Washington University School of Medicine thesis collection

In 1825-1826 a group of physicians led by Dr. Horation Gates Jameson, a prominent Baltimore surgeon, applied to the Maryland state legislature for a charter to found a medical college. When this request was denied because of pressure on the legislature from the already-existing University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, Jameson persuaded Washington College in Washington, Pa., to petition to establish a medical school in Baltimore under its charter. The school prospered initially, and a new charter was awarded in 1839, wherein the college changed its name to Washington University of Baltimore with the intent to add curricula in Law, Divinity, Arts and Sciences. The new schools never materialized, but the university continued to flourish and a new building was constructed in 1849. Funds began to diminish, however, and the University closed in 1851.

The medical school was reborn in 1867, when a group of Confederate physicians led by Edward Warren (Surgeon-General of North Carolina during the Civil War) united to form a medical school with the expressed purpose to "arrest the tide that tended Northward, and offer to the young men of the South congenial homes." The school opened in an old converted warehouse and during its first year succeeded in having the Maryland legislature pass an act authorizing the erection of the Maryland Free Hospital in connection with the college. However, the rebirth was shortlived and the school closed for good in 1871.

[Excerpted from "Medical Care in the City of Baltimore, 1752-1919" by Nancy Bramucci, 2001. http://www.mdhistoryonline.net/mdmedicine/cfm/schools.cfm]