Rachford, the first ever Cincinnati physician to limit his medical practice to pediatrics and chair of the college’s Department of Pediatrics from 1901 until 1920, was also an 1882 graduate of the Medical College of Ohio.
The UC Board of Trustees formally accepted Emery’s gift on Oct. 25, 1920 and, although the name has been infrequently used since then, the department became the B.K. Rachford Department of Pediatrics. This gift created the eighth endowed chair at the UC College of Medicine, and Kenneth Blackfan, MD, was chosen as the first Rachford Chair.
The establishment of the Rachford Chair was a forerunner to a formal affiliation between the UC College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s. By 1925, UC and Children’s Hospital, today known as Cincinnati Children’s, would affiliate.
This agreement has provided the foundation for Cincinnati Children’s work and administration over the past 100 years. The college’s pediatrics department would be comprised of the physicians and researchers at Cincinnati Children’s, who would hold UC academic appointments.