Pfizer donates "Great Moments in Medicine" art series to Michigan medical school

Robert Kelch, MD, received a book of medical history portraits when he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1967 that he has kept to this day.

"They tell you of your origins in a graphic, powerful way," Dr. Kelch said.

Now Dr. Kelch, as executive vice president for medical affairs and CEO of the university's health system, has the chance to share the original versions of those paintings with medical students and other campus visitors.

Pfizer announced in December 2007 that it will donate "Great Moments in Medicine," a 45-piece portrait series by the late Michigan artist Robert A. Thom, to the Ann Arbor university.

The series depicts significant moments and icons in medical and pharmacy history, such as the ancient Greek temples of Aesculapius, the demigod of medicine; the first use of a smallpox vaccine by Edward Jenner; the founding of the AMA; and the discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen.

Pfizer acquired the paintings when it bought Warner-Lambert in 2000. Warner-Lambert became owners of the series in 1970 when it bought Michigan-based Parke-Davis & Co., which commissioned the medical history series, along with a 40-portrait series called "Great Moments in Pharmacy," from Thom between 1948 and 1964. Pfizer has donated the pharmacy series to the American Pharmacists Assn. Foundation.

Rick Chambers, Pfizer's spokesman, said the company wanted to donate the art to an organization that could make it available to the public. "It made sense to provide this gift in honor of medical innovation in Michigan," he said.

The paintings are a bittersweet parting gift to Ann Arbor. Pfizer announced in January 2007 it would shut down its Ann Arbor research facility by the end of 2008 as part of a plan to lay off 10,000 employees worldwide. The facility is the last vestige of the old Parke-Davis in Michigan.

The works, all oil on masonite, are up to 5 feet tall. Thom researched each one extensively before painting. It is estimated that Thom traveled nearly 250,000 miles through North America and Europe during his research for the series.

Parke-Davis, then the nation's largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, distributed reproductions of the portraits in the 1950s to physicians in the United States and Canada, according to Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist and director of the University of Michigan's Program in Culture, Health and Medicine. He co-wrote a paper on Thom that appeared in the Fall 2006 Literature and Medicine. The paintings soon were displayed in physicians' offices, pharmacies and private homes. The images also were picked up in calendars and popular magazines and became the subject of a full-length movie retracing the production of each image.

Dr. Metzl said art critics of the time attributed the paintings' mass appeal to Thom's ability to re-create defining moments in history with an attention to detail.

Though there's no mention of Parke-Davis in any of the paintings, Dr. Metzl said, some of the portraits do highlight events tied to drugs the company developed. Overall, the campaign was done to get physicians and the public to view pharmaceuticals in a positive light.

"Pharmaceutical companies were nowhere near as financially powerful as they are today," Dr. Metzl said. "The power resided in the medical establishment. That impacted how aggressive pharmaceutical advertising could be. They had to appeal to the good graces of the medical profession."

Dr. Kelch said the paintings serve as a reminder of how the medical present might look to those in the future and that "we better not be too arrogant. For someone 20 or 100 years from now, our discoveries may seem simple to them."