The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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Upon completion of the
apprenticeship was three years.
course the preceptor would issue a certificate. Unless some
form of examination was required by law, this certificate,
when registered, entitled the holder to practise medicine.
If the young physician became a member of a medical
society, he was likely to rate a little higher. At times students
and young doctors clubbed together and brought in
an outside lecturer for two or three weeks' instruction.
Men who held the college medical degree were always careful
to display the M.D. on their prescriptions and signs.
the absence of data it is hard to estimate, but it appears that
prior to 1840 approximately three-fourths of the doctors
in the Middle West received their training by means of the
apprentice system.^"*
As the idea that "book larnin'" was not necessary and
might even be a handicap gave way to the demand for
formal training, the preceptorial system was supplemented,
then gradually replaced, by the medical school. There is no
more interesting chapter in the development of medical
education than that provided by the history of the medical
colleges in the Middle West. Many of these schools were of
the proprietary type, the product of the personal ambitions
and dreams of one man or a group of men; often
owners, faculty, and trustees were one and the same. This
fact, together with jealousies arising from locations, accounts
in large part for the many and bitter conflicts
which arose.
To Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky,
belongs the dual honor of being the first university and the
first medical college in the West. Until 1837 only the Ohio
Medical College of Cincinnati, which graduated its first
class in 1821, arose to question Transylvania's monopoly
of medical education in the Ohio Valley. The rivalry of
the two cities for the distinction of being the "Athens of
the West" in medicine as well as in commerce and general
intellectual leadership gave rise
In
to many heated individual
controversies.
Transylvania University was formed in 1798 by the