America 250: Young doctors in a young nation spark the future of Tulane Medicine
When the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, the United States was a nation without many of the institutions it would eventually come to rely on, including medical schools.
Most physicians in the thirteen colonies learned through apprenticeships, while those seeking advanced medical education often traveled to England to study at Oxford or Cambridge. The American Revolution severed those ties, leaving the young nation to build its own systems for educating physicians and advancing medical science.
Louisiana followed a somewhat different path. Influenced by French and Spanish traditions, physicians in New Orleans generally favored less aggressive treatments than the bloodletting and mercury-based therapies common in British medicine. By the early 1800s, French and American-trained physicians practiced side by side in the city, exchanging ideas and helping shape a distinctly New Orleans approach to medicine.
As New Orleans grew into one of the nation's busiest ports, its hospitals became laboratories for learning. Epidemics of yellow fever and cholera, along with injuries from shipping, commerce, and daily life, created an urgent need for physicians trained to care for a rapidly expanding population.
Recognizing that need, three young physicians, Drs. Thomas Hunt, John H. Harrison, and Warren Stone, all 26 years old or younger, published a prospectus in the New Orleans Bee on Sept. 29, 1834, proposing the creation of a medical college. They argued that New Orleans was the ideal location because it had the region's largest population, exceptional hospital facilities, and an unparalleled opportunity for clinical instruction.
The Medical College of Louisiana welcomed its first students the following year. Classes were held in a church, at the old Charity Hospital, and in the professors' homes, laying the foundation for what would eventually become Tulane University School of Medicine, today one of the nation's oldest medical schools.
The school would endure yellow fever epidemics, the Civil War, and the economic hardships of Reconstruction while continuing to educate physicians and advance medical knowledge.
“Without question, Tulane’s long tradition of service provides a source of strength and resilience to the institution,” historian John Duffy wrote in The Tulane University Medical Center: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Medical Education.
Nearly two centuries after its founding, and 250 years after the birth of the United States, the school continues the work envisioned by its founders: educating physicians, advancing medical discovery, and caring for the communities that depend on them.
