C. P. Howard Papers

Campbell Palmer Howard was born April 2, 1877, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His father, Robert Palmer Howard, was a physician, and his godfather, Sir William Osler (1849-1919), was a widely respected physician. Howard graduated from Montreal High School, followed by the Montreal Collegiate Institute. He received a Faculty of Arts B. A. degree from McGill Medical College (later named McGill University) in 1897. He took the M.D.C.M. medical degree at McGill in 1901. After graduation, he completed a one-year internship at Montreal General Hospital and served as assistant resident physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1902 until 1906. Howard completed graduate work at the University of Munich from 1906 to 1907. Over the next three years, he taught clinical chemistry and a course in adolescent diseases at McGill University while he served concurrently as physician at the Royal Edward Institute for Tuberculosis in Montreal.

Dr. Howard joined the State University of Iowa faculty in September 1910 as professor and head of the Department of Theory and Practice of Medicine, with his focus in bacteriology. He was recruited because of his training, which was one of the changes suggested for SUI by Abraham Flexner, following Flexner's 1910 report on medical education in the United States and Canada. Flexner had praised McGill Medical College in his report. In 1921, Howard was also named Physician-in-Chief of University Hospital and was successful in attracting talented physicians to the faculty. Howard resigned July 1, 1924 to become professor of medicine at McGill University and physician to the Montreal General Hospital. During his medical career, Howard served as president of the Association of American Physicians and of the Society for Clinical Investigation. He was a guest speaker for the Iowa State Medical Society at the Des Moines session in May 1931.

In 1911 Howard married Ottille Frances Wright, a niece of Osler's, and they had a son, R. Palmer Howard, M. D., who became director of the History of Medicine Program at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. C. P. Howard died on June 3, 1936.