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Envisioned by Yale President Ezra Stiles in the eighteenth century, medical instruction at Yale came to fruition under the presidency of Timothy Dwight. The Medical Institution of Yale College, chartered in 1810, and opened in 1813, was a joint project of Yale and the Connecticut Medical Society. This relationship to the state society was unusual among medical colleges and proved beneficial to the college in its early years. The medical school flourished in its first decades especially due to the reputations of Nathan Smith, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic and Surgery, and Benjamin Silliman, Professor of Chemistry. This illustration of the Medical Institution of Yale College, located on Grove Street, appeared in E. Porter Belden, Sketches of Yale College, New York, 1843. |
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The first medical school to be founded in the United States was at the College of Philadelphia (now University of Pennsylvania) in 1765. John Morgan of Philadelphia, who obtained a medical degree abroad, persuaded the trustees to establish a medical school and appoint him as professor. The school opened in 1766 with three professors. It was followed by the King's College (now College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University) in New York (1767), Harvard Medical School (1783), Dartmouth Medical School (1797), and the University of Maryland (1807). Medical schools were established by one or a few persons who provided lectures to students in return for course fees. Students got their clinical instruction through apprenticeship to local physicians and they attended lectures to complete their medical education and acquire a degree. An M.D. was not a requirement to practice medicine until the new licensing laws in the late nineteenth century. Nathan Smith, for example, was apprenticed to a physician in Vermont before attending Harvard Medical School where he was awarded an M.B. degree (later upgraded to M.D.) in 1790.
Shown is John Morgan, A discourse upon the institution of medical schools in America; delivered at a public anniversary commencement, held in the College of Philadelphia, May 30 and 31, 1765. Philadelphia, Printed and sold by William Bradford, at the corner of Market and Front-streets, 1765. |
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The Rev. Ezra Stiles became president of Yale College in 1777 and held the position until his death in 1795. He was considered one of the most learned men in the country, and possessed an intellectual curiosity about all areas of knowledge including the sciences. He restored good relations between Yale College and the Connecticut Legislature and greatly increased the number of students and the reputation of a Yale education. He had ambitions plans and would have liked to increase the number of faculty, but funds were not yet available. |
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Before he assumed the Presidency of Yale in 1777, the Ezra Stiles sketched a future plan for Yale to become a University with professorships of medicine and law. He wrote "There may be 200 Physicians in the State of Connecticutt. Their profession is very important to the public; these being entrusted with the Health of the Bodies of the People at large, as the 200 Ministers are by their profession called to attend to their spiritual State." In the pages shown, Stiles described the content of three sets of medical lectures. It was left to Stiles' successor, Timothy Dwight, to realize the goal of medical teaching at Yale.
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The Rev. Timothy Dwight, who succeeded Ezra Stiles as President of Yale in 1795, initiated the founding of the Medical Institution of Yale College. His hiring of Benjamin Silliman as professor of chemistry at Yale College in 1802 and his support for Silliman's subsequent training in chemistry and medicine, was a first step in creating a medical faculty.
At his urging, the Yale Corporation began discussion of forming a medical school in 1806. Because the Connecticut Medical Society legally controlled the requirements for entrance into the medical profession in Connecticut and since several of the candidates for chairs in the medical school were very active in the Society, the College entered into negotiations with the Society. A proposal was sent to the Medical Society and a joint committee was formed of equal numbers of members of the Society and College. Silliman was a member from the College side and a key negotiator. It took until 1810 to work out an agreement. |
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The founding document of the medical school was in the form of an addition passed by the General Assembly of Connecticut in 1810 to the law chartering the Connecticut Medical Society. It established the Medical Institution of Yale College with four professors and included details of the courses and fees. The Medical Society was given the right to nominate professors to the Yale Corporation, to nominate practitioners to receive Honorary Degrees, henceforth to be awarded through Yale, to serve on the examining committee for medical students, and to nominate one Connecticut man per county to receive free instruction for a year. In return, the Society changed its constitution to require a course of lectures at the Medical Institution of Yale College or similar institution in order to be licensed to practice medicine in Connecticut. This unique agreement between Medical School and Society lasted until 1879. It prevented the battle that occurred between Harvard and the Massachusetts Medical Society over licensing, and likely assured that Connecticut, unlike most other states in the nineteenth century, including Massachusetts, would have only one medical school. |
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Mason Cogswell studied medicine with his brother, and practiced medicine and surgery in Hartford. Acquiring an excellent reputation as a surgeon, he was one of the first surgeons to operate for cataract in the U.S. He was instrumental in founding the American Asylum for the Deaf in Hartford in 1817. It was known that Nathan Smith, M.D., then teaching medicine at Dartmouth College, might be interested in a move to New Haven where he would not have to lecture in all medical subjects on his own. Although the joint committee had considered Smith for the leading professorship of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, Timothy Dwight was concerned that Smith did not appear to be sufficiently religious. So an offer of the professorship was made to Mason Fitch Cogswell, a graduate of Yale College in 1780 who had acquired an excellent reputation as a surgeon. Cogswell accepted with reluctance because he had a busy practice in Hartford. When Smith made it be known indirectly that he was truly a Christian, Cogswell gladly deferred to Smith. A portrait of Cogswell hangs just outside the Medical Library. |
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After graduation from Yale, Munson studied divinity with Ezra Stiles but his career as a minister was short, for he became ill and moreover, his reputation as a wit and prankster did not jibe well with the character of a minister. He then studied medicine with the Rev. John Derbe, a graduate of Yale, in Long Island. In 1760 he moved to New Haven. One of the founders of the New Haven County Medical Association in 1884, Munson played a major role in securing the charter of the Connecticut Medical Society. He served as the Connecticut Medical Society's president from 1794 to 1801. In the latter year the Society conferred upon him an honorary M.D. Munson was appointed first Professor of Materia and Botany at the Medical Institution of Yale College in recognition of his reputation as a physician and his knowledge of materia medica and chemistry. At the time the school opened, he was 79 and not prepared to undertake teaching. The courses were instead taught by his pupil, Dr. Eli Ives. Munson wrote on the yellow fever epidemic in New Haven in 1794, arguing that the disease was contagious, and also contributed two cases to the 1788 publication of the New Haven County Medical Society. |
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Silliman graduated from Yale College in 1798 and was preparing for a law career when Timothy Dwight approached him oin 1801 to become the first professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale College. As part of his subsequent training in the sciences, he attended chemistry and medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in 1802-1804 without taking a degree.. The Connecticut Medical Society awarded him an honorary M.D., though Silliman never practiced medicine. He was instrumental in the founding of the Medical Institution and in the appointment of Nathan Smith. After 1813, Silliman taught at both the college and the medical school. Medical students attended his undergraduate course, noted for its elaborate demonstrations, as well as a separate session for medical students. His course was said to be one of the high points of the Yale medical curriculum. Silliman was the only member of the medical faculty who had a full-time position at Yale. He acquired an international reputation as a chemist, textbook author, and founder and editor of the American Journal of Science (1818). |
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Nathan Smith received his training in medicine by apprenticeship to a physician in Vermont, by attending Harvard Medical School, and by studies in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London. He acquired a considerable reputation as one of the foremost physicians and surgeons in New England. In 1797 he founded Dartmouth Medical School, acting for a time as its the sole faculty member. When it became known that Smith, who had the needed experience of organizing a medical school, was interested in coming to Yale, Mason Cogswell was happy to step aside as the intended Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. At the Medical Institution of Yale College, Smith became the leading faculty member, known for his innovative practical approach to medicine and surgery. The school flourished during his leadership. |
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We know the content of what Nathan Smith taught through the notes taken by students who attended his classes. Students usually kept detailed lecture notes in leather bound volumes such as this one. The author of this set of notes is unidentified. |
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Smith's most important work was his Practical Essay on Typhus [typhoid] Fever in which he gives a clear clinical description of the disease and recommendations for its treatment. He believed typhoid fever was a self-limited disease. At the time typhus fever and typhoid fever were not yet distinguished, but the Smith's experience would have been likely to have been with typhoid fever, a water-borne disease, rather than typhus, transmitted by lice and associated with crowded unsanitary places like army camps and jails. Nathan Smith. A practical essay on typhous fever. New York: Bless & E. White, 1824. |
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Eli Ives, a graduate of Yale College in 1799, studied medicine with his father and with Eneas Munson and attended medical lectures under Benjamin Rush, Caspar Wistar, and Benjamin Smith Barton at the University of Pennsylvania. He was active in the Connecticut Medical Society and in the negotiations leading to the founding of the Medical Institution of Yale College. Although his mentor Munson, was named professor of materia medica and botany, the title was largely honorary for Munson. From the beginning, Ives rather than Munson, taught the courses. Widely known for his knowledge of materia medica, Ives established a botanical garden in association with the medical school. He was a pioneer in the teaching of pediatrics in the U.S. Eli Ives, portrait by N. Jocelyn. The original hangs above the Library rotunda. |
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Ives was the first physician to teach a course in pediatrics in America. But he was especially remembered at the time for his vast knowledge of indigenous medical herbs, which he imparted to students in his course on materia medica. These student notes were taken by Ives' son, Levi Ives, (1816-1891) in 1836. Levi Ives received his M.D. in 1838. |
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Jonathan Knight, a graduate of Yale College in 1808, studied medicine in New Haven and attended courses at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a license from the Connecticut Medical Society in 1811 and entered the practice of medicine and surgery in New Haven. Knight served first as professor of professor of Anatomy and Physiology from 1813 to 1838, and then as Professor of Surgery from 1838 to 1864. After Nathan Smith's death in 1829, Knight assumed effective leadership of the Medical Institution. Noted for his skill as an organizer, Knight, an incorporator of the State Hospital in New Haven (now Yale-New Haven Hospital), chartered in 1826 and opened in 1833, served as President of the Board of Directors from 1842 to his death in 1864. He was president of the National Medical Convention that formed the American Medical Association in 1846, and subsequently served as president of the AMA in 1853-1854. |
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This catalog lists the professors and the students for the first year of medical teaching at Yale. The school opened in the fall of 1813 and awarded its first M.D.s in 1814. Many of the 37 students listed here attended only one year and did not receive an M.D., since one year was sufficient to take an examination and obtain a license to practice in Connecticut. A student was required to attend two years at Yale or elsewhere to be awarded an M.D.
Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Medical Institution of Yale College, November 1813, included with Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Academical Institution of Yale College, November 1813. New Haven, 1813. |
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Students paid each professor separately for the privilege of attending his course of lectures. These cards of admission to the courses, each signed by the professor, belonged to Elijah W. Carpenter, who attended the Medical Institution of Yale College in 1813-1814. Carpenter had previously been apprenticed to a physician in Vermont. He stayed at Yale only one year (and thus did not obtain an M.D.) before returning to Vermont where he became licensed to practice in 1814. |
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Classes were held and students were initially housed at a building on the corner of Grove and Prospect Streets across the street from the Grove Street Cemetery. The buiulding was originally built by James Hillhouse as a hotel. At first the building was rented, but a grant from the State Legislature enabled Yale to purchase it.
This postcard, based on a contemporary engraving, is from a later date. |
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In 1814 the professors applied to the State General Assembly for a grant of $20,000 to provide a financial basis for the new school. The success of this petition has been attributed to Nathan Smith. The grant allowed Yale to purchase the Medical School building, outfit the lecture room, expand the library and anatomical museum, and fence off the botanical garden. Other than this one-time grant, the Medical Institution had to depend on student fees. Professors, except for Silliman, made the bulk of their income from private practice, |
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These laws set strict regulations for medical student life, similar to the rules in effect for Yale College students. Medical students were to live in the medical college building and take all their meals there. They had to participate in daily prayers, and not leave their rooms on Saturday night and Sunday except for religious worship. Later editions of these laws were far more lenient. Students were soon after allowed to board elsewhere in town. |
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This M.D. diploma was awarded by Yale College in 1815 to Asaph L. Bissell (1797-1850) of Suffield, Connecticut. The vellum certificate was signed by all four professors of the Medical Institution and by Yale President Timothy Dwight. |
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It is likely that Bissell attended the medical lectures of Nathan Smith at Dartmouth and was one of Smith's students who followed him to Yale. Bissell practiced medicine in Suffield from 1815 until his death. The Historical Library owns his leather saddlebags loaded with medicines that he took with him on his horse when he visited patients. |
