Christian R. Holmes Collection

Christian R. Holmes, M.D. was born in the village of Engom, Denmark, in 1857 and travelled to the U.S. with his family at the age of 15. After a brief stay in Canada, the Holmes family settled in Syracuse, New York. A natural talent for drawing landed the young Holmes in the railroad shop drafting rooms. This proficiency brought him to Seymour, Indiana, to work for the LaFayette, Bloomington, and Muncie Railroad. An illness brought him to Cincinnati seeking the medical attention of Dr Elkanah Williams, also a professor at the Miami Medical College. Over successive visits, Williams saw potential in Holmes as a practicer of medicine and encouraged him to apply to the Miami Medical College. Holmes earned his medical degree from the school in 1886 and soon became an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist. He also became an instructor at the college and practiced at the Cincinnati Hospital. He married Bettie Fleischmann, daughter of Charles Fleischmann, in 1892.

Subscribing to Daniel Drakes's conception of a medical school and hospital being synonomous, Holmes soon became frustrated with the Cincinnati Hospital's ability to train future medical professionals, and began laying the groundwork for a future city hospital that would combine a medical college and clinical practice in one. He became the dean of the recently combined Ohio-Miami Medical College at the University of Cincinnati in 1914 and remained in that position until his death in 1920. As early as 1895, Holmes's idea for the new city hospital was already at work. After years of political wrangling, fundraising, and public opinion swaying, Holmes saw to the completion of the new Cincinnati General Hospital in 1915. Built in the pavilion style it was lauded as an architectural feat at the time. Upon accepting deanship of the the Ohio-Miami Medical College, Holmes was adamant that a new medical college building also be buit along with the hospital. In October, 1914, builders laid the cornerstone and finished the new college building in 1917.

As World War I loomed, Dr. Holmes entered the US Army as a major in the medical reserve corps. He was charged with oversight of the medical facilities at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio. Holmes was released from duty in 1918 and shorltly after his discharge became ill. He passed away in January, 1920. Just a few years after his death, the Christian R. Holmes Hospital was erected in his honor to provide hospital facilities for full-time clinical medical faculty at the University of Cincinnati.