Columbia's Secret

A secret which President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University has been keeping, escaped last week upon publication of Columbia's Medical School annual report: Professor William Darrach, 54, dean of the Medical School since 1919, resigned last July but has continued as acting dean until President Butler could decide on a successor. President Butler had not, up to last week, found his successor.

Dean Darrach's greatest accomplisment, one of U. S. medicine's greatest executive jobs, was his part in the organization of the $40,000,000 healing, teaching, researching Medical Center in upper Manhattan.* The Medical School last week had 420 regular students, besides a variable number of special students. Teaching and research staff approximated 700.

The professors of surgery and medicine, those who treat private patients in the Center Hospitals, work on two different plans. Some give all their fees to the hospitals. Their salaries therefore are larger than regular professors'. Others keep their patients' fees, but accept few patients. Dean Darrach is a cordial, friendly, well-liked person, bald, with a ruddy face and stocky frame. Last year at Columbia University's 175th anniversary, the university hung and oil painting of Dean Darrach. It shows him as he appears at Commencement exercises--in a lurid red gown and a dinky, black, lopsided hat which slopes to one side very rakishly.

* Components: New York State Psychiatrist Institute & Hospital, Neurological Institute, College of Physicians & Surgeons; Vanderbilt Clinic, School of Dental & Oral Surgery, Babies' Hospital, Presbyterian Hospital, Sloane Hospital for Women, Jay Bentley Squier Urological Clinic.

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