Allison W. Maxwell

(Sept. 24, 1848-Jan. 15, 1915). First dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine, Allison W. Maxwell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, and graduated from Indiana University (IU) in 1868. Maxwell’s family had historic and loyal IU ties. His grandfather was Dr. David H. Maxwell, who many credit as being the IU’s founder and who also served as president of the university’s first board of trustees. Maxwell Hall on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus is named in their honor. His father, Dr. James Darwin Maxwell, also was an IU Trustee for many years.

With an 1876 MD from Miami Medical College, Cincinnati, Maxwell began his medical practice as a family physician in Indianapolis in 1876. He also served in various appointed and elected roles in the community. Between 1905 and 1907, Maxwell participated as a leader in the competition for a medical school that erupted between Indiana and Purdue universities. Maxwell was dean of the State College of Physicians and Surgeons of Indianapolis, organized by a group of IU supporters in 1906 after Purdue created the Indiana Medical College from a 1905 merger of the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons in Indianapolis and the Fort Wayne Medical College. In 1907, the IU Board of Trustees merged the Indiana University School of Medicine in Bloomington with the State College of Physicians and Surgeons. The trustees, however, agreed only to finance its Bloomington operations. Students took their first two years of coursework in Bloomington and then headed to IU’s State College of Physicians and Surgeons for their clinical training.

In April 1908, IU and Purdue University reached an agreement to consolidate the Purdue and Indiana University medical schools in their Indianapolis and Bloomington locations, retaining the name of the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM). Maxwell’s appointment as dean of IUSM by the Indiana University Board of Trustees on June 23, 1908, helped launch the fledgling four-year medical school and unify faculty.

Maxwell guided IUSM during its first three years following the agreement between IU and Purdue, 1908–1911. He presided over the school during a period when financial budgets for clinical training in Indianapolis did not exist and while consolidation of IUSM and the short-lived Purdue University-affiliated Indiana Medical College was completed. On February 26, 1909, the Indiana General Assembly fully sanctioned the operation of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Marion County and appropriated its first budget for clinical education there. During Maxwell’s tenure as dean, IUSM was among the few medical schools in the nation to receive a positive evaluation in the influential 1910 Flexner Report which transformed U.S. medicine by establishing the biomedical model as the gold standard for medical education.

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