University of Maryland School of Medicine - Terrae Mariae Medicus (Baltimore, MD)

Page 12 text:

$£• H0 % ♦owe jttmnn™ 7 BALTIMORE It ' s Not So Bad When You Get to Know the City | | L 1 H ' 1 1 ■

Page 11 text:

of land on which the school might be built and lent his name to a city wide request for funds. Bycoincidence,the bill to incorpo rate the medical school had been presented to the state assembly on the day that the raid occurred and this served to justify the importance of the bill. Now with violence apparent and the support of some of the most influential elements in the state, the legislature perceived the need for for- mal recognition of medical education. On December 18, 1807, the assembly approved the charter incorporating the College of Medicine of Maryland. The college was the sixth such institu- tion in the country (following Pennsylvania, Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth and New York) and the first such school south of Pennsylvania. Dr. Davidge took the chair of surgery and became dean of the college. Cocke assumed the chair of anatomy and physiology. To the fourth chair, the theory and practice of medicine concerning the identification and cure of disease, the faculty named Nathaniel Potter, a hard working giant of a man who was to make the college his life for the next 36 years. During the excitement of organizing the College, Davidge quietly moved his tiny class into his home and continued his instruction in surgery. The chief problem was to find a building, for both students and faculty disliked meeting in private homes and faculty wives found the presence of dissected corpses a hindrance to orderly housekeeping. Although the truth is uncertain, it may have been in 1812, at the end of the fifth year of instruction, when Maryland conferred its first five M.D. degrees. IHUUMHW Dr. Nathaniel Potter

Page 13 text:

; ; i. . ‘ . - - :r - ; l --cm .:. - mi