History
Our Journey
History of
The International
Gynecologic Society
The Obstetrical and Gynecological Travel Club began in 1921 when Drs. William A. Jewett, Eliot Bishop, and Sidney Smith made occasional trips to Baltimore to Johns Hopkins Hospital to see Howard Kelly and J. Whitridge Williams perform surgery.
In 1923, the group was joined by Drs. Ned Bullard, Jake Ward, and Onslow Gordon and traveled to the Boston Lying in Hospital and the Brookline Free Hospital for Women. Following that visit, Drs. Fritz Irving, Frank Pemberton, Jim Huntington, and Jack Swift lavishly entertained their visitors and declared that “We are now members of this Club.” And that was the early beginning.
In 1927, the "Club" assembled and went to Montreal, where Drs. Walter Chipman and Harry C. Burgess showed what they were doing in their clinic and gave some sound advice about the future of a travel club. They indicated that if this group were to continue as a traveling group, it would be wise to have a little more organization, elect some officers, and have a few simple rules of procedure. That advice has been followed into the 21st century.
The small group of friends, who began to visit other specialists working in distant centers, watched the birth of professional travel clubs. In sharing personal fellowship with their hosts, they achieved an apogee of academic exchange unattainable elsewhere within the discipline.
The emblem of the Obstetrical and Gynecological Travel Club was designed in 1963 and expressed the attributes of the club. The book and plumed pens emphasized scholarship and communication, which were enhanced by travel, while the ancient symbol for Aphrodite dominates the whole, in token of the ultimate beneficiary, women. Too ineffable to be captured in such a device, the fourth quality, friendship is manifested rather in the perpetuation of the organization and its spirit of camaraderie.
Over the past 100 years, the “Club” has enjoyed the literary legends of Dr. John F. Jewett, the poetry of Dr. Henry C. McDuff, the jokes of Dr. Joseph Pratt, the real endangered animal interest stories told by Dr. Kurt Benirschke, and the inimitable singing of Dr. Robert Harrison, to cite a few non-medical highlights. The Travel Club has flourished because members and spouses have treated one another like family, as close colleagues and confidants.
In 2005, the name of the "Club" was changed to The International Gynecologic Society to reflect the international membership and scope of the Society, which remains dedicated to the exchange of knowledge and ideas to improve women's health around the world.