WHEN DARTMOUTH Medical School culminates its bicentennial celebration at an academically star-studded symposium in Hanover, NH, next month, the occasion will mark not just the anniversary of an institution but the reaffirmation of a dream.
From September 5 to 7, at the fourth-oldest medical school in the United States, a distinguished group of scientists chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph L. Goldstein, MD, and Michael S. Brown, MD, will discuss "Great Issues for Medicine in the 21st Century: A Consideration of the Ethical and Social Issues Arising Out of Advances in the Biomedical Sciences." That such a gathering will take place in a small village in the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River is due largely to the tenacious vision and untiring efforts of two physicians: Nathan Smith in the 18th century and S. Marsh Tenney in the 20th.
Smith, a 33-year-old Harvard-educated rural practitioner in Cornish, NH, proposed to