As part of the University of Toledo's sesquicentennial celebration, a longtime UT archivist highlighted the city's 140-year history of medical education Thursday, including the establishment of a school of medicine nearly 60 years ago.
“Medical education in Toledo has a long and sometimes difficult history,” Barbara Floyd said at a lecture in the Health Education Building on the university’s Health Science Campus in South Toledo. “And there are a lot of questions about this history... Should the Medical College of Ohio have been established as part of the University of Toledo in 1964?”
She spoke during a presentation titled “Medical Education in Toledo: 140 Years of Progress,” about events that shaped medical education in the city. About 20 people attended the hour-long event, which included questions and answers.
During the public lecture, Ms. Floyd, a UT professor emerita, looked back at the first medical school established in 1882, the founding of the Medical College of Ohio in 1964, and its merger with the University of Toledo in 2006. UT is celebrating its 150th birthday.
During the lecture, Ms. Floyd cited excerpts from her book, An Institution for the Promoting of Knowledge: The University of Toledo at 150, in which she explores the university, noting that the university “contributed in innumerable ways to making Toledo a great place to live.”
When the Medical University of Ohio merged with the university in 2006, the combined institution was seen as something brand new. But this was the second time a medical college had merged with the university, said Ms. Floyd, who retired in 2017 after being a UT archivist for about 31 years.
From 1904 to 1918, the university and a school called the Toledo Medical College were one. When that school closed in 1918 due to financial constraints and demands for improving medical education and licensing physicians, medical education ended in Toledo until 1964, when the Medical College of Ohio was established.
“Actually, it was supposed to be part of the University of Toledo from the beginning,” Ms. Floyd said of MCO. “But when the board of regents at the state level finally came through with the legislation to create it, it was actually established as a separate institution, and that was largely because Paul Block Jr., [co-]publisher of The Toledo Blade, believed that the University of Toledo, which was then a municipal institution, was not at that stage ready to have a medical college as part of it. So, he used a lot of political influence and had it established as a separate institution.”
The school was created on Dec. 18, 1964, when Gov. James A. Rhodes signed legislation establishing the Medical College of Ohio at Toledo. At the MCO dedication, Mr. Rhodes declared that Paul Block, Jr., The Blade’s longtime co-publisher, was the "moving force" behind the medical school.
The first medical students were enrolled in 1969, but the college’s first permanent building was not dedicated until September, 1973. In 1995, the building was named the Paul Block, Jr., Health Science Building.
The late Mr. Block, who held a doctorate in organic chemistry, served as the first chairman of the MCO board of trustees, Ms. Floyd said.
During the decades that followed its establishment, the medical college grew from an idea nurtured by early supporters to a gleaming university and hospital campus, described by some as magical, that merged with the University of Toledo in 2006. Ms. Floyd also spoke of the subsequent years and UTMC's struggles through the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and recession and troubles associated with a financial dispute between ProMedica and UT.
Dr. Amira Gohara, a former interim president of MCO, said she enjoyed the lecture.
“It brought back sweet memories to me because I was here since the first class graduated,” Dr. Gohara said. “I think we should have more lectures about the medical history not only of the medical school but about the university, too, because the university is one of the anchors of our society.”
First Published April 20, 2023, 11:34 p.m.
