How is a medical university established?

WAM was formally established in 1958, but preparations took over 10 years. First, a school of feldshers was established (then the army decided that it prefers to have fully educated specialists, and paramedics studied with us as officers and became doctors). Then, in 1950, the Military-Medical Faculty was established, whose students studied partly at the Civil Medical Academy and only partly in military institutions.

During this process, professors and associate professors, often pre-war medical officers, were called from all over Poland. Individual departments were launched gradually as the staff was recruited and educated. Until a genuine department was established, the subject was taught at the Civil Medical Academy in Lodz.

Suffice it to say that the undersigned, who started his studies as already the 8th year of this university, still had anatomy classes in the mortuary at a civilian university, and similarly, at this university, he had classes in paediatrics. However, as the first year of studies, he had biochemistry classes at his own Department of WAM (Fiszer and Kański's satanic doublet - this short poem illustrates the level of requirements of Dr. Fiszer and doc. Kański, lecturers of chemistry and biochemistry). A magnificent building of theoretical departments was built with departments of histology, pathomorphology, pharmacology, microbiology, biochemistry, physiology and pathophysiology, and prepared students for the medicine of the future. For example, in 1966, we analyzed karyograms in an exercise in histology. There was one large hospital of its own (the present WAM Hospital), but most of the clinical activities were conducted in those civilian hospitals that did not belong to the Civil Medical Academy and on the basis of which military departments were created. In a similar way, it was only after my graduation in 1971 that the WAM Department of Paediatrics was established. Simply put, it was done very solidly and systematically.

Well, the authorities of that time had a strong self-preservation instinct and they wanted their health and life (and other Poles too) to be taken care of by doctors of real importance.