’s classes, and partnerships were forged with most of Milwaukee’s hospitals sothey could become clinical training sites for med students.
In 1967, Marquette University announced thatmounting debts would force it to sever its bonds to the medical school. Nolonger connected to any academic institution, the medical school was setadrift, without an endowment, a revenue stream, property or facilities. To keepthe doors open, attorney Louis Quarles raised $1 million over a weekend. A newboard composed mainly of business leaders on the Greater Milwaukee Committeetook the reins. Milwaukee County Executive John Doyne and Edmund Fitzgerald,chairman of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., appointed a task forceheaded by local industrialist Joseph Heil Sr. to study the need and potentialfor an academic medical center in Milwaukee.
The Heil Commission Report called for major publicand private financing and support for a comprehensive regional medical centerwith the medical school as its nucleus. It was at this point that the medicalschool’s board of directors determined that the school’s name needed to bechanged to reflect its statewide services and ties to all of the citizens of Wisconsin. In 1970, themedical school was renamed the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW).
When the MedicalCollege moved to new facilities on thecampus of the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in 1978, itjump-started a period of phenomenal growth that would ultimately lead to itsidentity as a major academic medical center. Today, on-campus facilitiesinclude Froedtert Memorial LutheranHospital, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin,the BloodCenter of Wisconsin’s research institute, the Eye Institute, CurativeRehabilitation Services, the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, the Medical CollegeCancer Centerand the Health Research Center,among others.
From humble origins in 1893, the Medical College ofWisconsin has evolved to become a national leader in the education ofphysicians and scientists.
