University of Maryland School of Medicine

In December 1807, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation establishing a medical college.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine is located on the Baltimore City Campus, and is the fifth oldest medical school in the United States. It was founded in 1807, when a group of professors obtained a state charter from the Maryland Legislature. This charter was needed because of the strong antivivisection activity in Baltimore. The first class graduated in 1810. University of Maryland School of Medicine is the first public medical school in the United States.

This school owes its origin to Dr. John B. Davidge, who in 1804 commenced a course of lectures in Baltimore on midwifery to a class of six students. In 1807 two eminent physicians, Dr. Cocke of Virginia, and Dr. Shaw of Maryland, united in the school and lectures were given on the different branches of medicine; in the same year a charter was granted, and the school became regularly organized by the style of the “College of Medicine of Maryland.”

In 1812, the state re-chartered the medical college as the University of Maryland, adding the areas of arts and sciences, law, and divinity. It thus became the first university in the nation to be founded with a medical school as its educational center.

The faculty at the University of Maryland actually started a hospital in 1823, so that their students might have an adequate exposure (This hospital was taken over by the medical school in 1830).

By the influence and zeal of its distinguished founder, and the labors of other eminent teachers, this institution has been rapidly rising into importance, and at the present time is one of the most respectable institutions in the country.
University of Maryland School of Medicine