Vital Signs

Then & Now

A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from the 1980 DMS admissions viewbook:

"In response to the nation's need for primary-care physicians, increasing numbers of recent graduates of DMS and other medical schools have been entering residency programs in the fields of medicine, family practice, and pediatrics. Since 1973, 188 of the Medical School's 288 M.D. recipients (65%) have entered primary-care programs: 125 in medicine, 34 in family practice, 29 in pediatrics.

63
Number of DMS M.D. recipients in 2009

17
Number who entered primary-care residencies

27%
Percentage who entered primary-care residencies

A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from The Journal of William Tully: Medical Student at Dartmouth 1808-1809:

Tully, who entered DMS 11 years after it was founded by Dr. Nathan Smith, recorded the fact that on September 27, 1808, he and some other medical students "conversed of a visit to Dr. Smith's laboratory that we had made the last night. This room is only two of the Collegiate rooms, converted into one by removing a partition. . . . [It contains] a large and long table, upon which the Doctor performs all his chemical experiments, and I suppose makes his dissections."

5,900
Square feet of teaching lab space at DMS in 2009

>268
Number of individual DMS research labs in 2009

A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from the 1984 Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital Annual Review:

"In the summer of 1982, [high school football player] Alan [Brown] injured his knee during football training, [tearing the] fibrocartilaginous cushion of the knee called the meniscus. . . . Prior to 1980, Alan's injury would have required a three to five-day hospital stay [and] a total recuperation time of eight to ten weeks." But thanks to an arthroscopic procedure performed by Hitchcock orthopaedist Dr. Robert Porter, "'Alan was able to go home the same day and, best of all, was back on the football field within three weeks,' stated Porter."

3
Number of weeks following knee arthroscopy after which it's usually possible to resume sports today

A reminder of the pace of change, and of timeless truths, from the Spring 1994 Dartmouth Medicine:

DMS's Dr. C. Everett Koop said of the Clinton administration's health-care reform proposal: "I think the plan is up for grabs. There are 925 lobbies that will make themselves really felt. . . . This is the time for democracy to go into play. If the public gets mad enough . . . to bring pressure on Congress, you're going to see some changes made. I am disappointed in people who say there is no health-care crisis. There is a health-care crisis."

75 million
Number of U.S. adults aged 19-64 who were under- or uninsured in 2007

19th
Rank of the U.S. in health outcomes among 19 leading nations, according to a 2008 Commonwealth Foundation study