recognized as the cause of the many postoperative fatalities, but because of the risk, major operations were avoided whenever possible. After 1869 some operations were performed at the Hospital “upon patients that could not be brought before the class” in the presence of Obstetrics and Gynecology (1942) 3 a few specially interested students (R.P., 1870-76, p. 207). Many of the surgical patients were carried across the campus to an upper lecture room of the Medical Building and were operated on while lying on a table upon which, perhaps the hour before, the professor of anatomy had demonstrated on a cadaver. It was under such circumstances that Sager performed a Caesarean section on a rachitic dwarf — one of the first, if not the first, of such operations in Michigan (Univ. Mich. Med. Journ., 2 [1871]: 385-93). It is not to be wondered at that the patient died of peritonitis soon after the operation. Sager’s description of the operation, in which he was assisted by Professor Corydon L. Ford and George E. Frothingham, Demonstrator of Anatomy, is of particular interest. Because he thought it his duty, this modest little man, who probably had had very little experience as a surgeon, performed an operation almost without parallel in this section of the country. Thirteen years earlier such a procedure was advocated by Sänger. The uterine wound was sutured to avoid spill from the interior of the uterus and subsequent infection. Dr. Sager secured the pelvis and gave exact measurements to show why birth through the natural passages was impossible. The report of the case is impressive for its demonstration of the scientific mind of that period. Sager’s teaching career ended in 1873. At that time he obtained a leave of absence because of ill-health, and in his place Dr. Edward S. Dunster was appointed Lecturer in Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. In March of the following year, Sager resigned his chair and was made Professor Emeritus, but, at the request of the faculty, he retained the deanship, which he had held since 1868. The admiration with which his colleagues and the University officials regarded him was expressed in the following resolutions adopted by the Regents in March, 1874: Resolved, That we hold Prof. Sager in the highest esteem, not only for the symmetry of his character and purity of his life, but also for the eminent services which he has rendered to this University during a period of thirty-two years. Resolved, That the great success attending the Medical Department has been largely due to his loyalty, industry, wisdom and scholarship. (R.P., 1870-76, p. 334.) 4 Obstetrics and Gynecology Sager resigned the deanship in 1875 as a protest against the University policy of requiring certain of the “regular” medical professors to receive students of the new Homeopathic Medical College into their courses. He died in Ann Arbor, August 6, 1877. Edward Swift Dunster (Harvard ’56, A.M. ibid. ’59, M.D. New York College of Medicine and Surgery ’59, M.D. hon. Dartmouth ’81), a direct descendant of Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College, was appointed Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children in 1874. He had served through the Civil War and until 1868 as assistant surgeon in the United States Army. From 1868 to 1871 he had been professor of obstetrics and of the diseases of women and children in the University of Vermont and also editor of the New York Medical Journal, and from 1869 to 1874 he served on the faculty of the Long Island College Hospital as lecturer on the subjects of obstetrics and the diseases of women and children. In 1871 he became professor of obstetrics at Dartmouth College and continued to lecture there during the summer months until his death. Holding chairs in two separate institutions at once, as he did from 1869 to 1871 and again in 1873-74, was a practice typical of the times, made possible by short annual sessions and an almost total lack of clinical teaching. Dunster was in many ways a brilliant man and was acknowledged to be the most logical, eloquent, and interesting lecturer that the Department of Medicine and Surgery had ever had. To quote the words of his pupil, assistant, and successor, James Nelson Martin (Hillsdale ’80, Ph.M. ibid. ’83, Michigan ’83m): Last but facile princeps in the lecture room or editor’s chair, was our scholarly Dunster. It is no disparagement to the others of that faculty to say that he was the most brilliant lecturer and writer among them all. Everyone enjoys a logical presentation of the subject, and no one left Doctor Dunster’s classroom or read his articles, without a clear conception of the subject under discussion. Listening to him gave pleasure like that derived from the study of a fine painting. His language was almost perfect, his diction polished, and his argument clear and convincing … His students love to remember him in the lecture room. (Physician and Surgeon, 27 [1905]: 152-53.) Obstetrics and Gynecology (1942) 5 For nearly three years the Regents had been considering plans for a large hospital, to be donated by the state and operated by the University. Such an institution, it was suggested, might have been (1) entirely an alms hospital for county patients, or (2) a treatment center where victims of diseases which were hard to treat might receive effective care, whether they were public patients or not, or