175 Years, 175 Stories: Part 7
Making a difference internationally
The Medical School has a long history of global impact, with a reputation for inspiring bidirectional programs that influence patient care, research, and education abroad and at home. Here are just a few of the individuals who have helped us serve the world.
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MEDICAL MISSIONARY
Christine Iverson Bennett (M.D. 1907) was a Danish immigrant. During medical school, she was assistant demonstrator of anatomy and secretary of her class. She moved to Bahrain in 1909 to do medical missionary work. After marrying, she and her husband relocated to Basra, Iraq (then Arabia), where Bennett treated wounded World War I soldiers. She contracted typhoid fever while treating patients during a 1916 outbreak, which led to her death at age 35.
Source: Wikipedia
Making a difference internationally
The Medical School has a long history of global impact, with a reputation for inspiring bidirectional programs that influence patient care, research, and education abroad and at home. Here are just a few of the individuals who have helped us serve the world.
126
MEDICAL MISSIONARY
Christine Iverson Bennett (M.D. 1907) was a Danish immigrant. During medical school, she was assistant demonstrator of anatomy and secretary of her class. She moved to Bahrain in 1909 to do medical missionary work. After marrying, she and her husband relocated to Basra, Iraq (then Arabia), where Bennett treated wounded World War I soldiers. She contracted typhoid fever while treating patients during a 1916 outbreak, which led to her death at age 35.
Source: Wikipedia
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SAVING WOMEN'S LIVES IN GHANA
When Timothy R.B. Johnson, M.D., traveled to Ghana in 1986 as part of a group of Americans striving to build relationships in medicine, he learned that women were dying in childbirth from diseases and conditions that were manageable in the United States. Those conditions included bleeding, hemorrhages, high blood pressure, and strokes. Ghana needed partners who could train health workers to save women’s lives, and he took on that charge. Over three decades, Johnson mentored undergraduate students, medical students, residents, and fellows in Ghana. More than 50 publications documented his unique program development. Johnson, who served as chair Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology for 24 years, received the University of Michigan President’s Award for Distinguished Service in International Education in 2022.
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EYE CARE ACCESS IN EAST AFRICA
Since finishing residency in 2009, John Cropsey (M.D. 2005) has been leading ophthalmology programs in East Africa, first in Kenya and then in Burundi, where he was one of only a handful of ophthalmic surgeons in a country of more than 12 million people. Cropsey developed and implemented the first retinoblastoma treatment program in Burundi. In 2022, he became part of the faculty at the Rwanda International Institute of Ophthalmology. He received the Michigan Medicine Alumni Society Humanitarian Award in 2018, and in 2024, he was awarded the Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
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LIFE-SAVING REHYDRATION THERAPY
In 2002, Nathaniel F. Pierce (M.D. 1958) was named one of the four recipients of the first-ever Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research. In Kolkata, India (formerly Calcutta), in the 1960s and ’70s, Pierce and the other recipients had studied water and electrolyte balance in patients with cholera. Their work made it possible to create an optimal oral rehydration solution that could maintain hydration in patients who had severe diarrhea without the need for an IV. It is estimated that this work has saved the lives of 40 million children.
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WOMEN'S HEALTH AND KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS IN AFRICA
Senait Fisseha, M.D., J.D. (Residency 2003, Fellowship 2006), joined the Medical School faculty after her training in obstetrics and gynecology with Timothy R.B. Johnson, M.D. She began work to replicate Johnson’s success in her home country of Ethiopia in 2012. She founded the Center for International Reproductive Health Training, which helped to establish OB-GYN residency programs nationally.
While in Ethiopia, she learned the prime minister wanted to start a kidney transplant program to tackle a growing and expensive chronic kidney disease problem — a paradox of the expanded Ethiopian life expectancy.
She reached out to Jeffrey Punch (M.D. 1986, Residency 1992), who had begun volunteering in Kenya with his church and loved his time in Africa. Punch worked with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health to establish the first kidney transplant program in Ethiopia. With the help of an international team of volunteers, this program began performing live donor kidney transplants in 2015 and has since become self-sustaining.
Fisseha’s work later took her to Rwanda, where the same problem existed. Having essentially finished his work in Ethiopia, Punch followed, this time partnering with more health care providers to start a program there.
“In order to meet the standard of a high-quality transplant program, you can’t just bring it in and drop it into place. It has to be developed in place,” he says. Fisseha is vice president of global programs at the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Punch is a professor of surgery in the Medical School.
Sources: “Expanding women’s health care in Ethiopia,” Michigan Alumnus Summer 1999; U-M Department of Surgery
TRANSFORMATIVE PHILANTHROPY
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Global health leader
A scientist and scholar in gastroenterology, Tadataka “Tachi” Yamada, M.D., became the chief of gastroenterology at the U-M Medical School in 1983. In 1990, he rose to chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, leading hundreds of U-M physicians and the care of hundreds of thousands of patients. He was a pioneer in drug and vaccine development who helped forge numerous biotech companies and spent five years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as head of global health. Yamada and his wife, Leslie, donated $10 million to establish the University of Michigan Center for Global Health Equity. The program was launched in early 2020 and aims to accelerate work by U-M faculty, staff, and students to address inequities in health in the poorest nations and in disadvantaged populations in middle-income countries. Tadataka died in 2021, and Leslie and her family gave another $10 million to advance the work of the center in 2024.
Source: Medicine at Michigan, Winter 2022; “Global health equity center receives additional $10M donation,” University Record
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HIGH STANDARDS FOR EMERGENCY MEDICINE IN GHANA
In 2008, Rockefeller Oteng, M.D. (Residency 2009), began working with the U-M Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative to build emergency care systems in Ghana. For the first few years, he spent eight months out of the year in Africa, helping to train physicians and nurses to the same standard he uses at U-M, where he’s an associate professor of emergency medicine. “I expect the same from my residents here as I do from my residents in Ghana,” he says. “There’s no difference other than GPS location.” Those emergency systems now have their own attending physicians and nurses, and in 2015, thanks in part to Oteng’s work, Ghana established its first training program in emergency medicine.
Source: Medicine at Michigan, Fall 2020
TRANSFORMATIVE PHILANTHROPY
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Global health leader
A scientist and scholar in gastroenterology, Tadataka “Tachi” Yamada, M.D., became the chief of gastroenterology at the U-M Medical School in 1983. In 1990, he rose to chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, leading hundreds of U-M physicians and the care of hundreds of thousands of patients. He was a pioneer in drug and vaccine development who helped forge numerous biotech companies and spent five years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as head of global health. Yamada and his wife, Leslie, donated $10 million to establish the University of Michigan Center for Global Health Equity. The program was launched in early 2020 and aims to accelerate work by U-M faculty, staff, and students to address inequities in health in the poorest nations and in disadvantaged populations in middle-income countries. Tadataka died in 2021, and Leslie and her family gave another $10 million to advance the work of the center in 2024.
Source: Medicine at Michigan, Winter 2022; “Global health equity center receives additional $10M donation,” University Record
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HIGH STANDARDS FOR EMERGENCY MEDICINE IN GHANA
In 2008, Rockefeller Oteng, M.D. (Residency 2009), began working with the U-M Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative to build emergency care systems in Ghana. For the first few years, he spent eight months out of the year in Africa, helping to train physicians and nurses to the same standard he uses at U-M, where he’s an associate professor of emergency medicine. “I expect the same from my residents here as I do from my residents in Ghana,” he says. “There’s no difference other than GPS location.” Those emergency systems now have their own attending physicians and nurses, and in 2015, thanks in part to Oteng’s work, Ghana established its first training program in emergency medicine.
Source: Medicine at Michigan, Fall 2020
With the population aging so rapidly, it is important that we find ways of treating skin conditions of elderly people — not just for purposes of vanity, but also for the healing of wounds and the reduction of ulcers.
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Sewon Kang, (M.D. 1987). In 2007, while he was professor of dermatology at the Medical School, Kang co-authored a study on the effects of retinoids. It was previously thought that retinol lotions could only improve skin aged by the sun, but this study demonstrated that they also worked to reduce fine wrinkles from naturally aging skin.
Source: Michigan Medicine news release
TRANSROMATIONAL PHILANTHROPY
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A prolific scientist and humanitarian
Gil Omenn, M.D., Ph.D., has worked for decades to advance critical interdisciplinary biomedical, translational, and clinical research and translating those findings into real-world clinical applications. Omenn is the Harold T. Shapiro Distinguished University Professor of Medicine as well as professor of computational medicine and bioinformatics, of internal medicine, and of human genetics at the Medical School. His work has not only delved deeply into the complexities of disease but also has inspired and educated scientists across continents. Recognizing the expanding impact on health and health care of computational medicine, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics, Omenn and his wife, Martha Darling, made a $25 million gift to the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics in 2024, making it one of the first named medical school basic science departments in the nation.
Source: Medicine at Michigan, Spring 2025
Credit: Michigan Photography
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MATCH DAY MEMORY LANE
“I distinctly recall entering the Dean’s office on the seventh level of the Medical Science building around 8:15 a.m., picking up my envelope, and immediately walking down the hall into my classmate’s empty laboratory,” recalls James C. Stanley (M.D. 1964, Residency 1970). “I opened my envelope with no one around and felt a rush of happiness. Philadelphia General Hospital was where I’d be next year. I was euphoric. As I left the laboratory and walked over to the hospital to catch up with rounds, I didn’t encounter one classmate! Absolutely amazing, and I wondered if they had all disappeared into an empty classroom, bathroom, or closet to open their envelopes.” Stanley went on to become professor emeritus of surgery and one of the founding directors of the Samuel and Jean Frankel Cardiovascular Center.
Source: U-M Department of Surgery
FIRSTS
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First Asian graduate
Myatt Kyau (M.D. 1882) came to Michigan from Burma to study at Kalamazoo College before coming to the Medical School. A member of the Karen ethnic group, he was the first person of Asian heritage to graduate from the Medical School. He also was a member of the local Baptist congregation. He returned to practice in Burma and died in 1914.
Source: U-M social media and Michigan Medicine history website
Photo credit: U-M William L. Clements Library
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PROPER CATHETERIZATION DEVELOPMENT
Jack Lapides, (M.D. 1941), served as the chief of the section of urology at U-M from 1968–1984. His research focused on bladder physiology and the neuropathic bladder, a condition where the bladder doesn’t function properly due to nerve damage or dysfunction. Lapides is best known for the simple, but revolutionary promotion of proper catheterization. His contribution to the development of intermittent catheterization has saved the kidneys and lives of innumerable patients and enabled the success of many urinary tract reconstructive procedures.
Source: U-M Department of Urology
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PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGY PIONEER
Amnon Rosenthal, M.D., joined the U-M faculty as professor of pediatrics and director of pediatric cardiology in 1977. His groundbreaking research in congenital heart disease, including over 300 published articles and abstracts, resulted in lifesaving techniques that have helped tens of thousands of children with heart problems lead normal lives.
Caption: Items from Rosenthal’s large tin toy collection, which he and his wife, Prudence, began in 1974. Many are on display at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center through December 2025 as part of the U-M Gifts of Art program.
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AWARD-WINNING MEDICAL EDUCATOR
Frances Bull (M.D. 1952) was head of the cancer chemotherapy unit at University Hospital from 1958–1971 and was head of the section of medical oncology in the Department of Internal Medicine from 1971–1978. She was a noted educator, receiving the H. Marvin Pollard Award for Outstanding Teaching of Residents, the Kaiser-Permanente Award for Excellence in Teaching of Preclinical Sciences, and the Elizabeth Crosby Award for Outstanding Teaching of Medical Students in a Basic Science Area.
Source: Ann Arbor News obituary
Photo: J. Jefferson Gibson, 1893, U-M Bentley Historical Library
In the early nineteenth century, medical education was taught exclusively in classrooms — students sat, and professors lectured. Starting in the mid-1800s, U-M was one of a handful of medical schools that led a transformation to more hands-on learning. In the 1880s, they beefed up laboratory spaces and added more lab time to the required curriculum. The purely didactic method of instruction at the Medical School had fully given way to demonstrations and an experimental approach.
Sources: U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; Michigan Medicine; The University of Michigan: an encyclopedic survey (U-M Press, 1941); Michigan Medicine Office of Development
Kevorkian represented himself in the trial where he was charged with first-degree murder. Here he gives his opening statement to jurors on March 22, 1999 in Oakland County Circuit Court in Pontiac, Michigan.
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“Dr. Death” changed the national conversation on physician-assisted suicide
By Katie Vloet
“Dear Dr. Kevorkian, HELP! I am a 41-year-old victim of MS. I can no longer take care of myself. Being of sound mind, I wish to end my life peacefully …”
This letter from 1990 is typical of the correspondence received by Jack Kevorkian, who was the best-known advocate for physician-assisted suicide in the United States.
Kevorkian earned a medical degree from U-M in 1952. After service in the Korean War, he returned to U-M for residency, during which he became fascinated by death and dying. He made regular visits to terminally ill patients, photographing their eyes in an attempt to pinpoint the exact moment of death and to help physicians understand when resuscitation was useless. His proposal that death-row prison inmates be used as the subjects of medical experiments while they were still alive earned him the nickname of “Dr. Death” and an ejection from the U-M residency program.
Years later, his interest in euthanasia was piqued after a visit to the Netherlands, where Dutch physicians were assisting in the suicides of terminally ill patients. In 1990, Kevorkian assisted Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s, in ending her life on a bed inside his 1968 Volkswagen van. He then called the police, who arrested and briefly detained him. Like so many families that would follow, Adkins’ family publicly thanked Kevorkian for helping to end her suffering.
Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999. He served eight years of a 10- to-25-year prison sentence before he was released. In 2011, he died at age 83.
Since then, physician-assisted suicide, also called “medical aid in dying,” has become more accepted. It is now legal in 10 states and Washington, D.C., and, according to a 2024 Gallup poll, 71% of Americans believe doctors should be “allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it.”
A longer version of this article was published in Collections, the Bentley Historical Library magazine.
Credit: REBECCA COOK/AFP via Getty Images
FIRSTS
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The father of Puerto Rican statehood
“Black! Black! Black! I am proud of being a Negro. Nor have I ever tried to beg tolerance from anyone. Superiority is not proved by color, but by the brain, by education, by willpower, by moral courage.” That quote, often reprinted, was a rallying cry for José Celso Barbosa (M.D. 1880), the first Puerto Rican graduate of the Medical School. Before coming to U-M, Barbosa was rejected by Columbia University because of his race. He would later advocate for the statehood of Puerto Rico, where José Celso Barbosa Day is still celebrated each year.
Source: “From Puerto Rico to the U-M Medical School” (Medicine at Michigan, Summer 2024)
Photo credit: U-M Bentley Historical Library
FIRSTS
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The father of Puerto Rican statehood
“Black! Black! Black! I am proud of being a Negro. Nor have I ever tried to beg tolerance from anyone. Superiority is not proved by color, but by the brain, by education, by willpower, by moral courage.” That quote, often reprinted, was a rallying cry for José Celso Barbosa (M.D. 1880), the first Puerto Rican graduate of the Medical School. Before coming to U-M, Barbosa was rejected by Columbia University because of his race. He would later advocate for the statehood of Puerto Rico, where José Celso Barbosa Day is still celebrated each year.
Source: “From Puerto Rico to the U-M Medical School” (Medicine at Michigan, Summer 2024)
Photo credit: U-M Bentley Historical Library
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SEX EDUCATION
Marguerite “Peg” Shearer (M.D. 1960) put herself through medical school at U-M, where she was one of eight women in her class. As a physician at the U-M Student Health Service, she was the first to prescribe contraceptives to students. Alarmed by some of the stories related to her by students who had undergone illegal abortions, she and her husband, Marshall Shearer, M.D. (Residency 1964), volunteered to give sex education lectures, which became incredibly popular at U-M. The Shearers also wrote a weekly article on sex for the Detroit Free Press that became nationally syndicated, and they published three books on sex and relationships.
Shearer was a leader in family medicine at U-M. She helped select and recruit the department’s first chair in 1978 and established the AEI Sorority Endowed Medical Student Scholarship Fund in the Department of Family Medicine to support students who choose family medicine as their specialty.
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A TEACHER'S TEACHER
In kindergarten, Douglas Paauw (M.D. 1985), read a book about snakes, and he was so fascinated by the subject that he started giving presentations to his classmates.
“I remember the feeling that if I knew something, I wanted to share it,” he recalled in 1997 when he received the distinction of Teacher Superior in Perpetuity from the University of Washington, where he is professor of internal medicine.
His goal as a teacher is to create lifelong learners, he says. “The part I enjoy the most is seeing the students take what they are learning and then teach it to someone else.”
Paauw has received many other awards, including numerous teaching awards and the Michigan Medicine Alumni Society Early Career Achievement Award in 2002. When he received the American College of Physicians Washington Chapter’s Laureate Award in 2007, University of Washington News said he was cited for the award as a “consummate educator, a teacher’s teacher” with a “legendary commitment to medical students.”
Paauw at the Medical School Reunion Tailgate Party in October 2023
Source: University of Washington News
Credit: Marc-Grégor Campredon
The glory of medicine is that it is constantly moving forward, that there is always more to learn. The ills of today do not cloud the horizon of tomorrow, but act as a spur to greater effort.
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William James Mayo (M.D. 1883), co-founder of the Mayo Clinic, speaking to the National Education Association in 1928
[Artificial Intelligence] will serve as our future personalized digital assistant. AI won’t replace clinicians and researchers; if used responsibly, it will enhance our work as well as our ability to teach and learn. We are currently working collaboratively to develop a future strategy to do so safely, securely, ethically, and inclusively.
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Brian D. Athey, Ph.D., told Medicine at Michigan in 2024. Athey is the Michael Savageau Collegiate Professor and Chair of the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. He is a member of the U-M Generative AI Committee, which released a report in 2023 establishing guidelines for the safe, transparent, and ethical use of AI at U-M.
Source: “A crash course in AI,” Medicine at Michigan, Winter 2024
Credit: Illustration by Andrea Levy
“Morning Advertiser,” Trinidad, Colorado, 1892. Beshoar is wearing a top hat, center right.
Credit: Courtesy of the Denver Public Library Special Collections
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WILD WEST RENAISSANCE MAN
Michael Beshoar was a remarkable and complicated figure — and probably one of the most unrecognized success stories in late nineteenth century American medicine. Beshoar graduated from the Medical School in 1853. He joined the Confederate Army, but after being captured by the Union Army, he signed an Oath of Amnesty and became a surgeon for the Union until the end of the Civil War. He set up a medical practice in Pueblo, Colorado, opening the first drug store between Denver and Santa Fe. He advocated for public health measures, such as school lunches and food safety inspections, and was one of the only physicians who provided medical care for the local Native American population at the time. He served as a county court judge, county coroner, county clerk, and state legislator. He also had mining interests in several states and founded a monthly medical journal and the Pueblo Chieftain, the oldest daily newspaper still in operation after 157 years. Beshoar had his fair share of Wild West encounters, too. One source claims Billy the Kid threatened Beshoar with a scalping for refusing to remove a bullet from the leg of Billy’s buddy.
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Cardiovascular powerhouse
For more than 40 years, Kim A. Eagle, M.D., has shaped the careers of countless cardiovascular leaders. Recruited to U-M in 1994, Eagle made an immediate impact through his clinical and research expertise and the comprehensive outcomes research program he developed. Founder of Project My Heart Your Heart and Project Healthy Schools at Michigan Medicine, his national leadership in the American Heart Association, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and other top organizations has greatly influenced the field. He is the Albion Walter Hewlett Professor of Internal Medicine and director of the Frankel Cardiovascular Center.
Source: Michigan Medicine Office of Development
FIRSTS
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First Black woman graduate
Sophia B. Jones was born in 1857 in Chatham, Ontario, a northern terminus of the Underground Railroad. In 1879, she was admitted as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, but she couldn’t attend medical school there due to her race and gender. In 1885, she became the first Black woman to graduate from the U-M Medical School and the first Canadian Black woman to receive a medical degree. She founded the nursing program at what would become Spelman College, where she was the first Black woman faculty member.
Source: “Sophia B. Jones: Canada’s First Black Woman to Earn a Medical Degree,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
FIRSTS
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First Black woman graduate
Sophia B. Jones was born in 1857 in Chatham, Ontario, a northern terminus of the Underground Railroad. In 1879, she was admitted as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, but she couldn’t attend medical school there due to her race and gender. In 1885, she became the first Black woman to graduate from the U-M Medical School and the first Canadian Black woman to receive a medical degree. She founded the nursing program at what would become Spelman College, where she was the first Black woman faculty member.
Source: “Sophia B. Jones: Canada’s First Black Woman to Earn a Medical Degree,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
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PIONEER IN BURN MEDICINE
In the 1950s, there was no specialized program for managing burn injuries. Burn patients were scattered throughout the U-M hospital. If a patient survived, there was no formal aftercare follow-up. At that time, most patients with burns greater than 25% total body surface area did not live. In the summer of 1957, two children died from burns involving only a small area of their bodies. This case inspired third-year U-M surgical resident Irving Feller (M.D. 1955) to investigate how to improve the care of burn patients. He discovered that severe burn injuries could produce life-threatening complications, including systemic infections and organ systems failure. These accounted for most in-hospital deaths of burn victims. Feller also determined that a formalized protocol for the treatment of burn injuries and a dedicated “burn team” could drastically improve patient outcomes. In 1959, Feller, a professor of surgery at that point, founded the U-M Burn Center — one of the first dedicated burn units in the country and the first of its kind in Michigan.
Physicians treat the leg of a patient at the U-M Burn Center in 1973.
Credit: U-M Bentley Historical Library
The experience of working with veterans is very meaningful. You feel your small part adds up to have a large impact to the benefit of the nation.
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Michael Kelley (M.D. 1985), national program director for oncology with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He’s also a professor of medicine at Duke University and chief of hematology and oncology at the Durham VA Medical Center.
Source: Medicine at Michigan, Summer 2022