The group, led by William Cullen Bryant, the noted poet, abolitionist and editor of the Evening Post, was particularly concerned with the condition of hospitals and medical education. Bryant was zealously devoted to the branch of medicine known as homeopathy. The school opened its doors on the corner of 20th street and Third Avenue as the New York Homeopathic Medical College. Bryant served as the medical school’s first president and held the office of president of the Board of Trustees for 10 years.
Advancing Medical Careers for Women
In 1863, a separate but related institution known as the New York Medical College for Women was founded by Dr. Clemence Sophia Lozier, staffed and supervised by many of the College’s male faculty. In 1867, Dr. Lozier’s institution graduated the first female Canadian physician, Dr. Emily Stowe, who had previously been refused admission to every medical school in her native Canada. Dr. Susan McKinney, the first African-American female physician in New York State and the third in the nation, graduated from New York Medical College for Women in 1870 with the highest grade in the class. When the institution closed in 1918, students transferred to the College. Thus, New York Medical College makes its claim to be among the first medical schools to admit women.
Metropolitan Hospital and Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals
In 1875, Metropolitan Hospital opened as a municipal facility on Ward’s Island, staffed largely by the faculty of New York Medical College. Today that relationship is one of the nation’s oldest continuing affiliations between a private medical school and a public hospital.
The Flower Free Surgical Hospital, built by New York Medical College in 1889, was the first teaching hospital in the country to be owned by a medical college. It was constructed at York Avenue and 63rd Street with funds given largely by Congressman Roswell P. Flower, later governor of New York. By 1935, the College had transferred its outpatient activities to the Fifth Avenue Hospital at Fifth Avenue and 106th Street. The College (including Flower Hospital) and Fifth Avenue Hospital merged in 1938 and became New York Medical College, Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals.
Nation’s First Minority Scholarship Program
In 1928, the College became the first medical school in the nation to establish a scholarship program specifically for minority students through the efforts of Walter Gray Crump, Sr., M.D. An alumnus and voluntary faculty member who participated vigorously in the academic life of the College, Dr. Crump taught surgery, served as a staff surgeon at other hospitals, was a founder of the New York Medical College for Women, was a trustee of Tuskegee Institute and Howard University and assumed a leading role in the advancement of minority education and minority affairs.
Graduate Education Program Growth
In 1938 the College was authorized to award graduate degrees—a master of science in medicine, a doctorate in medical science and a doctorate in public health. The conduct of research and the scheduling of advanced courses dated as early as 1910 and the offering of graduate courses in surgery and medicine to residents began in the 1920s. In 1963, the Graduate School of Medical Sciences was founded (renamed in 1969), establishing for the first time graduate education within a school separate from the medical curriculum.
During the late 1970s and throughout the ‘80s, the size and stature of faculty, the quality and amount of funded research, the caliber of students and the improvements in medical care afforded to people in communities served by the College increased significantly. In 1980, the Graduate School of Health Sciences was founded to respond to the growing regional and national need for healthcare professionals. In 2003, it was renamed the School of Public Health.
In 1984, the New York State Department of Education recognized the status of New York Medical College as a university, due in large measure to the strength of the institution’s curriculum.
New York Medical College Today
The College sustains a commitment to enhancing its educational mission, and every new decade brings new challenges. Over the years we have made substantive gains our reputation for producing excellent physicians, scientists and health professionals. in the quality of our student body. Yet our charge is far from complete. The ongoing task is to enhance all facets of the university that support student quality and academic rigor. To remain a standard bearer in medical education requires that our educational facilities and equipment mirror not only our academic quality, but also the state of medical practice and research today. This is our mandate for the future.