A new home and a new name: Winston-Salem and the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, 1941-1971. (Wake Forest Centennial).

IN THE LATE 1930s, the medical program on the old Wake Forest College campus operated under the name Wake Forest College School of Medical Sciences. Like other 2-year programs, Wake Forest College's medical school was threatened with closure, ostensibly because of inadequate facilities and instruction, but more realistically because of a perceived oversupply of physicians desiring to protect their incomes. By 1937, the medical school at Wake Forest had produced more than 500 graduates, and the dean, Coy C. Carpenter, was convinced that the best way to ensure its continued existence was to expand to a 4-year program conferring the MD degree.

The estate of Bowman Gray, Sr. (Fig 1), of Winston-Salem, who died in 1935, included a bequest for an unspecified philanthropic purpose. It was decided to offer the bequest to entice the University of North Carolina (UNC) to establish a 4-year medical program there. But when UNC declined the offer, Dr. Carpenter recognized an opportunity to acquire the needed funds to expand the Wake Forest program. He secured the Bowman Gray Fund, which consisted of 18,500 shares of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company stock with a value between $600,000 and $720,000 for Wake Forest by agreeing to move the medical school to Winston-Salem. Although an estimated $10 million would be needed to finance a 4-year school, Carpenter, with great resourcefulness, obtained a loan at 1% interest using the Gray bequest as collateral, and made plans for the move (Fig 2).

North Carolina Baptist Hospital, which would become the school's teaching hospital, agreed to increase its capacity from 88 beds to 300 (Fig 3). In April 1940, construction began on both the medical school, to be renamed the Bowman Gray School of Medicine (BGSM), and the expansion of North Carolina Baptist Hospital. In September 1941, 42 freshmen and 30 sophomores started classes. Although BGSM intended to confer the first MD degrees in the spring of 1944, the intervention of World War II necessitated an accelerated graduation schedule, and the first MD degrees were conferred in December 1943.

Carpenter assembled an outstanding faculty for the new school, including Camillo Artom, a biochemist who came from Italy to Wake Forest in 1937 and moved with the school in 1941, and Tinsley R. Harrison, who. left Vanderbilt University to head the Bowman Gray Department of Medicine. Many local physicians joined the clinical faculty at Carpenter's invitation, minimizing typical town-gown conflicts and providing an excellent complement of doctors for the medical school. In 1947, Carpenter hired Manson Meads, MD, as an instructor in medicine; Meads later became professor and chair of Preventive Medicine, then succeeded Carpenter as dean of the School of Medicine in 1963 and vice president for health affairs in 1967.

The faculty and administration recognized an opportunity in their new school to restructure traditional medical education. Instead of departments, they established four interdisciplinary sections: structure (anatomy, radiology and pathology); function (physiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry); medicine (internal medicine, preventive medicine, pediatrics, and bacteriology); and surgery (general surgery and all surgical specialties). Curricular innovations that have distinguished the school through the years had their precedent in this "radical" beginning.

Finances presented a constant challenge during Coy Carpenter's long tenure as dean (1936-1963). Medical school faculty members received no salaries, but collected fees from private patients and made "contributions" from this income to support the building programs. Without significant contributions from the Gray family and the work of the medical school's Board of Visitors (an advisory board made up of prominent Winston-Salem citizens), however, the continued existence of the school, let alone its expansion, would have been unlikely.

A modest building program completed in 1954 added approximately 150 beds to the hospital, and, in 1959, the completion of the James A. Gray Building doubled the size of the school. A much larger development campaign in the 1960s resulted in the addition of a research building and an auditorium in 1970, and a 16-story patient tower was completed in 1973. Under the leadership of deans Carpenter and Meads (Fig 4), the medical school had positioned itself for steady expansion in scale, vision, and reputation through the 1970s and beyond.

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Richard H. Dean, MD

In culmination of a distinguished career in medicine, Richard H. Dean, MD, was appointed President of Wake Forest University Health Sciences in November 2001. Previously, he had been Senior Vice President for Health Affairs of Wake Forest University. He is also director of the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

The son of a family physician in Radford, Virginia, Dr. Dean earned his BA degree from Virginia Military Institute and his MD degree from the Medical College of Virginia. He trained as a surgeon at Vanderbilt University and later at Northwestern University where he was a research fellow in vascular surgery. In 1975, he joined the faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, rising to the rank of Professor of Surgery and Head of the Division of Vascular Surgery.

He joined the Wake Forest faculty in 1986 as the Richard T. Myers Professor of Surgery. He later served as director of the Division of Surgical Sciences and Chairman of the Department of General Surgery.

Dr. Dean is a member of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine. He has served as a Director of both the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Plastic Surgery, and an office holder in innumerable national and international surgical societies. He has been a visiting professor and has performed operative demonstrations at universities throughout the world. He is the author or co-author of over 200 articles in scientific journals and chapters in medical texts and has edited several textbooks of general and vascular surgery.

Dr. Dean is the father of four sons and lives with his wife, Mary, and youngest son, Wills.

From the Office of the Dean, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC.

Reprint requests to Donna S. Garrison, PhD, Publications Manager, Office of the Dean, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157.