University of Maryland School of Medicine: 200 years for nation's first public medical school.

BALTIMORE—In early December 1807, a mob opposed to dissection of human bodies razed the building where Baltimore surgeon John B. Davidge, MD, was teaching anatomy to aspiring physicians. The crowd carried off the cadaver. Outrage over the rampage spurred introduction of a resolution in the Maryland General Assembly to establish a medical college in Baltimore. At the time, Maryland had fewer than 50 medically trained physicians. Delegates swiftly approved the bill. On December 18, 1807, the Assembly chartered the College of Medicine of Maryland, now the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the nation’s first public medical school (http: //medschool.umaryland.edu). Only 4 existing US medical schools are older: those at the University of Pennsylvania (1765), Columbia University (1767), Harvard University (1782), and Dartmouth College (1797), all private institutions. The Assembly did not appropriate funds for the new school, however. Davidge, who became the college’s first dean, and his colleagues initially taught anatomy, surgery, midwifery, physiology, chemistry, and materia medica (pharmacology) in their homes. They used Baltimore’s Almshouse for clinical instruction. The 5 members of the first class to complete the 2-year curriculum received their Doctor of Medicine degrees in 1810. Davidge and colleagues pooled their own money and secured loans to purchase land on the western outskirts of the city. There, they erected a pantheonstyle domed building, red brick with eight white columns, completed in 1812 for about $40 000. Davidge Hall (http: //medschool.umaryland.edu/davidge .asp), still in use today, has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Its portico provided a clear view of the 1814 British bombardment of Fort McHenry that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star-Spangled Banner. Davidge Hall houses 2 circular amphitheaters, one above the other, each with rising rings of seating that accommodate about 200 people. In the upper amphitheater, Anatomical Hall, a large central skylight and 8 surrounding smaller skylights provide illumination. Given Baltimore’s steamy summers, dissections were conducted only between November and May. Today, the school uses this room and the lower amphitheater, Chemical Hall, for Match Day and other special occasions. Contrary to myth, Davidge Hall has no secret dissecting rooms and no tunnels to nearby Westminster Cemetery, purportedly a prime source of cadavers in the school’s early days, says Larry Pitrof, executive director of Maryland’s Medical Alumni Association and author of The University of Maryland School of Medicine: The First Two Centuries (Baltimore: Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland Inc; 2007, http://www.medicalalumni.org/). The medical college formally became the University of Maryland in 1812, when the state authorized it “to constitute, appoint and annex to itself faculties of divinity, law, and arts & sciences.” Maryland thus became the first university to arise from a medical school. In 1815, Maryland opened a medical school library. In 1823, it built the Baltimore Infirmary, the nation’s first hospital designed for clinical instruction, for $16 000. Patients paid a weekly fee of $3. Today, themedical schoolsharesa60acre Baltimore campus with the UniversityofMarylandMedicalCenter; schools oflaw,dentistry,pharmacy,publichealth, nursing, andsocialwork; and thegraduateschool,whichoffersmaster’sanddoctoraldegreeprogramsinhealth,physical, biomedical,medical, andsocial sciences. In its 200 years, “the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been a leading voice for many important re-