Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 247]

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The Colleges and Schools

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take from the standpoint of the interests of the commonwealth. There is no doubt that the average level of medical education in the state of Illinois would be much higher than it is today and the public health would be much more adequately conserved if the College of Medicine had been established and properly supported at the time of the opening of the University. During Governor Altgeld *s administration, and largely upon his initiative, an attempt was made to incorporate medical teaching in the general university scheme by annexing to the University an existing medical school. Following the earnest suggestion of Governor Altgeld, who had insisted that the people of Illinois desired that the University of Illinois should become a university in the fullest and completest sense of that term, the Trustees of the University, after long and careful deliberation, made, with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago, a contract of affiliation April 1, 1897, to go into effect April 24th of the same year. Under this contract the College of Physicians and Surgeons turned over to the University the use of its plant in return for a specified rental. The University in co-operation with the faculty of the medical school which had been conducted by the College of Physicians and Surgeons took over the responsibility of managing the school, making it, for practical purposes, the medical department of the University of Illinois. The trustees, however, did not assume any financial obligations for the conduct of this experiment beyond using the income from the fees of students and the gifts of private individuals for the support of the medical school. They simply agreed to manage it and make as good a school as they could with the proceeds arising from the sources mentioned. The result was so satisfactory to both parties that a new contract of affiliation was made, to go into effect May 1, 1900. (It was modified in 1901.) Under this contract the College of Physicians and Surgeons as a corporation, with the consent of the Board of Trustees of the University, undertook to enlarge the plant, which had been used for the medical