GUSTAVUS HINRICHS, Professor of Chemistry: The German-born Hinrichs was a gifted teacher and internationally recognized chemist, but he was also a volatile and sometimes vindictive man. After he was dismissed for being confrontational and abusive, Hinrichs called the hospital a "slaughter house" and claimed that operating surgeons at the clinic had been drunk while attending to patients. The investigating committee found that "the charges originated in jealousy and spite and are without a particle of foundation in fact."
WILLIAM S. ROBERTSON, Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine: The son of an Iowa pioneer physician, Robertson was a state senator and the first president of the Iowa Board of Health. He drew applause from students on the rare, brief occasions when he put down his extensive lecture notes and improvised. According to one source, Robertson was lecturing in 1887 when he announced the end of the course, having just recognized the symptoms of brain tumor in himself.
JOHN C. SHRADER, Diseases of Women and Children: Shrader was captain of Company H, Twenty-Second Iowa Volunteers, during the Civil War; he was discharged with high honors. He served two terms in the Iowa Senate.
P.J. FARNSWORTH, Materia Medica and Therapeutics: The fatherly Farnsworth was known as "Pappy" to the students. He was considered the most gifted of the faculty's classical scholars.
WILLIAM MIDDLETON, Physiology and Microscopic Anatomy: Middleton was an apprentice to Peck before being appointed to the Medical Department. His experiments on a "gastric juice dog," an animal with a surgically implanted stomach tap, attracted widespread publicity. This excerpt is from the State Press: "...Curious physical phenomena can be shown, such as opening the end and allowing the dog to drink, which, as the fluid runs out as it is taken in, he will do until he lies down exhausted."
JAMES BOUCHER, Professor of Anatomy and Assistant Surgeon: Boucher was assistant surgeon to the Thirteenth Regular Iowa Volunteers at the beginning of the Civil War; by its close, he was Medical Director of Georgia. Boucher was considerably older than his Dean and Chief of Surgery, Washington Peck, and the two often disagreed. Peck made little effort to protect Boucher when a body-snatching scandal resulted in Boucher's retirement in 1871.
JUDGE JOHN F. DILLON, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence: Dillon was an 1850 graduate of Davenport's College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Upper Mississippi, but he only practiced medicine for a few months before giving it up because "the life of a rural physician [was] too strenuous for one who could not ride horseback." He was, at various times, a member of the Supreme and Federal Courts of Iowa and chief counsel of the Union Pacific Railroad.
WASHINGTON FREEMAN PECK, Dean and Professor of Surgery: The dynamic "organizational genius" Washington Peck helped organize Davenport's Mercy Hospital and served as surgeon-in-chief of the Rock Island Railroad before being named Dean of the Medical Department at age 28. Peck had a stiff right index finger which he is said to have lanced himself after it became infected while he was tending a patient's gunshot wound. Peck was known for his lectures on the genito-urinary tract, which were so popular that law students often sat in on them.
WILLIAM GREEN, Janitor: Billy Green moved ice and bodies to and from the anatomical clinics, shared his "uncanny" knowledge of cranial bones with perplexed students, and kept "well posted" on departmental affairs, but his official title was simply "janitor." Billy was noted for his "sepulchral voice" (which was also described as a stage whisper), "the mass of misinformation always at his disposal, [and] the sad smile with which he would greet one." He was janitor for thirty years, and for nearly a decade he was listed with the faculty in the Department's annual announcements. | 
