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

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by Dr. Thomas Vaughan Morrow as president.
In the fall
and winter term of 1839 were offered: Anatomy and
Physiology for $12; Chemistry and Medical Jurisprudence,
$12; Theory and Practice of Medicine and Midwifery, $12;
Surgery and Diseases of Women and Children, $10; Botany,
Materia Medica, and Pharmacology, $10. The charge
for spring and summer sessions was only $5 per ticket.
There was an optional $5 dissection fee; the fee for graduation
was $10. Five daily lectures were given for five months
in the fall and winter term; in alternate springs a threemonths'
course was offered. The summer sessions were
devoted to botanical field trips.
Nine years of growth and prosperity followed the opening
of the school, but the lifting of cadavers from a neighboring
graveyard led to the formation of an infuriated mob
which wrecked Dr. Morrow's home and practically demolished
the college. He then moved to Cincinnati, where in
1840 he organized the Reformed Medical School of Cincinnati
"to effect a permanent and salutary form of the
Healing Art in the most enlarged and liberal spirit of
Medical Eclecticism." In the beginning this school, like the
earlier New York establishment, operated without a charter,
but as enrollment increased from a single student for
the first term to thirty in 1845, the mayor and more than
a thousand citizens sent a petition to the legislature. A
charter was granted to this institution as the Eclectic Medical
Institute of Cincinnati. The school, of course, was
vigorously opposed by the regulars,
one of whom was so
satisfied with his professional state that he declared, "Medical
science does not need, nor is it susceptible of further
improvement or reform." During the first three years of
existence as the Institute, enrollment was greater than in
any of the schools of the regulars. Attendance for the first
ten years showed a gradual growth, a reflection of the
rapid increase in popular acceptance of Eclecticism. Dr.
Beach lectured at the Institute only one year, 1845-46.
In keeping with the spirit of the times as well as the
place. The Eclectic Institute became involved in numerous