The Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine was first established as the
Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School in 1905 to train physicians from the British colonies of present-day Singapore and Malaysia. It was located within a former women's mental asylum at Sepoy Lines. The start of this
medical school was significant in two ways. It was meant to train local men and women to bring
Western medicine to the local population. It was handsomely supported by local
merchants who took advantage of the
tax exemptions of the time not to garner more wealth, but to give generously to public causes.
Tan Jiak Kim gave the largest individual sum. Another donor,
Tan Chay Hoon donated a building to the school in memory of his father, Tan Teck Guan. The
Tan Teck Guan Building was built in 1911. In 1921, the school was renamed the
King Edward VII College of Medicine after receiving a donation from the
Edward VII Memorial Fund founded by
Lim Boon Keng. In 1926, the
College of Medicine Building was built to house the college in addition to the
Tan Teck Guan Building. The dental school was founded soon after. During
World War II, the college continued operating even with the
Japanese occupation of Singapore, but not without consequences. The first casualty was a fourth-year medical student based at
Tan Tock Seng Hospital who was fatally wounded by Japanese shells during the
Battle of Singapore. While his friends were burying him, they were spotted by Japanese soldiers and eleven were killed on the spot. The dead are commemorated by the
SGH War Memorial. In 1949, the KECM then merged with Raffles College, which specialized in the humanities and
teacher training, to form the Singapore campus of the
University of Malaya (UM). The medical school became the Faculty of Medicine of UM, and students in Malaysia wishing to study medicine would go to the campus in Singapore. UM eventually split into UM (Kuala Lumpur) and the University of Singapore in 1962, with the medical school coming under the University of Singapore while and UM in Kuala Lumpur established the
Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya. Through a series of mergers with other universities, the University of Singapore would eventually form the
National University of Singapore (NUS). The medical school became the Faculty of Medicine within the university and in 1982, it left its old buildings at Sepoy Lines behind to move into its new campus at
Kent Ridge. The historic
College of Medicine and
Tan Teck Guan buildings which it previously occupied are currently owned by the
Ministry of Health and listed as
national monuments by the
National Heritage Board. In 2005, the centenary of the medical school and also that of the university, the medical school was renamed the
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine in honour of philanthropist and doctor Yong Loo Lin following a
SG$100 million endowment from the Yong Loo Lin Trust. The gift enabled the medical school to expand its infrastructure and facilities. ==Departments==