It was a time when professors at some of the country's medical schools sold tickets to class. Antibiotics were merely a pipe dream, and hospitals connected to medical schools were an uncommon luxury.

It was at this time, in 1907, when the UW School of Medicine was established; that biology and science classes were taught in the attic of Science Hall; some classes were also held in the Chemical Engineering Building.

The first students, who attended the "Attic Medical School, " as it was commonly called, included 29 students, three of whom were women. Most were Wisconsin residents.

And they literally saw skeletons in the attic, since the Science Hall attic is where gross anatomy, accompanied by a skeleton on the desk, was taught.

Ronald Numbers, professor of history and science and medicine in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the UW, says, "Early medical schools primarily taught science; the students had to learn to do medicine by being an apprentice. "

When the UW Medical School was established 100 years ago, it was a two-year program. Charles Bardeen was appointed the first dean of the college.

In 1926, when Wisconsin General Hospital opened its doors, the UW Medical School expanded to a four-year medical program. Doctors received their clinical training at the hospital that was then located on University Avenue.

The Flexner Report

Soon after the medical school opened, a significant report changed the face of medical education. Numbers says, "The 1910 Flexner Report surveyed every medical school in the U.S., and the UW Medical School was considered the best of its kind in the country. "

The young school was lauded for its structure -- it was an organic part of the university and had been established with high standards.

To understand the importance of the UW Medical School getting high marks, you have to understand why the book-length report by Abraham Flexner, a professional educator, was important.

In 1904, the American Medical Association initiated the Council on Medical Education with the idea of reforming American medical education.

Four years later, the CME got the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching involved in order to get rid of medical schools that weren 't meeting CME standards. Flexner was chosen to conduct the exhaustive survey.

To this day, large medical schools in the United States and Canada continue to follow Flexner 's recommendations.

When Flexner conducted his survey, there were 155 medical schools in North America, and few of them had common denominators regarding admission and graduation. Many medical schools were proprietary, owned by one or more doctors who were unaffiliated with a college or university. Some of these people sold tickets to classes, a practice that didn 't last long because schools couldn 't survive on student class fees.

Lab work and dissection were not required at many of the schools Flexner surveyed.

"There 's an interesting story behind why the report is sometimes called The Shoebox Report, ' " Numbers says. "When Flexner asked some schools where their laboratories were, they brought out a shoebox full of dirty instruments. "

One of the report 's recommendations was that medical schools require applicants to have a high school diploma as a minimum admission requirement. Other major recommendations included closing or incorporating proprietary medical schools and implementing a four-year program.

Following the Flexner Report, between 1910 and 1935, more than half of American medical schools merged with other schools or closed altogether. In 1935, the United States had 66 medical schools that graduated M.D.s. Fifty-seven of these were part of a university, and the UW School of Medicine was one of them, as it had been since its infancy.

A pivotal time

Numbers, who has taught American medicine and science for 34 years, says, "One of the big changes in medical education occurred when hospitals began to appear. At the end of the 19th century and early into the 20th century, typically, hospitals would not take infectious or dying patients. In 1907, births were also moving from home to a hospital setting. "

While the medical school in Madison was growing, so too was the trend of building hospitals around the country. In 1873, for example, one survey reported that there were 180 hospitals in the country and 60 of those were mental hospitals. Fifty years later, there were 6,000 hospitals nationwide.

The UW Medical School continued teaching anatomy classes in the attic of Science Hall well into the 1960s. While students peered at skeletons in the red brick building 's top floor, doctors in Madison were practicing medicine far differently than they do today.

Carl Weston, administrative medical director of HospiceCare Inc., remembers those times. Weston grew up around medicine. On Sunday mornings his father took him to University Hospital while he made his hospital rounds.

"I thought it was pretty cool because I got to play in the lobby, " Weston says.

His father, Frank "Red " Weston, a general practitioner, graduated from the UW School of Medicine in 1921. He was also an All-American football player at UW.

"Dad graduated when the medical school was a two-year school, " says Weston, "and then he went on to graduate from Rush in Chicago in 1925. " Weston 's grandfather was also a doctor in Iowa.

In the middle part of the 20th century, Weston, 73, says his dad was unusual.

"He had an office in town, as most doctors did, but he also had one at University Hospital, highly unusual at that time. "

Equally out of the ordinary was the fact that Red Weston admitted all of his patients to the hospital as necessary, a practice that was out of step with the norm.

In 1964, it was a year before intensive-care units became part of the hospital system when Carl went into practice with his father. They continued the elder Weston 's practice of admitting all patients to University Hospital as necessary.

House calls were also de rigueur and the Westons made their share to Madison-area homes. "Back then, I made about 30 house calls a month, " Carl Weston recalls.

Since he went into practice in the 1960s, Weston says the practice of medicine has drastically changed.

"My last lecture in 1960 at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School was on RNA and DNA. The lecturer said to pay close attention because we would hear more about these things in the future. "

Then and now

Weston says technology has significantly changed doctors ' diagnostical abilities. He tells the story about his father who, about 50 years ago, was exulted as a hero when he was called to Sauk City to see a banker gravely ill with pneumonia.

During this house call, the elder Weston pulled out a bottle of strychnine (a poison that sometimes was given to patients) and gave the banker a dose.

"The man promptly sat up in bed and said he was cured, " Carl Weston says. "After that, they talked about Dad in Sauk City as a great healer for years. "

Of course, there were no cell phones when the Westons practiced medicine together.

"When I went to the movies in the 1960s, I 'd call the baby-sitter from the theater phone and tell her I was sitting in seat 11 in row J or whatever. That 's how an usher found me with a flashlight if a patient needed me, " he says.

For Weston, life has come full circle. He grew up tagging along with his father when he made house calls, and today, he continues to make house calls by visiting HospiceCare patients in their homes.

Life 's twists and turns also includes a link to the mentor he had decades ago.

"William Rock, a medical director at HospiceCare, was my attending when I took my residency at UW Medical School. Here we are working together again. "