Awards

Honorary Degree - 1929

LL.D.

Doctor of Laws

Bloomington, Indiana

Presenter: William Lowe Bryan

About John Finch Barnhill

Dr. John Finch Barnhill graduated from the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons and served an apprenticeship with a prominent Indiana surgeon, Dr. Joseph Eastman. For eight years, Barnhill practiced general medicine in Irvington and then decided to specialize in disease of the head and neck. He studied in postgraduate schools in New York, London, Berlin, and Vienna. Returning to Indianapolis in 1900, he lectured in the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons and was a professor of physiology for several years. Barnhill initiated the first postgraduate course at the Indiana University School of Medicine in 1915. “The Barnhill Course” was an anatomical and clinical postgraduate offering, given to provide postgraduate education for surgeons practicing in the Indianapolis area. The course is the longest continuing medical post-graduate course in the United States, attracting medical talent from across the country, and celebrated its Centennial Edition in 2015. The IU School of Medicine annually awards the “John Barnhill Award” to the most outstanding student in the outstanding course in anatomy.

A close friend of his, Barnhill encouraged Dr. Robert W. Long to give $200,000 in securities and land to build Indiana University Medical Center’s first teaching and research hospital, the Robert W. Long Hospital. The Long Hospital was established through the State Legislature and became the first building of the IU Medical Center in 1914. The central street through the IU Medical Campus is Barnhill Drive (now a walking street). When Riley Hospital for Children opened in 1924, the Riley Memorial Association (today the Riley Children’s Foundation) announced that Dr. John H. Oliver, first chairman of the IU School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, Dr. Lafayette Page, professor in the Department of Otolaryngology, and Dr. John Finch Barnhill would serve as the medical committee responsible for supervising medical care of pediatric patients.

A highly prominent figure in the discipline of otolaryngology, Barnhill published numerous texts, including the well-known “Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck” in 1937. He was president of the American Laryngological Association, president of the American Laryngological of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology. He was a member of the American Otologic Society, and the American Board of Otolaryngology, and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Barnhill retired in 1928 to Miami Beach, Florida. He returned to Indianapolis each year to present the annual Anatomical and Clinical Postgraduate “The Barnhill” course and eventually established a similar course at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.