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Department Publications
Department History (1969—1970)
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1858-1912 1913-1930 1931-1942 1943-1958 1959-1968 1969-1970 1971-1985 1986-2006 |
1969-1970 The University Takes Charge of the Infirmary: "Progress Comes Slowly, But It Does Come. "
Peter Kronfeld came to the end of his long, productive service to Illinois as drafting began on legislation to transfer the Infirmary wholly to University control. The "Chicago Professional Colleges" had by then become the ''University of Illinois at the Medical Center." In 1961 the Department of Public Welfare had been supplanted by the Department of Mental Health, which in turn gave way in 1963 to the Department of Children and Family Services as the agency of joint control with the University. While the transfer, which had first been planned fifty years before, moved in stately fashion through levels of approval by state and University officials, James McDonald served as Acting Head of Ophthalmology at Illinois from 1968 to 1969.
McDonald had first come to Illinois in 1949, as Assistant in Ophthalmology and Resident at the Research and Educational Hospitals and Infirmary. He served as Medical Director of the Glaucoma Screening Project in the early sixties. In 1968-69, when he was President of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, he brought the Eye Bank, located at Cook County Hospital since 1947, to the University, under the direction of Maurice Rabb.
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James E. McDonald |
At the request of the University Police in 1967-68, McDonald investigated the effects of Mace on the eyes of rabbits, later pursuing extensive studies of the physics and physiology of human tear films. During his interim administration, McDonald inaugurated a small contact lens clinic, run on a volunteer basis, which soon proved so popular that it was running six months behind the demand.
In October 1969 David Dodds Henry (who had become University President in 1955) replied to an inquiry from Francis Lederer, Head of Otolaryngology, about progress on the transfer of the Infirmary: ''We are, at long last, getting the administrative lines with the State straightened out," Henry wrote. ''The University will become the full proprietor next January. Progress comes slowly, but it does come." Progress to the point of complete transfer had required just over a half-century, but, true to President Henry's word, the Infirmary finally came under full University control, on January 1, 1970.
Two weeks later the Ophthalmology Department gained its first full-time (and present) Head, in Morton F. Goldberg. The administration in Chicago and Urbana was relatively stable and capable of supporting internal improvements. At last—for the first time in the history of the University—the circumstances and the leader were rightly matched to lift Ophthalmology to a level of research excellence comparable to the Department's long and honorable record of service.
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Dr. Maurice F. Rabb prepares solutions for the processing of donor Eye Bank eyes. |
