Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

VOL. XVI

OCTOBER, 1914

IN MEMORIAM

GEORGE FREDERICK REINHARDT

No. 4

Dr. George Frederick Reinhardt, Professor of Hygiene, University Physician, and unfailing friend of the student body of the University of California, is dead. One of the sturdiest pillars that support the University life is broken, and death has won a signal victory over one of his sturdiest foes.

Dr. Reinhardt literally gave his life in the service of others. For several weeks he had been giving surgical treatment to a patient who was suffering from a carbuncle. Dr. Reinhardt seems to have been peculiarly susceptible to this disease, and through some accidental infection became a victim to it himself. Everything possible was done to save his life, but the disease took a very virulent form and he died in the infirmary which he had created, on the 7th of June, 1914.

Two days later, a group of students, professors, and townspeople stood with bared heads in the beautiful grounds. of the infirmary, where services for the dead were pronounced over his bier.

Dr. Reinhardt was born in Kansas, June 3, 1869. His boyhood was spent in Southern California. He received. the degree of B.S. from the University in 1897, and graduated from the Medical Department of the University of California in 1900. Dr. Reinhardt was a fine example of a sound mind in a sound body. He was assistant in physical culture, played on the football team, and was football manager and leader in student affairs. To an extent, unusual among physicians, his athletic training made him

appreciate the advantages of physical health, and he tried to secure it for all the students who entered the university. He was one of the most manly men that ever lived. He met every difficulty with a cheerful smile. Whenever he entered a room he brought sunshine with him, and even in death a smile of good cheer was still upon his face.

No single contribution to the university life has been more important than the development of the Students' Infirmary. This is undoubtedly the most efficient one in the United States; it approaches in its completeness the medical service of the United States Army and Navy. It is Dr. Reinhardt's creation and it will be his monument.

He was an intense believer in preventive medicine, and had in view a plan to extend this influence over the whole State of California. One can almost fancy that Death saw in him a dangerous enemy and struck him down lest he should become more formidable.

He left a widow and two little sons. May these sons cherish as their most precious heritage the memory of their sire wise physician, skillful surgeon, tender husband, loving father, useful citizen, and faithful friend.

S. B. CHRISTY.

"He was one of the most efficient, useful, and unselfish men I ever knew. To thousands of the students he has been their best friend. The Students' Infirmary is his creation. He furthermore developed therein the type of the college infirmary which meets the needs and can be maintained. This will be his lasting monument.

"Everyone who worked with him he cheered and stimulated. He gave of himself to every good cause unstintingly and without thought of remuneration. All his thoughts went out toward public service. We could not afford to have him go. On every side are the great gaps he has left. What shall we do without him?"

BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER.

The following letter from one of America's most eminent physicians is a splendid tribute to Dr. Reinhardt's character and achievement:

"BOSTON, June 19, 1914.

"DEAR PRESIDENT WHEELER:

"I am exceedingly sorry to hear of Dr. Reinhardt's death. I believe he was one of the pioneers and leaders in a movement which is sure to spread throughout the country, all the more swiftly because of the skillful and thoroughly efficient way in which Dr. Reinhardt organized the work at the University of California. It took great courage to do what Dr. Reinhardt did; it will never require so much courage from another man to imitate him. In my own way I hope to follow in his footsteps and push along to the best of my ability the work which he initiated in California.

"He was a man of broad vision combined with executive ability and medical competence. We have very few in this country who combine these qualities. When once he had made up his mind what was right, he did not allow himself to be turned from his course by any opposition, yet he was eager and willing to listen to all suggestions and to profit by any one else's experience.

"When the history of American medicine is written I am sure that we shall all of us recognize Dr. Reinhardt as the initiator in this country of one of the most important medical reforms that ever eased the lot of humanity. No discovery of a new surgical operation or a new microorganism equals in importance the invention of a way to make the whole of medical knowledge more generally available for the benefit of humanity. It is this that Dr. Reinhardt has helped to do by showing that in the University of California, at any rate, co-operative medical service is not an Utopian dream but a solid fact. I count it a privilege to have known Dr. Reinhardt and I shall do my best in the future as in the past to spread his fame and the

merits of the system which he initiated. Wherever I have gone since my visit to California in 1912 I have tried to preach his gospel and yours.

"Very sincerely yours,

"RICHARD C. CABOT."

Dr. Reinhardt devoted his life to public service. He saw that the benefits of modern scientific medicine, both in the cure and in the prevention of disease, were inaccessible to the rank and file of the people. His most original and constructive work was directed toward one ultimate goal. He strove toward a state of society wherein every citizen, through reasonable insurance fees, or taxes, might secure to himself the right to the best medical service, without the stigma of accepting charity. This service, he felt, should be rendered by groups of physicians and nurses working together, organized into well-equipped public institutions, whose only aim was to prevent and cure disease and to maintain the highest possible level of efficiency and wellbeing among the people.

The needs of the state at large he saw reflected in the student body of the University. In this community he demonstrated that his idea was workable. For the students, he invented, established, and developed an institution which he regarded as a type of what the people as a whole should have the Infirmary of the University of California.

Infirmaries for students had been established before, but nowhere else had a university maintained salaried physicians as well as nurses, and eliminated practice fees.

The Infirmary was made cheerful and homelike and Dr. Reinhardt lived to see, through its complete success, the vindication of his steadfast conviction that co-operation through compulsory insurance against sickness would make scientific medicine available to all the people.

The Infirmary was made cheerful and homelike and absolutely democratic. All students paid equally for its

support. There was no charity. The rich and the poor roomed together, not as the rich and the poor, but as fellow students of the University of California, getting rest and repair in their own Infirmary. The treatment they received was always of the simplest, with drugs playing usually the minor part. Sympathy and truth were the keynote. Drugs were never given merely because drugs were expected, and the truth was always dispensed frankly.

The Infirmary is now firmly established. Because it met a fundamental need, there need be no fear that Dr. Reinhardt's untimely death will alter in the least the essential plan.

Dr. Reinhardt's efforts to further the public health were not limited to his signal services in sanitation on the University Campus. As Health Officer of Berkeley he strove to control communicable disease, as President of the State Board of Medical Examiners he worked to raise the standards of medical education, as Professor of Hygiene he taught to thousands of students from all parts of California the fundamentals of public and personal hygiene. Largely through his efforts the State Hygienic Laboratory was established at the University.

Dr. Reinhardt has not ended his work. He was laboring on a plan for raising the efficiency of our health officials through a professional course at the University in public health. In the midst of his struggle for the rights of the common people to the enjoyment of health, suddenly Death spoke to this rugged fighter. His last days were spent in his beloved Infirmary.

WILBUR A. SAWYER.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »