John Richard Woodcock Dunbar

Artist: Unknown; Oil on canvas

John Richard Woodcock Dunbar was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1805. He attended Dickinson College, and then was a pupil of Dr. John Bell in Philadelphia. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1828, and after, was a resident physician.

For several years, he practiced in his hometown of Winchester, Virginia. He moved to Baltimore in1830 and helped found the Baltimore Medical Institute, and was a Professor of Surgery. He was the Vice President of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty from 1859 to 1880 and President in 1870.

In 1867, Dr. Dunbar began tutoring Whitfield Winsey, who became the first African-American physician admitted to the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty.

Dr. Dunbar probably had a great influence on Winsey’s acceptance into Harvard Medical School. As a graduate of the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Medical School and the founder of the Baltimore Medical Institute, Dr. Dunbar had important connections in the medical community which would prove to be an immense help to Winsey, an up-and-coming black physician.

Dr. Dunbar was an excellent surgeon, but had no business sense. As a consequence, his valuable library, the fruit of years of labor and expense, was seized by his landlord and creditor, Johns Hopkins.

The shock brought on softening of the brain from which he soon died at the Baltimore Infirmary on July 3, 1871.