The College of Medicine, originally an independent institution, opened on September 26, 1882, as the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago (
P&S), with 100 students and a faculty of 30. Five years later, the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois approved a contract of affiliation whereby the university would lease P&S as its Department of Medicine. The arrangement continued until 1912, when there was a nine-month hiatus in the affiliation owing to a lack of legislative support. It was only after the faculty and alumni of P&S bought up all shares of the school's stock and presented them to the
Board of Trustees as a gift that the school officially became the College of Medicine of the University of Illinois in March 1913. In the late 1800s, although six medical schools were already in existence, five physicians—Charles Warrington Earle, Abraham Reeves Jackson, Daniel Atkinson King Steele, Samuel McWilliams and Leonard St. John—decided to open their own proprietary medical school. They pooled together $5,541.78, purchased a piece of land and secured a certificate of incorporation. The new school, located on Harrison and Honore streets, was named the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago (commonly referred to as P&S). Its doors opened on September 26, 1882, with a class of 100 students and a faculty of 30 physicians. At the West Side Free Dispensary, located on the first floor of the medical school, students in small groups could observe pathological cases and their treatment. Patients were classified according to the affected area or system of the body: heart, lungs, eyes, ears, skin or nervous system. The dispensary also furnished material for college clinics in medicine, surgery, gynecology, obstetrics, ophthalmology, neurology and pediatrics. In its first three years, the dispensary registered 20,353 patients and dispensed 17,347 prescriptions. In 1913, after years of negotiations, the P&S faculty and alumni donated stock to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees to establish the University of Illinois College of Medicine. In 1970, the Illinois legislature voted to expand the college to three additional sites: Peoria, Rockford and Urbana. Their purpose was to provide access to care for all citizens in the state and increase opportunities for Illinois residents to attend medical school. In 1902, National Medical Honor Society
Alpha Omega Alpha (ΑΩΑ) was founded at the Chicago College of Physician and Surgeons (later named the College of Medicine of the University of Illinois) by medical student William Root and colleagues. Today, ΑΩΑ has 135 Chapters in medical schools across the country, and more than 200,000 members, including 55 Nobel Prize winners in physiology, medicine, and chemistry, and more than 75 percent of medical school deans. ==Present status==