Medical School

A month shy of his 16th birthday, Ty Hobson-Powell made history Sunday when he walked across the stage at The Lyric as the youngest person ever to graduate from the University of Baltimore. Hobson-Powell gave up a fledgling basketball career when he began college three years ago, commuted more than an hour each way from his home in Northwest Washington after transferring last fall from Howard University and once completed 27 credits in a single semester while shuttling between classes at Howard, Montgomery College and the Internet.

Whether teammates needed help developing their skills or just a few words of encouragement during a particularly challenging practice, Western Tech's Geraldine Ezeka and Loch Raven's Ryne Schanberger each were eager to step up. Ezeka often ran behind teammates to offer support if they were struggling with conditioning drills during Western's basketball season. She was also ready to dive for a loose ball in a practice or game, always leading by example. Schanberger, an offensive guard, was dedicated to the summer workout program for Loch Raven's football team, and learned how to punt after the team desperately needed a kicker.

Johns Hopkins Medicine has signed an agreement to open the first private, four-year medical school and teaching hospital in Malaysia in the Baltimore-based health system's latest effort to expand its reach overseas. Executives from Hopkins signed an agreement with a Malaysian partner Tuesday during a ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. Hopkins will act largely in a consultative and advisory role to the Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine and Perdana University Hospital, but will have "significant control over the content and quality of the education delivered," Mohan Chellappa, president of global ventures for Johns Hopkins Medicine International, said in an e-mail.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine has begun construction of a $200 million proton center that will bring the latest in cancer treatment to the region and double investment in the University of Maryland's growing BioPark in West Baltimore. University officials will join state and local officials, including Gov. Martin O'Malley, for an official groundbreaking Tuesday at the site of the 110,000-square-foot facility, which is expected to treat 2,000 cancer patients a year.

The 200-year-old mummified remains of a small child are making their way back to the University of Maryland School of Medicine after an absence in which they were posted for sale on eBay and languished for almost five years in a Michigan police evidence room. The effort to identify the mummy's home and return it was aided by a Port Huron, Mich., police lieutenant, a couple of astute Michigan anthropologists and the curator of a mummy collection originally assembled by a convicted 19th-century Scottish grave robber.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine will use a five-year $877,000 grant  on a program to increase the number of students who enter primary care fields. The school said Monday it will create a primary care track that will allow students to work one-on-one with faculty from family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine and other primary care specialties. The new program is being developed as health care reform is expected to put further pressure on primary care doctors.

When one of Baltimore's premier institutions, the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, celebrated its 100th anniversary last week, its faculty and students could take special pride in the fact that after a century, the school is still on the cutting edge of medical education and research.Hopkins was the first medical school in the country to require its students to get part of their training from hands-on experience working with patients.It was the first school to systematize the hospital residency program, where students could learn from patients as well as the doctors who treated them.

First, "E.R." bumped "L.A. Law" from the TV lineup.Now, life is mimicking art.Faced with a glut of lawyers in the job market, undergraduates in record numbers are forgoing jurisprudence for a dose of medicine and business acumen.Applications to medical schools nationwide have been steadily rising while they dropped off dramatically at law schools this year.At the same time, the bust in business school enrollments, forecast since the stock market crash of 1987, is now a boom. Some master's of business administration programs are seeing increases of as much as 39 percent in applicants this year.

Donald E. Wilson came close to quitting medical school in his first six months because he didn't see how classes so boring and abstract could prepare him for the patients he wanted to treat.Now he has a chance to reform medical school education. The 54-year-old internist was appointed dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine yesterday, and he named curriculum reform as his No. 1 goal.The new head of the $100 million-a-year operation, a specialist in gastroenterology with expertise in treating ulcers, had decided that he wanted to be a doctor at age 7 after recovering from a serious illness.

Until last week, the final resting place of Dr. Nathaniel Potter, an early Baltimore medical giant and a founder of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, went unmarked by a memorial stone.Although his professional colleagues, who held him in high esteem, provided a burial plot in Green Mount Cemetery, Dr. Potter died 150 years ago in such unfortunate financial condition that his estate did not have money to mark his grave with a granite slab.The situation went uncorrected until an effort to get a burial stone began a few years ago."

Dr. Ernst Friedrich Lepold Niedermeyer, who was a leading researcher, author, clinician and pioneer in the field of electroencephalogy and its use in epilepsy and other brain research, died Thursday of colon cancer at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson. The longtime Towson resident was 92. "He was one of the senior people in his field at his passing and widely respected. His textbook, 'Electroencephalography,' is the standard in the field," said Dr. Ronald P. Lesser, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Elaine Karp-Gelernter, a retired Veterans Affairs psychologist who was also a textile artist, died of complications from pneumonia March 20 at Sinai Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 78. She was the daughter of Polish immigrants who ran a custom-tailored bridal shop in New York City. She grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Brooklyn College. In 1952, she married Steve Karp, a psychologist. She and her family moved to Mount Washington in 1964.

The stethoscope may be an icon of the medical profession to most patients. But it's more of a relic to many doctors. The device used to listen to the heart, lungs and other body parts — invented nearly 200 years ago — has been overtaken by newer, more sophisticated imaging equipment and other changes in healthcare. And some adherents to the old ways say a significant number of physicians who wear a stethoscope around their necks no longer know how to use it properly. Some medical schools including Johns Hopkins, however, are bringing back the lost art of cardiac auscultation, or listening, as a means to sharpen their students' diagnostic skills and cut costs from excessive high-tech imaging.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine will use a five-year $877,000 grant  on a program to increase the number of students who enter primary care fields. The school said Monday it will create a primary care track that will allow students to work one-on-one with faculty from family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine and other primary care specialties. The new program is being developed as health care reform is expected to put further pressure on primary care doctors.

Dr. Constance A. "Connie" Griffin, an internationally known pancreatic cancer researcher who led the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center's Cytogenetics Core and was director of the Pathology Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, died Jan. 8 of pancreatic cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Ruxton resident was 60. "The irony is that Connie passed away from the very disease that she studied," said Dr. Ralph H. Hruban, director of the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Rheumatologist and college dean Dr. Paul B. Rothman will serve as the next CEO of the $6.5 billion Johns Hopkins Medicine health system, ushering in a new era for the world-renowned medical institution that after a decade of rapid expansion faces the new challenges of an evolving health care industry. Rothman comes from the smaller and lesser-known University of Iowa, where he is dean of the Carver College of Medicine and leads the university's clinical practice plan. But he brings with him nearly three decades of academic medical experience as a scientist, clinician and administrator, Hopkins executives said Monday in announcing his appointment.

CLARIFICATION An article in Saturday's editions about the retirement of Dr. Donald E. Wilson as dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine quoted Dr. Morton I. Rapoport, who was chief executive officer of the University of Maryland Medical System in 1991 when Wilson was hired. Dr. Rapoport was succeeded in that post in 2003 by Edmond F. Notebaert. Eighty-hour workweeks, plus the wear and tear of academic politics, egos and turf battles are enough to push U.S.

Andrew George Smith, who taught microbiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, died of an infection and complications from Alzheimer's disease Sept. 2 at Joseph Richey Hospice. The Ellicott City resident was 86. Dr. Smith was born in Williamsport, Pa., and he earned his undergraduate degree in microbiology and chemistry at Pennsylvania State College at State College, Pa. He worked in a dairy and in Philadelphia pharmaceutical laboratories before joining the Marine Corps.

Dr. Edwin H. T. Besson, a retired pediatrician who was the former chairman of the St. Agnes Hospital pediatric department, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, Dec. 4 at his Ellicott City home. He was 85. In a memoir, he recalled that after his birth in Carbondale, Pa., he often moved with his family and wound up living in the small town of Stockton in Worcester County. His family had suffered economic hardship in the Depression and they lost their home.

Ronn Wade gingerly picked up the package wrapped in a simple white sheet and placed it on an examining table before slowly unwrapping the layers. And there it was. The mummified remains of a small child that had disappeared from University of Maryland School of Medicine years ago. With one look Wade knew it was part of the famed Burns Collection, an obscure set of medical mummies once used for dissection and the training of medical students and...