Washington Freeman Peck

Background

Washington Freeman Peck was born on January 22, 1840, in Galen, New York, United States.

Education

Washington Peck took his medical training at New York’s Bellevue Medical College. He graduated in 1863.

Career

In 1863 Washington Peck became the house surgeon at Bellevue Hospital. After 18 months as an army surgeon at the Lincoln Hospital in Washington, D.C., he moved to Davenport, Iowa, in 1864.

Washington Peck quickly established a prosperous practice, was named the head surgeon for the Rock Island Railroad, and joined the Scott County Medical Society. With that status, he labored to improve public health in Davenport. In 1865 he secured compulsory smallpox vaccinations in the city, and he was able to insist on a sewer system and closure of surface wells and cesspools during the 1873 cholera epidemic.

In 1868 Washington Peck allied with eastern Iowa legislators to situate the SUIMD in Iowa City. He proposed creating a six-man department with professors of surgery, theory, and practice of medicine, obstetrics, anatomy, chemistry, and materia medica (pharmacology). Knowing that the Iowa legislature would not pay salaries, he suggested that the medical faculty be paid from student fees. In the spring of 1870, the State University of Iowa regents approved the SUIMD, and the General Assembly provided $1,900 to renovate South Hall for medical instruction.

In the fall of 1870 Washington Peck and five physician friends, all younger than 40 years old, opened the SUIMD for business. Thirty-seven students, including eight women, formed the first class. Iowa was the first medical school west of the Mississippi to admit women on equal footing with men. As the faculty was part-time and paid via student fees, an open admission policy made fiscal sense. The curriculum consisted of five daily lectures and four weekly clinical demonstrations from October to April, with the same sequence repeated for the second year - a typical mid-with-century medical education. Realizing the shortcomings of clinical demonstrations in South Hall, Washington Peck worked to create a hospital in which to teach. He raised $4,000 from Iowa City businessmen and $1,500 from the regents in order to convert the Mechanics Academy, an erstwhile classroom building, into a 20-bed hospital complete with a surgical theater and outpatient dispensary. He then persuaded Davenport’s Sisters of Mercy to provide nuns "specially educated in the treatment of the sick" to serve as nurses. By 1873 the conversion of the Mechanics Academy was complete, and Washington Peck and his medical faculty had created Iowa’s first teaching hospital.

With the establishment of the hospital, enrollment increased rapidly, reaching 100 in 1875 and averaging 130 students for the next 15 years. During that time, Washington Peck served as a professor of surgery and dean of the SUIMD. He also lobbied the Iowa legislature for more resources, securing modest faculty salaries and funds for hospital improvements. He doubled the number of faculty and added a third year to the curriculum, keeping the SUIMD apace with developments in medical education.

In addition to his work at the SUIMD, Washington Peck found time to write articles for national medical journals, maintain his practice in Davenport, and serve as president of the Iowa State Medical Society in 1875-1876. His peers held him in high esteem. One wrote that he possessed "the faculty of inspiring absolute confidence in his patients" by weighing options of each case and then operating with "fearless skill unmatched by other surgeons."

Peck’s commitment to the SUIMD was ruthless. In 1871 a grave-robbing scandal threatened to close the medical department. Washington Peck quickly fired the anatomy instructor, his friend James Boucher, in order to preserve the SUIMD. The Sisters of Mercy established a separate Mercy Hospital in 1886, hoping to carve out a sphere of autonomy for their nurses. Washington Peck regained the upper hand by threatening to forbid medical faculty from practicing at the new hospital, restoring a shaky equilibrium. In 1888 Gustavus Hinrichs, professor of chemistry in the SUIMD, brought charges of corruption and incompetence against Washington Peck. The ensuing special joint legislative investigation cleared Peck, confirming his importance to the university.

Membership

• Scott County Medical Society

Connections

Friend:

James Boucher

References

• Hudson, D., Bergman, M., & Horton, L. (Eds.) The biographical dictionary of Iowa
  2009