John Collins Warren

In 1809, Warren’s son, John Collins Warren (1778-1856) was appointed Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, assisting his father in anatomical teaching, dissection, and demonstration. When the Medical School removed to Boston in the following year, the length of the curriculum was increased, and anatomical and surgical teaching was divided into one course for medical students in the autumn and winter and a separate course of anatomical lectures for undergraduates in the spring. After his father’s death, John Collins Warren assumed the Hersey professorship.

After resigning from his teaching duties in 1847, John Collins Warren presented his extensive anatomical and pathological teaching collection of models and preparations—some 1,000 items at that time—to Harvard to form the nucleus of the Warren Anatomical Museum. This gift prompted the Medical Faculty to erect a new building on North Grove Street "… in which the collection could be fairly displayed, and sufficiently protected; thus affording the requisite means of opening the new Museum to the inspection of medical students and others interested in medical science."