OLYMPIA – Spend any time listening to the debate over proposals to let Washington State University open its own medical school in Spokane and you will hear about the competing big university on the other side of the state having a nearly 100-year-old monopoly on doctor training.

A 1917 law is denounced as antiquated, outmoded and waaaay too 19th Century for our 21st Century medical needs, by folks who sometimes talk as if they were around for the vote. But it’s not exactly true that the Legislature thought deeply about medical schools 98 years ago when it passed that law.

That Legislature was trying to settle a huge turf war between the University of Washington and what was then known as Washington State College, not get a med school started.

To get a feel of how bad this inter-scholastic fight was, one need only read news accounts of how it was settled. After spending much of the early weeks of the 1917 session lobbying for expanding programs on their campus – and taking them away from the other institution – WSC President Ernest Holland and UW President Henry Suzzallo were summoned to the governor’s office on the evening of Feb. 1, presented with a compromise weary legislators had worked out, and apparently not given a chance to object.

Chances are state leaders’ patience was wearing thin. The country was in an uproar trying to figure out when, rather than if, the United States was going to go to war with Germany – which it would exactly two months later. Olympia, too, was more than a tad unsettled because a disgruntled logger had shot and killed the Industrial Insurance Commissioner Edward Olson earlier that day over a rejected injury claim.

On Feb. 2, the House and Senate both passed the bill that divided up the majors for the two schools. Unanimously.

“Collectively, the assembly heaved a sigh of relief when it was over,” J.W. Gilbert, a reporter for the Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote the next day, calling the bill “the most notable achievement of the session." The presidents held something of a luncheon press conference to answer questions and make nice in front of reporters. Gilbert described them as “felicitating each other” – which is a term that I would love to use someday if I thought I could get it past my editors.

In divvying up majors, the Legislature gave law, architecture, journalism and aeronautic engineering, among others, to UW. WSC got veterinary medicine and almost anything related to agriculture and “rural life.” Both could teach liberal arts, pure science, education and several other engineering majors.

Those were the majors that generated the most public attention, based on press reports. A medical school wasn’t even mentioned in the news accounts.

The new law had a separate section requiring “work and instruction in medicine, when introduced or developed, should be taught at the University of Washington exclusively.”

The “when-introduced-and-developed clause” is interesting now, because UW went almost 30 years before getting the go-ahead from the Legislature for a medical school. In 1945, as another World War was ending, the Legislature voted to give UW regents $450,000 for salaries to establish “forthwith” schools of medicine and dentistry, and $3.75 million for a building to put those students in. Just for reference, the entire payroll for the U was about $6 million, so this was a substantial investment.

The Legislature set the tuition at $100 per quarter for students from Washington and the Alaska territories and $165 per quarter for all other students. They also were assessed fees of $25 for locals and Alaskans, and $75 for all others, to help pay off the medical and dental building.

The precedent of that time gap is something WSU officials should note as the current medical school bills give them the permission to start a medical school, but not the money to do so, just as the Legislature did in 1917 for UW.

But it is from that 1945 legislative action that the UW’s “monopoly” on medical education grows.

It’s not a 21st Century model, but unlike some descriptions of the legislative history of the monopoly, it’s more mid-20th than 19th Century.

By the way...

One other comment on the medical school discussions: A proponent said during the House debate bill last week that doctors were using leeches to treat patients in 1917 when the old law was passed. Another admitted that in previous discussion he suggested doctors back then didn’t wash their hands before treating patients.

Generally speaking, not true in either case. They did not have courses on the use of antibiotics, but they didn’t learn incantations and spells from witch doctors, either.

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