, founder of Dartmouth Medical School
Foundation and early years Dartmouth College's medical school was founded in 1797 as the fourth medical school in the United States, following the
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1765), the medical school of
King's College (now
Columbia University) (1767), and
Harvard Medical School (1782). The founder was
Nathan Smith, a
Harvard University and
University of Edinburgh Medical School educated physician from
Cornish, New Hampshire. Noting the dearth of medical professionals in the rural
Connecticut River Upper Valley area, Smith petitioned the
Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College in August 1796 to fund the establishment of a medical school to train more physicians for the region. Though
Dartmouth College as a whole was financially strapped, the Board approved the request, and Smith began lecturing on November 22, 1797. For much of its early life, the school consisted only of Nathan Smith and a small class of students, operating in borrowed space at Dartmouth College. Students of Smith were educated as
apprentices, and received a
Bachelor of Medicine degree upon graduation. Like Dartmouth College as a whole, the medical school had continual funding shortages. As time passed, however, the popularity of both the medical instruction and the basic sciences taught at the school drew undergraduates and training physicians alike. Soliciting funds from the state of
New Hampshire, Smith was able to obtain medical equipment and, by 1811, a dedicated physical plant for the school. Smith's departure provided for a period of expansion, both among the faculty and the student body. Former students of Nathan Smith's replaced him on the faculty, drawing medical professionals in the northeast such as
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to join them. The first hospital at the school was founded by DMS alumnus
Dixi Crosby in 1838, who used it to integrate academic instruction with hands-on patient care. In 1870, Carlton Pennington Frost, DMS '57, replaced Crosby as Dean of the school. Under Frost, the curriculum sustained another revamping, this time into a four-year program that included clinical and academic training. In 1908,
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching conducted a survey of medical education institutions in the United States. At the time, the discipline emphasized "bedside teaching" and providing students experience with a broad variety of illnesses and patients. The school's rural location was deemed too remote for proper clinical training, and the school was advised to stop offering the Doctor of Medicine degree and only provide pre-clinical instruction. The class of 1914 was the last (until 1974) to receive the Doctor of Medicine degree; subsequent classes of students attended DMS for two years before transferring to other medical schools. The drop of clinical instruction worsened the school's problems by driving away talented faculty members. In the 1960s, due to a national shortage of physicians and government
incentives for schools that increased their class sizes, Dartmouth Medical School graduates began to experience difficulty in trying to transfer to other medical schools to complete their final two years of medical school as other medical schools had increased their class size and could not accommodate transfer students. A cooperative program with
Brown Medical School began in 1981 where students received training at both medical schools. Fifteen to twenty students were selected for the program, which combined the first two years of basic science coursework at Dartmouth with the final two years of clinical coursework at Brown. The program balanced Dartmouth's greater basic science facilities than Brown, but fewer clinical facilities than available at the urban setting of Brown, which is located in Providence, Rhode Island. Graduates of the program received M.D. degrees from Brown. The program was discontinued in 2010.
New Medical Center In 1991, the
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was established on a campus in
Lebanon, New Hampshire. The three-year project, completed at the cost of $228 million, served as a replacement for the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, which was partially demolished in the early 1990s. A new curriculum was introduced in 1996 entitled "New Directions." The curriculum, still in place today, seeks to promote small classes, reduce the amount of lectures, and offer students extensive interactive experience with patients. 2009 saw the successful completion of a $250 million capital campaign. On April 4, 2012, the Dartmouth Medical School was renamed the
Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine in honor of their many years of generosity to the college. == Facilities ==