Skeletons in the Closet: The Quiz
How well do you know your Harvard Medical School lore?

1. When Alice Hamilton became the first woman to join the HMS faculty in 1919, she had to agree to forgo what symbolic expressions of a faculty rank?

A. An office in the Quadrangle, a velvet Commencement hood, and a portrait published in the Aesculapiad
B. Access to the Harvard Club, participation in the Commencement academic procession, and tickets to Harvard football games
C. A gold-headed cane, unlimited library privileges, and participation in faculty meetings
D. Second Year Show tickets, clerical assistance, and an insignia-embossed Harvard chair

2. What HMS dean told a graduating class, “Half of what we have taught you is wrong. Unfortunately, we do not know which half”?

A. Edward H. Bradford
B. C. Sidney Burwell
C. David Linn Edsall
D. George Packer Berry

3. HMS students have never received formal instruction from which of the following?

A. Benjamin Spock, author of Baby and Child Care
B. Robin Cook, author of Coma
C. Fannie Farmer, author of The Original Boston Cooking School Cook Book, 1896
D. Robert Coles, author of Children of Crisis

4. When Charles Eliot became Harvard president in 1869, he asked why HMS only held oral examinations. What was the response?

A. Students must learn to think on their feet.
B. Oral examinations are more efficient.
C. We follow the German model of education.
D. Many of the students can barely write.

5. Which of the following is not part of the Warren Anatomical Museum collection?

A. Dried skin specimens showing tattoos of sailing ships
B. The connected livers of Chang and Eng, the conjoined twins whose national origin gave rise to the term “Siamese twins”
C. A shrunken head prepared by a medical student
D. A two-headed goat

6. Which of the following did not claim credit for the invention of ether anesthesia?

A. William T. G. Morton
B. Charles T. Jackson
C. Nathan Keep
D. Horace Wells

7. When a prominent physician donated his body to Harvard Medical School, he became, for a time, the literal skeleton in the School’s closet. Who was the generous benefactor?

A. George Parkman
B. John Collins Warren
C. James Jackson
D. Oliver Wendell Holmes

8. Jacob Bigelow, HMS dean from 1820 to 1821, enjoyed translating which of the following into Latin and Greek?

A. Shakespearean sonnets
B. Short stories by Washington Irving
C. Mother Goose rhymes
D. Poems by William Cullen Bryant

9. What statement did Professor Henry Jacob Bigelow use in his argument that the members of the Harvard Corporation should not have a hand in reforming education at HMS?

A. “Reverend Putnam believes that God, not medicine, cures disease.”
B. “Mr. Lowell does not attend to the advice of his own personal physician.”
C. “Judge Bigelow understands the law only barely, and certainly not medicine.”
D. “Mr. Crowninshield carries a horse-chestnut in his pocket to keep off rheumatism.”

10. When Clarence John Blake established an aural clinic at the Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1870, he had only one piece of equipment, which he used to test hearing.  What was the device?

A. A dinner bell
B. A policeman’s whistle
C. A tuning fork
D. A xylophone

11. Thomas Dwight, chair of the HMS anatomy department from 1883 to 1911, is considered the Father of Forensic Anthropology. Research into which subject led him to be an expert witness in the important murder trials of his day?

A. Dactyloscopy, or the art of fingerprint analysis
B. The trajectory of stab wounds
C. Methods of determining sex and estimating height from bone fragments
D. Bloodstain analyses at crime scenes

12. Harvard Medical School’s current name came into general use only in the 1850s.  What was it called before then?

A. Medical Institution of Harvard University
B. Boston Medical School
C. Massachusetts Medical College
D. All of the above

13. In 1928, Vanderbilt Hall regulations allowed students to entertain women guests in their rooms from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. On what occasion were visiting hours extended by an hour?

A. Valentine’s Day
B. Commencement
C. The Harvard–Yale football game
D. Mother’s Day

14. What dean was credited with introducing the microscope and the stethoscope to the HMS curriculum?

A. Oliver Wendell Holmes
B. George Shattuck
C. Walter Channing
D. Henry Pickering Bowditch

15. Which “anatomy” test question stumped and panicked a number of HMS students in the 1960s?

A. Where is the Mandibular Canal?
B. Where are the Islets of Langerhans?
C. Where is the Fissure of Rolando?
D. Where is the Circle of Tugo?

16. On whom did Benjamin Waterhouse, a founding faculty member of HMS, perform the first smallpox vaccinations in the United States?

A. His private patients
B. His stable hands
C. His HMS students
D. His children and domestic servants

17. HMS Dean John Collins Warren was instrumental in getting the Anatomical Law passed in 1831. Until then, it had been illegal to procure bodies for dissection purposes—a problem that led to grave robbing. The Anatomical Law enabled HMS students to dissect the bodies of which of the following?

A. Poor immigrants who had died without the means for burial fees
B. Unclaimed corpses
C. People who had died while patients on the wards of Harvard-affiliated hospitals
D. Executed criminals

18. The HMS seal, with its image of a rampant lion, draws from the family crest of which early faculty member?

A. John Warren
B. Benjamin Waterhouse
C. Aaron Dexter
D. James Jackson

19. In what year did HMS begin requiring an academic degree for admission?

A. 1848
B. 1881
C. 1901
D. 1924

20. In 1896, Walter Dodd, a pharmacist at Massachusetts General Hospital, used a hand-cranked Holtz static machine to power the hospital’s first x-rays. For what purpose had the device been previously used?

A. To administer electrical shocks to patients with nerve disorders
B. To spark repressed memories in patients with head injuries
C. To study gastric motor activities under normal conditions
D. To restore normal heart rhythm to patients with arrhythmia

21. Walter Channing, one of the early deans of HMS, was dismissed from Harvard College in 1807 for participating in which of the following?

A. A cheating scandal involving a Latin exam
B. A student food rebellion
C. A drunken brawl following a Harvard–Yale rowing competition
D. A prank that resulted in the accidental destruction of a library bust of John Harvard

22. In 1849, authorities discovered that a local physician, George Parkman, had been murdered on HMS premises, in the chemistry laboratory of Professor John White Webster. Where was Parkman’s body found?

A. The furnace in Webster’s laboratory
B. A large wooden tea chest
C. A hole beneath Webster’s private privy
D. All of the above

Special thanks to the incomparable staff of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Countway Library of Medicine for providing research on a number of these questions.

This quiz appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin.

Photo caption: A portrait of Alice Hamilton in 1893.

Photo: Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine