Corydon L. Ford, M.D. joined the University of Michigan faculty as Professor of Anatomy in 1854. Revered by his colleagues, Dr. Ford was elected Dean of the Medical School in 1861-1862 and again from 1879-1880 and 1887-1891. He was the last medical school dean to be elected directly by the faculty.

Born in upstate New York in 1813, he contracted “infantile paralysis” or poliomyelitis as a child and walked with a decided limp for the rest of his days. Ford earned his M.D. from the Geneva Medical College in 1842, where he taught anatomy from 1842-1848. Among his many students was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to obtain an M.D. in the United States. Dr. Blackwell recalled in her memoirs that Dr. Ford was the kindest faculty member she encountered at Geneva, a trait he upheld and extended to both his colleagues and students his entire life.

Dr. Ford was close friends with Dr. Moses Gunn while both were at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York in the mid-1840s. Gunn was so busy with his surgical practice and teaching surgery at Michigan that he recruited Ford to come to Ann Arbor in 1854 to teach gross anatomy, and here Dr. Ford stayed (although he held several summer-time teaching posts at Long Island Hospital Medical College, Bowdoin College, Castleton Medical College, and Berkshire Medical College). At the time of his appointment, the University of Michigan Medical School was only 4 years old.

Dr. Ford taught on the top floor of the Medical Building because it featured a skylight and, of course, there was not yet electrified light to illuminate afternoon or evening sessions. He lived in his office until 1865, when at the age of 52 he married. At Dr. Ford’s final lecture, on April 12, 1894, the distinguished Harvard trained-physiologist Warren Plimpton Lombard recalled “All of the faculty would have been there had he allowed it to be known in advance. He was then eighty-one years old, but he gave a great lecture. It was a masterpiece. Ford was without doubt the finest of Old School lecturers on anatomy in this country and probably in the world.” After giving this last lecture, he turned wearily to an assistant and said, “My work is done.” A few hours later, Professor Ford walked the few block distance to his home, suffered a massive stroke, and died.

The personal belongings of Dr. Corydon L. Ford exhibited will be his surgical and anatomical tool kit, microscope, and walking stick, and were bequeathed to his great nephew, J. Lloyd Ford of Grand Rapids, Michigan, around 1895. These items have been kept in the vault of the Shawnee Milling Company of Shawnee, Oklahoma, since it was founded by J. Lloyd Ford in 1906. The items have come full circle with the Ford family's gift of these items to the University of Michigan on June 9, 2017 at 3pm.