The history of Rush University Medical Center is rich with innovation, change and growth. The following are a few examples of how Rush alumni and faculty have advanced medicine over a history spanning more than 170 years.

1837: With Daniel Brainard, MD, and other local physicians leading the way, Rush Medical College receives its charter, two days before the city of Chicago is incorporated. Named for a physician who signed the Declaration of Independence, it is the first school to be chartered by Illinois and the first health care institution in the city. In 1843, Rush Medical College opens its doors.

1912: Rush alumnus and faculty member James Herrick, MD, who had already discovered sickle cell anemia, identifies clot formation in coronary arteries as the cause of heart attacks.

1923: Rush faculty member Arthur Dean Bevan, MD, is the first to administer the combination of ethylene-oxygen during major surgery. Less toxic for both patients and surgical staff, the innovation is quickly adopted throughout the country.

1923-25: George Dick, MD, and Gladys Rowena Henry Dick, MD, contribute greatly to determining the cause and treatment of scarlet fever, a disease then endemic to North America and Europe. Together, the Dicks develop a skin test to determine susceptibility and immunization.

1948: James A. Campbell, MD, joins Presbyterian Hospital as a specialist in cardiology. He establishes Chicago’s first cardiac catheterization laboratory and performs the first heart catheterization in Chicago. Campbell later becomes the first president and CEO of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center.

1962: Rush surgeon William Shorey, MD, becomes the first physician in the United States to reattach a severed hand.

1965: Cardiologist John Graettinger, MD, working with Rush engineer Robert Sessions and other collaborators, develops one of the first implantable cardiac pacemakers in the world and the first used in a patient in Illinois.

1968: Hassan Najafi, MD, performs the first successful heart transplant in Chicago at Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital. Najafi describes the operation, which required a team of 30 medical professionals working in two rooms, as “a campaign in which surgery, medical care and the entire institution were involved.”

1966: George M. Hass, MD, a professor of pathology at Rush, is the first to demonstrate the role of nicotine in the hardening of arteries and the thickening of blood that can lead to heart attack and stroke.

1968: Hass achieves another medical first by producing leukemia and malignant lymphoma by restriction of magnesium in the diet of animals. This is the first instance of a causal relation between a normal, essential dietary constituent and the development of a malignant disease.

Late 1960s: In collaboration with a colleague at the University of Illinois, orthopedic surgeon Jorge Galante, MD, develops a titanium fiber mesh used as a porous coating on implants used in joint replacement surgery. This coating promotes ingrowth of new bone, allowing for the creation of a stable connection between the prosthesis and the patient’s bone and eliminating the need for the cement used in traditional replacement surgeries. The development began a new era of joint replacement surgery, leading to the invention of hip and knee replacements used today by surgeons around the world.

1982: Richard D. Penn, MD, J. A. Paice, PhD, and W. Gottschalk, MD, achieve a medical first at Rush by implanting a computerized programmable pump into the abdomen of a patient with cancer. The pump automatically delivers painkillers into the patient’s spine.

1983: Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center installs the first nuclear magnetic resonance imaging machine in Illinois. The machine and its ancillary equipment weight approximately eight tons and have to be lowered into position by a crane through a hole in the basement wall of the Woman’s Board Cancer Treatment Center.

1985: Rush opens the region’s first comprehensive breast cancer center. A team of oncologists, surgeons, radiation therapists and nurses work together to coordinate individualized care for each patient, producing a full range of the latest and most innovative treatment options.

1991: Rush neurologist Frank Morrell, MD, develops multiple subpial transection, an innovative surgical procedure for the treatment of epilepsy. The surgery, first performed by neurosurgeon Walter Whisler, MD, offers hope for some patients previously considered untreatable, including children with a rare form of epilepsy called Landau-Kleffner syndrome, which affects the brain’s speech and communication centers.

1994: Rush purchases the first positron emission tomography (PET) scan machine in Chicago. The new technology allows doctors to measure the activity levels of various organs, including the brain and heart, helping them to make better, more accurate treatment decisions.

1998: The CORE Center, the nation’s first freestanding, specialized outpatient health care facility for HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, is completed. It combines the resources of Cook County Bureau of Health Services and Rush to prevent, treat and conduct research on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other related diseases that affect men, women and children throughout the metropolitan area.

2001: Richard Berger, MD, an orthopedic surgeon on the medical staff at Rush, pioneers a new minimally invasive surgical approach to hip replacement that helps patients recover more quickly and with less pain.

2004: Rush is the only U.S. center participating in a study exploring the safety and tolerability of a new gene transfer agent delivered directly to the basal forebrain, an area of the brain almost universally affected by Alzheimer’s disease. If it proves safe, researchers will begin further studies to test whether this new agent is effective modifying the course of this devastating disease.

2005: Rush physicians find that mild cognitive impairment is an indicator of Alzheimer's disease or cerebral vascular disease, and should not be considered part of the normal aging process. The findings are from the landmark Religious Orders Study, the first study involving a large number of subjects who were followed until they developed mild cognitive impairment or dementia, and then died. Investigators base their findings on examinations of brain tissue from 180 people, including 37 with mild cognitive impairment, 60 without cognitive impairment, and the rest with dementia. All were Catholic nuns, priest or brothers who agreed to annual clinical evaluations and to donate their brains after death.