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The Medical School of Harvard University, Class of 1906
The Aesculapiad, the yearbook for Harvard Medical School, first appeared in 1924, but it had this unique precursor in 1906, in conjunction with the opening of the new buildings. The yearbook contains photographs of the faculty and the 68 graduating…
Dedication of the New Buildings of the Harvard Medical School
This extended version of the dedication program contains transcripts of the speeches and address of Dr. William H. Welch. The dean of the Medical School, William L. Richardson, said, "In these new buildings all that one could ask for has been…
Invitation to the Dedication Ceremonies
This invitation was sent to Dr. Joseph Grindon, the Professor of Clinical Dermatology at Washington University, in St. Louis.
Dedication of the New Buildings of the Harvard Medical School
This is a program from the two-day exercises at the dedication, September 25th and 26th, 1906. The faculty speeches and the formal dedication of the Longwood campus were followed the next day by an academic session on the Cambridge campus, with a…
Admission Ticket to a lecture at Harvard Medical School
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…
Description of the Physiological Laboratory
A large proportion of the new building on Boylston Street was devoted to laboratory space with adequate natural light. The Physiological Laboratory (“… intended to serve primarily as a laboratory of research, and secondarily as an…
Course Schedule
As part of the reform movement at Harvard, the recommended medical degree course was extended from three years to four in 1880. Students could still finish the requirements for an M.D. in three years, and anyone who completed a fourth was granted the…
88th Annual Announcement
This broadside issued following President Charles W. Eliot's educational reforms outlines the revolution in Harvard's medical curriculum. The academic year now begins earlier, three years' study is required, and the importance of practical and…
Some Account of the Medical School in Boston, and of the Massachusetts General Hospital
This brief promotional pamphlet describes the Harvard Medical School at its Mason Street location and also the clinical and surgical opportunities offered by the new Massachusetts General Hospital. The school and hospital both at this period would…
Annual Circular
This first circular from the new location advertises the opportunity for students to examine patients at the Boston Almshouse on Leverett Street and announces the new professorship in clinical medicine.
The faculty was also concerned about the cost…
Matriculating book
During the 19th century, every incoming medical student signed this volume at the beginning of the academic session and so agreed to follow the statutes of Harvard University and the direction of the Faculty of Medicine. On the page on the right can…
Student laboratory dissection exercises
First-year medical students, DeWitt Allen Green, Ernest Bingham Oliver, Harold Bengloff, and Bruce Robinson Merrill, produced these drawings as part of their assigned course work on a cadaver in the fall of 1934.
According to the description in…
Photographs of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, circa 1946.
Photographs of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death: Log Cabin, Dark Bathroom, Saloon and Jail, Three-room Dwelling--Kitchen, and Kitchen
Letter to George H. Hall
In 1788, John Fleet and George Holmes Hall became the first two graduates to receive medical degrees from Harvard. Here, in the following year, the two are in correspondence concerning treatment of several of their patients.
Report on the desirability of an electron microscope for the Harvard Medical School
Drs. Fawcett, for the Department of Anatomy, and Sognnaes, in the School of Dental Medicine, along with Professor Solomon in the Biophysical Laboratory outlined the need for an electron microscope at HMS, a report probably addressed to the dean.…
A hebdomadal reminiscence of diurnal events
James Arthur Emmerton (HMS 1858) of Salem used this diary every Sunday to record his experiences a student at Harvard Medical School from 1855 through 1857. He then returned to it to document life in the 23rd Massachusetts Volunteers during the…
Letter from Charles Eliot to Calvin Ellis
In this letter to Calvin Ellis, the dean of Harvard Medical School, President Eliot outlines several key factors in his proposed educational reforms: a three-year course sequence; examinations, partly written, in each department; familiarity with…
Examination Papers in Medicine : First, Second and Third Year
Following reform, rigorous medical examinations at the end of each year became a requirement for Harvard students. These are the exam questions posed by Dr. John P. Reynolds to third-year students in obstetrics during the 1877-1878 academic…
Notes on legal medicine lectures of Frank Winthrop Draper taken by Ralph Clinton Larrabee, October-November 1896.
The notes on Draper’s lectures from fourth-year student, Ralph C. Larrabee, concern signs of death and the onset of rigor mortis and the autopsy of an arsenic poisoning case.
The Parkman Murder : Trial of Prof. John W. Webster for the Murder of Dr. George Parkman
While few early photographs exist of the Harvard Medical School building on North Grove Street, considerable information about the structure and its interior can be found, ironically, in the published transcripts of the 1850 murder trial of John W.…
A Journal of the Harvard Medical School Unit to the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, Spring of 1915 / by Elliott Carr Cutler. [S.l.] : [s.n.] 1916?
Harvard's first involvement in World War I was staffing the American Ambulance Hospital in Neuilly during the spring of 1915; it was the second unit dispatched from the United States to the hospital. The Harvard Unit had a surgical staff, under…
Student Lecture Notes on Anatomy
Even the most renowned of neurosurgeons was once a first-year medical student, as illustrated by this volume of Harvey Cushing's notes on the anatomical lectures of Thomas Dwight. The Harvard Medical School student at this period attended anatomy…
Circle of Willies, circa 1909.
Silhouettes and autographs of members of the Harvard Medical School Class of 1909 with color illustration of the Circle of Willis
Laudate Dominum
Harvard's Assistant Professor of Music, F. S. Converse, composed this choral work for the dedication of the new Medical School buildings on September 26th. A chorus of alumni under the direction of Harvard's choir-master performed the piece. A…
Admission ticket to the lectures on the theory and practice of midwifery and medical jurisprudence for E. W. Pierce, November 6, 1839.
Admission ticket to the lectures of Walter Channing on the theory and practice of midwifery and medical jurisprudence for E. W. Pierce,
"Dean explains dropping Dept. of Legal Medicine" from the Boston Sunday Advertiser, August 13, 1967.
The Medical School's new dean, Robert H. Ebert, here announces the dissolution of the Department of Legal Medicine, stating that the training of medical examiners would be handled better by hospitals, and the appointment of William J. Curran, as…
"Cinema: the new pictures," August 7, 1950.
An MGM film originally intended as a documentary on the work of the Department of Legal Medicine was later recast as a fictional drama—Mystery Street (also known as Murder at Harvard.) The plot concerns a police detective (Ricardo Montalban)…
Invitation to Tea
Each afternoon during the American Medical Association's meeting in Boston, a musical tea was held on the new Medical School Quadrangle.
Scientific Exhibit in the New Buildings of the Harvard Medical School
During the course of the AMA meeting, demonstrations, lectures, models, photographs and slides, and other anatomical, pathological and scientific exhibits were all mounted in the amphitheaters, laboratories, and museum galleries of the new buildings.…
A Guide-Book of Boston for Physicians
The 1906 annual meeting of the American Medical Association was held in early June and provided an occasion for the first public opening of the Quad buildings. Dr. Walter L. Burrage, of the Sub-Committee on Printing and Programmes, edited this guide…