Other assistants, each of whom served under Martin for a briefer period, were Casper K. Lahuis (’96m), Dr. Clara A. O. Dedrick, and John J. Mersen (Hope ’95, A.M. ibid. ’98, Michigan ’99m). Neither Martin nor Lynds had any national affiliations. Their work was confined to the state. One of the reasons, probably, for Martin’s breakdown in health was his custom of operating in private houses in towns in the neighborhood of Ann Arbor, and then riding through the night in order to keep his University obligations the next day. In 1895 he was granted a leave of absence on account of blood poisoning contracted from Obstetrics and Gynecology (1942) 17 operating on a septic case. Another year’s leave of absence in 1897-98 was also granted because of ill-health. In 1900, a year before his resignation, he manifested distinct signs of mental instability and these symptoms grew worse until the time of his death in 1913. Lynds resigned with Martin, in February, 1901, and on October 1 of that year Reuben Peterson (Harvard ’85, M.D. ibid. ’89, Sc.D. hon. Michigan ’36) became Bates Professor of the Diseases of Women and Children. Peterson was born in Boston in 1862. After graduating from Harvard University and interning in three Boston hospitals, he came to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1890 and established a general practice. Because of his hospital training and inclinations, Peterson, even when engaged in general practice, devoted more and more of his attention to obstetrics and gynecology and in 1897 was elected to membership in the American Gynecological Society. In 1898 he went to the Chicago Post-Graduate Medical School as a professor of gynecology, and a year later he accepted an assistant professorship of obstetrics and gynecology at Rush Medical College. In the early and middle nineties, instruction in gynecological diagnosis and treatment, as well as in obstetrics, had been given to small groups of students at Michigan. The effort to increase the individualization of instruction was perhaps relinquished to some extent after Martin’s illness in 1897; at any rate, as late as 1900, patients were operated on before large classes, while the students sat on hard benches during long, prescribed hours and watched, seeing little and understanding less of what was done. Clinical teaching in this manner had been an almost universal custom throughout the country in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Peterson’s first task on assuming his duties at Michigan was to increase the effectiveness of the gynecological teaching by having the technique of pelvic and abdominal diagnosis and treatment of diseases peculiar to women taught to small groups of students. At the gynecological clinic, held twice a week, emphasis was laid on differential diagnosis, demonstration of specimens, and the progress and after-treatment of patients operated on at previous clinics. There were frequent ward walks and demonstrations of postoperated patients. 18 Obstetrics and Gynecology Peterson’s second task was to build an obstetrical clinic. Because the town was small this was no easy task, and the University authorities at that time were either opposed to, or at least unsympathetic to, the idea of making the expenditures necessary for such a clinic. It should be borne in mind that until thirteen years before Peterson’s appointment, practically nothing had been done to furnish obstetrical material, and that the steady but meager supply throughout most of the period had been obtained with great difficulty. The establishment of a separate detention ward, though not ending the hazard of contagion, was no doubt partly accountable for the fact that by 1900-1901 the number of pregnancy cases observed and treated had been increased to thirty (Hosp. Rept., p. 36). Despite the difficulty of obtaining clinical material for teaching obstetrics, within the next few years the department was sometimes embarrassed by the lack of enough beds for obstetrical patients applying for admission. As a matter of fact, the time spent in waiting for an adequate supply of obstetrical material was not wasted, however, for it was found possible to teach the principles of the mechanism of labor, at little expense, by means of the manikins with which the department was then abundantly supplied. The students, meeting in small groups, were thoroughly drilled in this way, so that even those who had had no experience in actual deliveries might have some practical knowledge of scientific obstetrics before entering medical practice. Students from Michigan interning at outside hospitals sometimes discovered that they were better grounded in the fundamental principles of normal and abnormal obstetrics than were fellow interns who had delivered, in hospitals or in outpatient services, six or more women. This method of teaching has been retained as one of the principal features of obstetrical instruction at the University. During Peterson’s first years at the University, although there were no instructors in the department, there were three or four assistants at a time, each of whom remained about two years. One of these men, Wales Melvin Signor (’05m), was advanced to an instructorship in 1906. He as well as each of the next two appointees to this position held it for only a year, but after 1909 the average tenure was lengthened. By 1917 it was customary for Obstetrics and