On Sept. 20, the Washtenaw County Historical Society’s Museum On Main Street debuted its new exhibit: “Creating the Future of Medicine for 175 Years.” The exhibit celebrates the 175th anniversary of Michigan Medicine through a collection of medical artifacts, photography and an exploration of its rich, multi-layered history.
A stroll through the exhibit takes visitors through three rooms organized in chronological order, from 1850 to 2025. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Kara Gavin, lead public relations representative for Michigan Medicine, said Michigan Medicine was founded in the center of campus.
“It was October of 1850 when the first medical school building opened on the Diag where the physics building is now,” Gavin said. “A lot of people don’t realize that. Our first hospital was on the Diag too.”
Along the walls of the museum, photographs and signs outlined in maize and blue tell the story of Michigan Medicine’s pioneering achievements. The University of Michigan was the first university in the nation to own a hospital, as well as the first to engineer a pharmacology department and one of the first in the world to found an institute dedicated to mental health research.
The exhibit also highlights the experiences of minorities in Michigan Medicine’s past and present. The University was the first major medical school in the U.S. to admit women, and many female graduates went on to pursue careers in anatomy, surgery, public health, women’s rights and more. However, during their medical training, women were taught separately from men and their anatomy lessons were completely separate until 1907. Gavin said the role of women in the medical field has changed since the early days of the school, which is reflected in the Medical School’s incoming class.
“I hope it makes people think about how the roles of women, especially, have changed over time,” Gavin said. “It’s this idea that your default if you were born female, until probably the ’70s, was (that) you were probably going to be a nurse, not a doctor. Now, if you look at those statistics on that door, the percentage of our current Medical students who identify as female is over half. So, it’s a dramatic change in medicine in the last 135 years.”
Gavin also mentioned that while the University’s Medical School was one of the first medical schools in the Midwest to admit people of Color, they also faced significant harassment during their time as students.
“We’re trying to show that while we were definitely ahead of many schools in admitting women and people of Color, we also had varying experiences for some of those individuals,” Gavin said.
The exhibit features more than 100 artifacts associated with both Michigan Medicine and general early medical tools. Many of the artifacts were loaned by the U-M Center for History, Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Ethics in Medicine, and most of the digitized photographs came from the Bentley Historical Library. Specifically, the exhibit features mid- to late-19th-century era surgical kits, civil war era leg splints and more.
In an interview with The Daily, Engineering senior Kaanan Datt said he was interested in the development of medical technology over time.
“I think it’s really cool to see how far medicine has come,” Datt said. “To think about how far the technology has come from, even back then, when they thought such a small thing was such a significant advancement, it’s really cool to see just how progress works.”
Several interactive features allow visitors to immerse themselves in the exhibit. A QR code at the beginning of the exhibit leads to a detailed map depicting each of Michigan Medicine’s relocations through time. Throughout each room, reflective questions line the walls, inviting visitors to think deeply about the themes presented by the exhibit as well as themselves.
The exhibit was made possible in collaboration with the Washtenaw County Historical Society and a team that includes Gavin and historians Alex Navarro and Linda Strodtman, among others. Beverly Willis, the administrator for the Washtenaw County Historical Society, told The Daily she felt the most impactful part of the exhibit was its ability to capture the continuous nature of Michigan Medicine.
“We will always be building,” Willis said. “We will always be growing, which is why ‘Creating the Future of Medicine for 175 Years’ is the title of the exhibit. It’s the work that Michigan Medicine does. And the students who graduate and the people who practice are all a part of that magic.”
Daily News Contributor Sonia Alizadeh can be reached at salizade@umich.edu.
