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He returned to the U. S. and immediately began spreading the new, heretical doctrine that disease was caused by microscopic bodies. He found a fertile field for his missionary work. At Bellevue Hospital (Manhattan), he set up a laboratory, studied, taught, practiced what he preached.
In the late '60s Johns Hopkins, wealthy Quaker merchant of Baltimore, provided money to establish there a University which would include a hospital and a medical school. Much preliminary preparation was necessary before the medical school could be opened. Finally, in 1883, needing a pathologist to open the school, the trustees despatched an emissary to Germany to find one. The Germans sent the emissary back to the U. S. "Find Welch," they said. "We have no one bigger."
Three other medical men were found for the nuclei around which Johns Hopkins was to grow great. One was a young Canadian, William Osier, destined to become Sir William, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. Before going to Hopkins he had had ten years teaching' experience at McGill University, Montreal. For his work there he was later to get the unofficial title "Father of Modern Medicine in Canada." The other two nuclei: Dr. Howard Kelly, now an internationally known surgeon, and the late Dr. William Halsted, whose fame was his operative technique for the eradication of goitre.
Once the school was functioning a long parade of students started, whose praise of Dr. Welch was to amount to little short of canonization. They have justly credited to him a connection with almost every great advance in U. S. medicine in the past 45 years.
"Welch Rabbits," a cartoon in a Yale classbook, depicted Dr. Welch as a magician. From a silk hat he was drawing rabbits, labeled with names of his students. Some of the rabbits' names: Joseph Colt Bloodgood, Simon Flexner, Franklin P. Mall, William Sydney Thayer, Lewellys Barker, Eugene Lindsay Opie, George Blumer, Walter Reed, James Carroll.
In 1917, aged 67, Dr. Welch joined the medical reserve corps, was commissioned major. Continuing his research work, he discovered the Welch bacillus (named by others), the gas-producing organism causing "gas gangrene" which attacked many a wounded soldier. In recognition of this and other work he was commissioned brigadier general in the Officers Reserve Corps.
Dr. Welch has held virtually every position in the Johns Hopkins medical school. Its first dean, he resigned to devote his entire time to the chair of pathology, which he held for 32 years. In 1916 he organized the School of Hygiene and Public Health, one of the first of its kind in the world, became its director. In 1926 he resigned "to give younger men a chance," assumed the chair of History of Medicine which he founded. Three years later he opened the Welch Medical Library, one of the world's great medical libraries (TIME, Oct. 28).
Johns Hopkins students long ago took a cue from Dr. Osler and nicknamed their school "St. Johns." Their patriarch they nicknamed "Popsy." They love him for defending them at faculty meetings after they have run amuck. They have affectionate stories about him. Example: