In 1950, the internationally famous neuroscientist
Dr. H. W. Magoun, from Northwestern University, was appointed the first
Chairman of Anatomy in the nascent medical school of UCLA. Construction had not begun, so Dr. Magoun
expected that he would have considerable time to organize research laboratories
and recruit a teaching staff. However,
early in 1951, the California State legislature decreed that if the new medical
school was to receive state funds, it must start teaching medical students
right away. Therefore, in the late
spring of 1951, Dr. Magoun secured the appointments of Dan Pease, an electron
microscopist from USC to head up Microscopic Anatomy, and Sawyer from Duke
University to organize the Gross Anatomy course.
Our temporary teaching center was a brick structure
known as the ”Religious Conference Building” located on the north side of Le
Conte Avenue opposite Bullocks’ parking lot. It had numerous small rooms for offices, a large parlor for lectures,
another large room for histology and neuroanatomy teaching labs, a covered
patio for the biochemistry lab and a very large dining room out back which was
separated into physiology and gross anatomy laboratories. For the first year, Dr. Patek of USC,
custodian of unclaimed bodies in Southern California, assigned UCLA seven
cadavers for dissection by our 28 medical students. The Gross course met for two half-days per week over the more
than 30-week school year and coordinated its schedule as far as possible with
Microscopic Anatomy, Neuroanatomy and Physiology-Biophysics.
Sawyer
gave all the basic Gross lectures that first year and, since Gross started a
half day ahead of Microscopic, he had the honor of presenting the first formal
teaching lecture at UCLA Medical School. In place of prosections, we used the Markee-Hollinshead silent
dissection film, which Sawyer brought with him from Duke. These were eventually superseded several
years later by the Clemente sound films designed to follow specific
lectures. That first year, Dr. Magoun
helped out in the Gross laboratory, and he proved to be a superb rapid
dissector whose technique the students tried to emulate. From the outset, we invited surgeons and
radiologists to give lecture and demonstrations, and we, in turn, were invited
to the VA Hospitals to lecture to the surgical interns and residents.
The
seven bodies supplied by USC for dissection that first year were the last we
had to request from the curator of claimed bodies. Taking advantage of a law passed by the California Legislature
permitting individuals to will their own bodies to medical schools for teaching
and research, Dr. Magoun placed an advertisement in the LA Times inviting such
personal contributions. The response was magnanimous and the Willed Body
Program set up thereby has supplied all of the needs of our department and
other departments of the Center for Health Sciences as well as material for
other medical schools.
Whereas
the Religious Conference provided space for offices and teaching, there was no
room for research or special projects. All of Anatomy’s appointees in the early 1950’s set up laboratories in
local VA Hospitals including . . . the Long Beach VA Hospital. Dr. John French, chief of Neurosurgery
there, arranged for Magoun and his associates to be invited to share space in
barrack type buildings behind [the] main structure. Here, many long-term research programs were initiated which were eventually
returned to the UCLA campus. However,
as far as Gross Anatomy is concerned, this was the site where, under Magoun’s
stimulus, the embedding of anatomical specimens in transparent plastic was
developed. This plastic embedding
program has produced the beautiful cross sections of the adult human body,
sagittal sections of the new-born child and frontal and sagittal sections of
the head and neck which are now on display in our Gross Anatomy
Laboratory. The head and neck series
was sponsored by the Dental School. These were marvelous teaching aids long
before CAT scans and MRI scans made them essential. The technique was developed and maintained by a series of artists
and technicians including Charles Bridgeman, Frank Humelbaugh, and the current
museum specialist and authority on instructional materials, James Parker.
Getting
back to the Religious Conference Building, the first three small classes of 28
students received their early training in its teaching areas. In 1954, many of
these rooms were converted to research labs whose occupants transferred to the
Brain Research Institute when its space opened in 1960. Shortly thereafter, the
new Dental School made the Religious Conference Building its administrative
headquarters while its permanent home was being built. The structure was torn down
a few years ago to make away for parking space in front of the hospital.
The construction which enabled us to accept an
entering class of 50 students in 1954 . . . [allowed Anatomy and Pathology to
share] the first floor, and Gross Anatomy laboratory was on the north side of
corridor 3 directly beneath the current laboratory on the seventh floor. Our shared lecture room was 13-105. Our
first mortician, Fred Gale, was a young British-trained anatomy technician, and
he kept the cadavers in excellent condition for dissection in space we shared
with Pathology for post-mortems and storage.
In the meantime, Anatomy’s training graduate
training program had been accepted by university administration and we started
awarding Ph.D.s in Anatomy in 1956. During the next 20 years, essentially all of our graduate students
included Gross Anatomy in their curricula, and most of them become teaching
assistants in Gross during their second or third years. Many of them
subsequently received good university faculty appointments in major medical
schools not only for their research records, but also for their ability to
teach Gross Anatomy. . . .
In the mid-1950s, Dr. Magoun, having successfully
lunched a highly respected Anatomy Department, retired from routine administrative
duties by pushing Sawyer into the Anatomy Chair. This gave Magoun more freedom
to concentrate on his goal of establishing a neurological institute eventually
called the Brain Research Institute (BRI). By the late 1950s, he had obtained
university approval and federal funding for construction of the BRI building. .
. . The completed building in 1960 . .
. towered above the first unit of the medical school and contained separate
floors for neuro-researchers of various department and disciplines. Additional floors to the medical school
building were completed in 1967, and Anatomy moved up to its present location
on the sixth and seventh floors.
Naturally,
Anatomy has had major interest in the BRI and all of its Directors (French,
Clemente and Scheibel) have held appointments in our department. Because of Magoun’s attracting
neurologically oriented anatomists, it was facetiously commented that when the
Anatomy Faculty numbered 15, we had five anatomists interested in the nervous
system teaching Gross, five others in the nervous system teaching Microscopic
Anatomy and the rest taught “Neuro”!
However, Gross Anatomy did not suffer . . . [with]
five people . . . [teaching] Gross in 1963. . . . Dr. Gorski . . . had recently taken his Ph.D. in the department. With interests in neuroendocrinology, he has
received many awards for research and teaching and has chaired our courses in
both Gross and Microscopic Anatomy as well as Chairing the Department from
1980-1992. . . . Dr. Clemente had just
become Chairman of Anatomy in 1963, a position he held for 10 years, and then
moved over to become Director of the Brain Research Institute for an additional
10 years. He arrived at UCLA in
1952. For more than 40 years, besides
his awards-winning research on brain function and neuroregeneration and his
administrative achievements, he has become famous for his contributions to
improved teaching of Gross Anatomy including his dissection films already
mentioned, his beautiful Atlas of Anatomy, and his skillful editorship of the
American Gary’s Anatomy. He has been President of the American Association of
Anatomists, and two years ago he won the prestigious Henry Gray Award from
their society. Currently, he is writing
a Dissection Manual.
. . . Earl Eldred, M.D., has been with us from 1951, first doing research with Dr. Magoun and later teaching all of our major courses: besides Gross Anatomy, he has taught surgical anatomy, microscopic anatomy and neuroanatomy. He was Acting Chairman of Anatomy in 1958-59 and for several years before his retirement five years ago, he served as Vice-Chairman in charge of graduate student activities. He is still very active in research on muscle spindles and motor units, a field to which he was introduced by Nobel Prize Winner Ragnar Granit, with whom he worked while on a postdoctoral fellowship in Sweden in 1952-53. . . . David Maxwell . . . had recently taken his Ph.D. in our department after spending two years at Oxford as a Rhode’s scholar. He was a neurophysiologist and neuroendocrinologist and an enthusiastic teacher of Gross and Surgical Anatomy. When the Dental School opened, he was commissioned to organize its Gross Anatomy course and he chaired Dental Gross for several years before returning to the medical gross course. He eventually chaired Medical Gross four years after Sawyer’s retirement in 1985. Unfortunately, he met an untimely death from cardiovascular problems four years ago. The fifth Gross Anatomist with interests in the nervous system was Sawyer, a neuroendocrinologist. All five of these anatomists also served on important administrative committees on Upper Campus. For examples, Maxwell became Chairman of the University Senate and Clemente Chairman of the University Budget Committee.
. . .
Dr. Eberhardt Sauerland . . . taught in both our medical and dental gross
courses in the 1960’s before leaving for Texas. Commissioned by Dr. Grant to succeed himself as editor of Grant’s
Dissector, Sauerland has updated the last four editors of the Dissector used by
all of our Gross Anatomy students.
. . .
the early days of Gross Anatomy at UCLA [in the] mid-1960s [included] Drs.
Gorski, Sawyer, Clemente, Maxwell, Al Le Bouton (a new Gross appointee from our
graduate student ranks), Sauerland, whom we just mentioned, . . . Dr. Magoun,
who had become Dean of Graduate School in 1962, visiting Professor Grant, . . .
and Earl Eldred . . .
Notables
. . . include Drs. Reidar Sognnaes (first Dean of the Dental School) and Jack
French (first Director of the Brain Research Institute) both of whom held
appointments in Anatomy, James Hayward, who held joint appointments in
Neurology and Anatomy, but taught Gross Anatomy, and pioneer appointee Dan
Pease, who still chaired the Microscopic Anatomy Course he first organized in
1951.
It is
interesting that of the four long-term Anatomy Departmental Chairmen following
Magoun: Sawyer (1955-63), Clemente (1963-73), Pease (1973-80) and Gorski
(1980-92), all except Dr. Pease served at some stage as Chair or Coordinator of
Gross Anatomy. So, Gross has maintained
a very important role among departmental activities, interests and
responsibilities.