100 years ago in Spokane: Gonzaga University passes on offer to help create medical school

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane’s physicians were offering to help create a new educational institution in Spokane: a medical school.

They were offering to teach medicine, free of charge, if Gonzaga University was willing “to take steps toward the installation of a school of medicine.”

Physicians M.B. Grieve and James B. Munly made the offer on behalf of a larger group of physicians who were willing to contribute their expertise.

“We believe that one or two years of medical work could be offered, with just as good professors as could be found in any city, and thus cut off that much time that students would have to spend in studying away from home,” Grieve said. “We would be willing to give our time either in the day or at night, just when they would specify.”

However, Gonzaga president James A. Brogan said that it was too late to offer such instruction for the 1916-17 school year, since the university had already opened its fall term. He left the door open for the future.

Yet he also offered a few cautionary words. He noted that a school of medicine “is an expensive proposition,” and that the school would have to provide clinical facilities and possibly even a new building.

In a way, the idea took a century to reach fruition. Just last month, 60 medical students arrived for the inaugural class of a medical school collaboration between Gonzaga and the University of Washington.