History of the medical schools in United States

During the 17th and most of the 18th centuries, students seeking medical education had three alternatives:
*Travel to Europe to study in medical school or hospital there
*Become formally apprenticed to a physician willing to train students, call a preceptor
*Learn the profession in some less formal way

Apprenticeship flourished as a necessity and without effective restrictions on the who and how of preceptorship. As early as 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company contracted with sergeant Lambert Wilson to serve the settlers and nearly Indians and to give medical training to one or more young men.

The most significant medical event in the decade of the 1750’s was the chartering (1751) and opening (1752) of the Pennsylvania Hospital, which to be designed general hospital.

The very first medical school in the original 13 colonies was founded in 1765 by John Morgan at the University of Pennsylvania, which at the time was known as the College of Philadelphia.

The faculty has been trained at the University of Edinburgh and used British medical education as the model.

Two years later, a second medical school was organized in New York as King’s College. King’s college holds the distinction of being the first medical school in the colonies to formally offer the MD (doctor of medicine) degree beginning in in 1767.

In 1800, three schools graduated students, with the number of schools increasing from 52 in 1850 to maximum of 162 in 1906.

In 1797, one-man medical school was established at Dartmouth College. In 1807 a group of physicians organized an independent medical school in Baltimore, because the city had no college. Medical schools were established at Yale in 1812, at Brown about 1815 and at Bowdoin in 8121.

From 1906 to 1929, the number of schools declined sharply, largely because of the inspection and classification system begun in 1904 by the American Medical Association Council on Medical Education. 

Led by scientific progressives in the medical profession, a movement arose to require rigorous scientific training and licensing of physicians.

Established in 1893, the John Hopkins Medical School required all entrants to hold college degrees and to complete four additional years of study for graduation.
History of the medical schools in United States