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> Establishing the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, best in the world (1901 ). The original gift was for $20,000 a year, but by 1928 the Rockefellers had given it $65,000,000—much of it wheedled by Dr. Welch. The aim: to make laboratory discoveries immediately available for treatment.
> Linking medical-school staffs to large public hospitals, combining bedside medicine with laboratory tests and experiments. From 1907 to 1913 Dr. Welch campaigned vigorously for full-time professors of clinical medicine.
>Founding a model School of Hygiene at the Hopkins, in 1916, after three decades of battle. During this time he helped stop a cholera epidemic in Manhattan, modernize Baltimore's sewage system, introduce pasteurized bottled milk, pass a Pure Food & Drug Act.
>Starting top-flight health organizations like the National Tuberculosis Association (1904), the Mental Hygiene movement (1909). He also founded the world's best history of medicine school at the Hopkins (TIME, Jan. 30, 1939).
Tall Stories, High Jinks. Although he was tremendously popular with his students, Dr. Welch never made intimate friends of any of them, not even Dr. Flexner, his favorite. For years no one dared call him Popsy to his face. Yet he did not act like a lonely, reserved bachelor —he was always dapper, always nimble on his little feet, always ready for fun. He loved carnival life: Coney Island, Hollywood, roller coasters, ice cream. He gorged himself on everything from terrapin to ham & eggs, ate from three to six desserts, became "irritated" if his friends stopped at one. An opera, painting, baseball fan, he astonished musicians and sports experts with his lore.
One of his favorite occupations was spinning tall stories. Once, toward the end of his life, he told a dinner party about his exploits as an airplane pilot, held everyone spellbound. Even his relatives were fooled, forgot that Popsy couldn't even drive a car.
*William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine; Dr. Simon Flexner & James T. Flexner; Viking; $3.75.