Richard Mills Pearce was an American pathologist and authority on medical education.
Background
Richard Mills Pearce was born on March 3, 1874 in Montreal, Montreal Region, Quebec, Canada. His father, Richard Mills Pearce, and his mother, Sarah Smith, were both from the United States and moved back to New England soon after their son was born.
Education
Richard Mills Pearce received his education at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Connecticut (1889 - 1890), the Boston Latin School (1890 - 1891), the Boston College of Physicians and Surgeons (1891 - 93), Tufts College Medical School (1893 - 1894; M. D. , 1894), and finally at the Harvard Medical School (M. D. 1897).
Career
Richard Mills Pearce's interest was directed toward pathology by F. C. Mallory, and by W. T. Councilman in whose department at Harvard he served as instructor (1899 - 1900). From 1896 to 1899 he had acted as resident pathologist to the Boston City Hospital, and during 1899 he was pathologist to three other Boston hospitals. In 1900 he accepted a post in the department of pathology at the University of Pennsylvania under Simon Flexner, and the following year went to Leipzig to work with Marchand. In 1903 he became director of the Bender Hygienic Laboratory at Albany and professor of pathology at Albany Medical College. He was called in 1908 to the chair of pathology at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, and in 1910 he went to the University of Pennsylvania to occupy the first chair of research medicine to be created in the United States, which had been endowed by John Herr Musser. This post Pearce held until his appointment as director of the division of medical education of the Rockefeller Foundation (1920).
During the War, as major in the medical corps, Richard Mills Pearce helped organize the laboratory section of the army medical department and served as chairman of the division of medicine and related sciences of the Council of National Defense. His appointment as a research professor of medicine marked the turning point in his career, and he worked unremittingly throughout the rest of his life to improve scientific medicine. In 1912 he delivered the Hitchcock lectures at California, choosing as his subject "Research in Medicine" and giving a vivid and farseeing portrayal of the history of medical experimentation and of present and future problems of medical education. Since he was a modest man of great alertness, tact, and broad human sympathies, it was scarcely surprising that he should have been selected to direct the great program of medical education inaugurated after the World War by the Rockefeller Foundation. His approach to the gigantic problem of improving world medicine was simple and logical, and it reflected his extraordinary combination of aptitudes for administration, teaching, and scientific investigation.
His first years were spent largely as an administrator collecting data about the conditions of medicine in every civilized country; his surveys were models of detailed accuracy and clarity, and they form an incomparable body of source material concerning the history of contemporary medicine. On the basis of information thus secured the Foundation devoted considerable attention to medical education, and in administering the large capital funds expended in influential medical centers during the next seven years (1922 - 1929) Pearce's unusual gifts as a teacher were allowed full expression. He concentrated upon the improvement of the preclinical sciences, giving funds for buildings and endowment, and fellowships for the training of promising teachers and investigators. To facilitate the exchange of information and opinion between countries, he established in 1924 an annual publication entitled Methods and Problems of Medical Education.
With his keen interest in fostering medical research, Richard Mills Pearce welcomed the important change of policy reflected by the fact that on January 1, 1929, the division of medical education became known as the division of medical sciences of the Rockefeller Foundation. "The new undertakings [of the Foundation] differed from earlier programs in being directly aimed at the advancement of knowledge through improvement of clinical facilities or routine teaching laboratories or more fully trained teaching personnel instead of the development of institutions as teaching organizations". In addition to many early contributions to pathology and to addresses on medical education (collected in Medical Research and Education, 1913) Pearce published a monograph, The Spleen and Anaemia (1918).
Richard Mills Pearce died on February 16, 1930.
Achievements
Personality
Richard Mills Pearce was a modest man of great alertness, tact, and broad human sympathies.
Connections
On November 6, 1902, Richard Mills Pearce married May Harper Musser. They had two children: a son and a daughter.