Stanford Medicine traces its history back to 1858 when Elias Samuel Cooper, a physician in San Francisco, California, founded the first medical school in the Western United States. The school underwent many changes, including a move from San Francisco to the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California in 1959.
California.[1]
1858 Elias Samuel Cooper collaborates with the University of the Pacific, a Methodist college in Santa Clara, to establish a Medical Department.[1][2]
1859 The Medical Department of the University of the Pacific opens at Mission and Third Streets in San Francisco, the first medical school in the Western U.S. The Department's seventeen trustees include ten clergy and three physicians.[1][3]
1860 Elias Samuel Cooper founds the San Francisco Medical Press, creating a venue for communication among medical practitioners in addition to the already-existing Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal.[4]
1861 Henry Gibbons, Sr. and Levi Cooper Lane join the faculty of the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific.[1]
1862 California physicians examine hair samples under microscopes to decide whether a witness in court should be classified as white (thus legally eligible to testify against other whites) or black (ineligible to testify against whites) [5]
1862 Elias Samuel Cooper dies, leading to the disbanding of the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific.[6]
1863 California Governor Leland Stanford signs into law bills that allow blacks to testify in court against whites, but that specifically disqualifies Native American and Chinese testimony against whites.[7]
1864 Hugh H. Toland opens the Toland Medical College at Stockton and Chestnut Streets in San Francisco. Lane, Gibbons and J.F. Morse move from the moribund Medical Department of the University of the Pacific to Toland Medical College. Instruction was informed by Parisian principles of medical education.[8][9]
1866 Federal baceriological laboratory established at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, New York.[10]
1867 Joseph Lister publishes three articles in The Lancet arguing for antisepsis in surgery.[11]
1870 Levi Cooper Lane re-organizes the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific on Stockton Street at Geary in San Francisco.[12]
1872 The Medical Department of the University of the Pacific is re-named The Medical College of the Pacific as affiliation switches from University of the Pacific to University College, a Presbyterian school that later becomes the San Francisco Theological Seminary.[12][13]
1873 Toland Medical College is deeded to the Regents of the University of California, and in 1951 is re-named the University of California, San Francisco.[14][15]
1873 Toland Medical College admits its first female student.[16]
1876 The California state legislature passes the "Medical Practice Act," requiring physicians to be licensed. The State Medical Board is created.[17][18]
1877 Cooper Medical College admits its first female student.[16]
1879 Robert Koch publishes The Etiology of Traumatic Infectious Diseases, confirming the germ theory of disease.[19]
1882 Cooper Medical College opens at Sacramento and Webster Streets, staffed with faculty from the Medical College of the Pacific. Construction of the new building is paid for by Levi Cooper Lane. Lane enlists former student and future San Francisco mayor Edward Robeson Taylor to oversee compliance of the college with the Medical Practice Act.[12][14]
1890 An addition to Cooper Medical College opens, including Lane Hall (a large auditorium), laboratories, and a surgical theater.[20]
1892 Cooper Medical College is one of only seven U.S. medical schools recognized by the English Royal College of Surgeons.[21]
1893 The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine opens in Baltimore, using a European training model for medical education.[22]
1895 Lane Hospital at Cooper Medical College opens on the corner of Clay and Webster Streets. It has a capacity of 100 beds. Construction was supported by Claus Spreckles and James McDonald.[20][23][24]
1895 Lane Hospital Training School for Nurses opens. Students are provided housing inside Lane Hospital.[25]
1896 Cooper Medical College student Theodore Durrant is convicted in a murder trial that garners national press coverage.[26]
1898 William Ophüls appointed as the first full-time salaried professor at Cooper Medical College.[27]
1899 Nursing students at Lane Hospital are provided housing in a residence on Clay Street adjacent to Lane Hospital, where Stanford Hospital would later stand.[25]
1900 The steamship Australia arrives in San Francisco from Honolulu bringing the bubonic plague, which disproportionately impacts the residents of Chinatown. California Governor Henry Gage issues a proclamation denying that bubonic plague exists in San Francisco. The proclamation is signed by Levi Cooper Lane.[28]
1902 Levi Cooper Lane dies. Charles N. Ellinwood is selected to replace Lane as the new president of Cooper Medical College.[23]
1906 David Starr Jordon, president of Stanford University, proposes acquisition of Cooper Medical College on the condition that the latter have a medical research focus.[29]
1907 Charles N. Ellinwood removed from the presidency of Cooper Medical College following a financial management controversy.[29]
1908 Cooper Medical College is deeded to the Board of Trustees of Stanford University. It is re-named as Stanford's Department of Medicine.
1910 The Flexner Report is published. It reviews existing medical schools in the U.S. and makes recommendations for curriculum reform.[30]
1912 The new building for the Lane Medical Library opens on the southeast corner of Webster and Sacramento Streets, across the street from the Stanford University Department of Medicine. Construction was funded by Pauline Lane, Stanford University, and the directors of the former Cooper Medical College. The building now houses the California Pacific Medical Center Health Sciences Library.[31]
1912 A new curriculum for the M.D. degree is introduced that requires two years of pre-clinical study in Palo Alto followed by 2 years in the wards and clinics of guided treatment of patients in hospital wards and clinics in San Francisco; a research-based thesis also becomes a requirement. This reflects recommendations made in the 1910 Flexner Report.[32]
1912 Lane Hospital is deeded to Stanford University; the Lane Hospital Training School for Nurses is re-named the Stanford School for Nurses.[25]
1913 The California State Medical Board changes from a membership policy that included allopathic, homeopathic, osteopathic and naturopatic practitioners to one that elimnated all non-allopatic members.[17]
1914 The Department of Medicine is re-named the School of Medicine; it is re-organized into 10 divisions: anatomy; bacteriology and immunology; physiology; chemistry; pharmacology; pathology; medicine; surgery; obstetrics and gynecology; and hygiene and public health.[32][33]
1917 Stanford University Hospital opens on Clay Street, adjacent to Lane Hospital.[25]
1917 Stanford Home for Convalescent Children (the "Con Home") organized.[34]
1922 Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford University and former dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, addresses the California State Medical Society. He expresses his concern that increased specialization and emphasis on laboratory sciences in medical training compromised future physcians' clinical ability.[35]
1922 A new residence for nursing students opens across Clay Street from the hospital, with an underground tunnel connecting the two.[25]
1923 The curriculum reduces instruction to fewer than 4,000 hours - the amount required for students to be eligible for state licensing of physicians; the difference is made up through required work in departments of students' choice, fostering further specialization.[36]
1925 The Department of Public Health and Preventative Medicine for the Stanford University School of Medicine is founded.[37]
1930 The federal baceriological laboratory at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, New York becomes the National Institutes of Health and relocates to Bethesda, Maryland.[38]
1939 Ruth Lucy Stern Research Laboratory opens across Clay Street from Lane Hospital and Stanford University Hospital.[39]
1941 Due to a demand for physicians in the Armed Forces during World War II, Stanford University Medical School developed the "9-9-9" Medical Plan, accelerating the time required to complete the M.D. program. The program was discontinued in 1945.[40]
1959 Stanford University School of Medicine is relocated to the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto. Among those faculty coming to Palo Alto from the San Francisco campus were Avram Goldstein and Henry Kaplan. Among those newly recruited to the faculty were Norman Kretchmer, Arthur Kornberg, Joshua Lederberg, Halsted Holman, Robert Chase, and David Hamburg.[41]
1959 The new Palo Alto campus for the Stanford University School of Medicine was designed by Edward Durell Stone. It included the Palo Alto-Stanford Hospital Center - a joint hospital with two separate staff.[42]
1959 Inspired by Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Stanford University School of Medicine adopts a five-year M.D. program.[43]
1960 The physical plant that previously housed the Stanford University School of Medicine in San Francisco is deeded to the Presbytery of San Francisco, thus creating the Presbyterian Hospital and Medical Center of San Francisco.[13]
1965 Palo Alto Hospital, re-named Hoover Pavilion, re-opens. .[44]
1967 The Presbyterian Hospital and Medical Center of San Francisco, which is housed in the physical plant that was previously occupied by the Stanford University School of Medicine, is re-named the Pacific Medical Center.[13]
1968 Stanford University reaches an agreement with Palo Alto's city council to become sole owner of the hospital.[45]
1968 The curriculum is revised. Instead of the five-year plan, all requirements in pre-clinical training are eliminated in favor of an all-elective curriculum.[46]
1970 Stanford University School of Medicine faculty and students cancel classes and protest the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State.[47]
1971 A demonstration alleging racist personnel policies at the hospital turns into a riot, resulting in injuries, arrests, and more than $100,000 damage to the hospital.[48]
1974 The original Cooper Medical College and Land Hospital buildings in San Francisco are demolished.[13]
1974 The Stanford School of Nursing closes.[49]
1980 Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco receive a patent for gene splicing and cloning technologies - a catalyst for the nascent biotechnology industry.[50]
1981 The Office of Statewide Planning issues a report praising Stanford University School of Medicine for recruiting minority students, while a faculty report charged that similar progress had not been made in recruiting minority faculty.[51]
1984 The curriculum is revised. Core preclinical courses become required.[52]
1988 Harvard University Medical School adopts a problem-based curriculum as an alternative to the more traditional model of two years in basic sciences followed by two years in clinical studies.[53]
1989 Stanford University Medical School survives a major earthquake relatively unscathed, though the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center, which is affiliated with the medical school, suffers approximately $30,000,000 damage.[54]
1993 Stanford University School of Medicine pilots "Preparation for Clinical Medicine," a course using problem-based learning, while retaining the traditional model of two years in basic sciences followed by two years in clinical studies.[53]
1997 Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco merge hospitals and clinics while leaving their respective medical schools independent. The partnership is discontinued in 1999.[55]