Yale School of Medicine - History

History

In 18th century United States, credentials were not needed to practice medicine. Prior to the founding of the medical school, Yale graduates would train through an apprenticeship in order to become physicians. Yale president Ezra Stiles conceived the idea of training physicians at Yale and ultimately, his successor Timothy Dwight IV helped to found the medical school. The school was chartered in 1810 and opened in New Haven in 1813. Nathan Smith (medicine and surgery) and Benjamin Silliman (pharmacology) were the first faculty members. Silliman was a professor of chemistry and taught at both Yale College and the Medical School. The other two founding faculty were Jonathan Knight, anatomy, physiology and surgery and Eli Ives, pediatrics.

One of Yale's earliest medical graduates was Dr. Asaph Leavitt Bissell of Hanover, New Hampshire, who graduated in 1815, a member of the school's second graduating class. Following his graduation, Dr. Bissell moved to Suffield, Connecticut, a tobacco-farming community where his parents came from, and where he practiced as a country physician for the rest of his life. The saddlebags that Dr. Bissell carried in his practice, packed with paper packets and glass bottles, are today in the school's Medical Historical Library.

The original building (at Grove and Prospect) later became Sheffield Hall, part of the Sheffield Scientific School (razed in 1931). In 1860, the school moved to Medical Hall on York Street, near Chapel (this building was razed in 1957). In 1925, the school moved to its current campus, neighboring the hospital. This campus includes the Sterling Hall of Medicine, Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine (1991, designed by Cesar Pelli), Anlyan Center (2003, designed by Payette and Venturi Scott Brown) and the Amistad Building (2007, designed by Herbert Newman).