About the Department

Department History

Physiology as a basic Medical Science began its rapid development in this country in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The subject was generally introduced into medical school curricula by members of the clinical departments and independent departments were created subsequently. The University Of California School Of Medicine was no exception and in 1898 when it moved into its new building at 3 rd and Parnassus in San Francisco instruction in Physiology was given by Dr. D’Ancona, who in 1889 succeeded Dr. M.W. Fish as Professor of Physiology. In 1899 Dr. D’Ancona became Dean and being dissatisfied that there were no independent basic science departments wrote to the President of the University “It is absolutely essential to abandon the custom of giving these scientific chairs to men actively engaged in the practice of Medicine”. This led to the invitation in 1901 to Dr. Jacques Loeb to come to California and led to the action of the Regents in June, 1902 when they formally “resolved to establish a University Department of Physiology”.

Dr. Loeb chose Berkeley as the home for the new department and through the generosity of Mr. Spreckels the Spreckels Physiological Laboratories were built there to house the departmental research activities. The Medical School Announcement of Courses for 1903-1904 lists in addition to Loeb as Professor of Physiology the following faculty: Frank T. Green, Martin N. Fischer, George Bullot, and T.B. MacCallum. These were the new members of the Department of Physiology, with research facilities in Berkeley , who gave instruction to students in San Francisco in the new Medical School Building there. One course was Chemical Physiology given by Frank T. Green, Associate Professor of Physiological Chemistry. Here we see the antecedent of the Department of Biochemistry which separated from Physiology slightly over a decade later. Other members of the Department gave instruction in Berkeley . Thus from its inception the Department of Physiology was both a general university department (Berkeley) and a Department of the School of Medicine ( San Francisco ).

The great San Francisco earthquake of April 1906 led to the conversion of part of the Medical School Building in San Francisco to the first University of California Hospital. To provide space for this conversion the Regents on June 12, 1906 decreed that the first two years of medical instruction be transferred to Berkeley . Here for slightly over half a century the Medical School related part of the Department remained, returning to San Francisco on July 1, 1958 when a Department of Physiology housed fully on the San Francisco campus first came into being. As of that time the department gave three major courses in Mammalian physiology, one in each of the professional Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy. In addition, programs leading to the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Physiology were available. Subsequently specialized courses in the area of general physiology, the physical foundations of physiology, neurophysiology, and cardiovascular physiology have been added. The major curricular problems to be faced by the department in the next decade are those brought by expanding enrollment in both the graduate division and the professional schools. A major conceptual problem continues to be the one discussed by Wilhelm Ostwald at the dedication of the Spreckels Laboratory on August 20, 1903 , “The Relations of Biology and the Neighboring Sciences”.*

* University of California Publication in Physiology, Vol. 1 #4 (1903-1904)