The First Faculty and Students
The size of the faculty of Harvard Medical School grew slowly. There were no changes to the three original chairs until 1809 when the Harvard Corporation authorized the addition of two adjunct professorships—in anatomy and surgery, filled by John Warren's son, John Collins Warren (1778-1856), and chemistry and materia medica, by John Gorham (1783-1829).
As the first faculty was small in size, so too was the student body, with only some twenty students—including several undergraduates from Harvard College—in attendance. Lectures ran two to three hours, and, depending on the weather, there could be any number from three to six delivered in a week. The requirements for graduation included attendance at the course of lectures and two years of study and apprenticeship with an experienced practitioner, followed by a public examination and dissertation defense in either Latin or English.
The first graduates of Harvard Medical School were John Fleet (1766-1813) and George Holmes Hall (d. 1807), both members of the Class of 1788. Upon completion of their studies, these first students did not receive a doctoral degree but rather the M.B., or Bachelor of Medicine; the actual M.D. was originally conferred by Harvard only after seven years of practice, submission of a dissertation, and an examination. This system persisted until 1811 when Harvard conferred the medical doctorate degree on all its graduates of that year and all living alumni who had not yet received it.
The number of early graduates remained small, generally only one to three each year, with fewer than thirty degrees conferred by the end of the 18th century. This would not change until the school's removal to Boston in 1810.
The use of admission tickets for each course of a medical student’s education was common until the late 19th century. Students paid the lecturer or professor directly and were then issued these passes for an academic session. This particular item is the earliest admission ticket known for a Harvard Medical School course. Aaron Dexter (1750-1829) was the professor of chemistry and materia medica and the third member, along with John Warren and Benjamin Waterhouse, of Harvard’s original medical faculty.