University Medical Center Opens Drive to Raise $58 Million Fund

The Harvard Medical Center has started a fund drive for $58 million. The money will be used primarily to stabilize the faculty and research facilities of the Medical School and its affiliated hospitals, although $7.5 million will be used for a Medical Library.

The Medical Center was formed in the summer of 1956, when seven hospitals--the Peter Bent Brigham, the Massachusetts General, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Free Hospital for Women, the Boston Lying-in Hospital, the Children's Hospital and the Beth Israel Hospital--combined with the Medical School in an attempt to remedy their common financial problem.

The fund will work independently of the Program for Harvard College and will not operate on the basis of getting every alumnus to give but of receiving large grants from selected individuals, corporations and foundations.

William M. Rand '09, chairman of the fund, said last night that the fund would operate in a relatively quiet manner until the Program for Harvard College has completed most of its publicity work. He emphasized that the Medical Center Fund must be careful to avoid becoming confused with the $82.5 million drive for the College.

Library Emphasized

Because the library represents a concrete object which can serve as a talking point for the fund in general and because the library is one of the most serious needs of local medical institutions, the fund will attempt to contact individuals and organizations interested in founding and endowing such a library.

The bulk of the money raised, however, will be used to increase faculty salaries, to endow professorial chairs in the Medical School and clinical chairs for full time teaching in hospitals, and to improve research facilities at both the Medical School and the hospitals.

No Other Buildings

Present conditions at the Medical School are such that both faculty and physical facilities are in need of augmentation. The fund, however, will include no actual building except for the library. All other building repairs are being done gradually through separate financial arrangements.

The library is definitely the School's most pressing need. Medical texts, pamphlets and slides are scattered all over the Boston-Cambridge area in various small college and hospital libraries, and to unite most of the necessary literature in one spot central to the School and most hospitals would be a great step forward.

The main object of the fund at present is to obtain the necessary $7.5 million for the library as soon as possible. After this is accomplished, there is no definite time limit set for the completion of the drive.

It could conceivably require a great deal of time to achieve the desired total, although it is possible that the entire sum might be donated by a single foundation which wishes to close out its financial operations by giving one final large grant.