Monumental Achievements in Black Medical History

 MedChi is doing occasional posts on Black Medical History. The "monumental" in the name comes from the Monumental Medical Society, a medical society for Black physicians. 

Stay tuned for more Monumental Achievements!

Dinner & a Show with the Center & the BSO

Please join MedChi, the Center for a Healthy Maryland and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, April 13, 2024 for dinner and a show, featuring jazz and music from the Prohibition and the Roaring '20s.

For tickets or more information, please email here or click or scan the QR code below.

MedChi Members and Friends, click below.

Medical Students and Residents, click below. 

Hope to see you then!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sending All of Our Valentine's Wishes to You! 

The Founding Document

On January 22, 2024, a group of MedChi's members, friends, Board members, and staffers gathered in Annapolis to celebrate 225 years. We worked with the Maryland State Archives for nearly a year to arrange for the original founding document to be present at the Procamation events at the State House. 

The Archives were kind enough to send us very high resolution scans of the original document. Please take a look and if the script is too difficult to read, the transcription is below the images.

An Act to establish and incorporate a Medical and Chirurgical Faculty or Society in the State of Maryland.

Whereas it appears to the General Assembly of Maryland that the establishment and incorporation of a Medical and Chirurgical Faculty or Society of Physicians and Surgeons in the said State, will be attended with the most beneficial and salutary consequences for promoting and disseminating Medical and Chirurgical knowledge throughout the State, and may in future prevent the citizens thereof from risking our lives in the hands of ignorant practitioners and pretenders to the healing art; Therefore,

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, that Gustavus Brown, William Lonsdale, Barton Tabbs, Elijah Jackson and William H. Roach of Saint Mary’s County;

James M. Anderson, Junior, Morgan Browne, Junior, Edward School, Robert Geddes, and Edward Warrell of Kent County;

Charles Alexander Warfield, Richard Hopkins, Wilson Waters, Thomas Noble Stockett and William Murray of Anne Arundel County;

Thomas Bourne, Thomas Parran, Joseph Ireland, Daniel Rawlings and James Gray of Calvert County;

John Parnham, Gustavus Richard Brown, Daniel Jenifer, John M. Daniel and Gerrard Wood of Charles County;

Thomas Cradock, Thomas Love, John Cromwell, Philip Trapnell, and Christopher Todd of Baltimore County;

Perry E. Noel, Stephen Theodore Johnson, Tristram Thomas and Ennalls Martin of Talbot County;

Levin Irving, Arnold Elzey, Ezekiel Haynie, John Woolford, and Mathias Jones of Somerset County;

Edward White, James Sullivane, Dorsey Wyville, William Hays and Thomas Goldsborough of Dorchester County;

Abraham Mitchell, William Miller, Elisha Harrison, John Grome and John King of Cecil County;

Richard J. Duckett, William Beanes, Junior, William Marshall; William Baker and Robert Pottinger of Prince Georges County;

Upton Scott, James Murray, John Thomas Shaff, and Reverdy Ghiselin of the City of Annapolis;

James Davidson, John Wells, Samuel Thompson, Robert Goldsborough and John Thomas of Queen Anne’s County;

John Neille, Thomas Fassett, George Washington Purnell, John Huston of Worcester County;

Philip Thomas, Francis Brown Sappington, William Hilleary, John Tyler and Joseph Sim Smith of Frederick County;

John Archer, Thomas H. Birckhead, Elijah Davis, and Thomas Archer of Harford County;

Jesse Downes, John Young, Junior, Benjamin Keene, Joseph Price, and Henry Helm of Caroline County;

George Brown, John Coulter, Miles Little John, George Buchanan, Lyde Goodwin, Ashton Alexander, Arthur Pue, Daniel Moore and Henry Stevenson of the City of Baltimore;

Richard Pindell, Samuel Young, Peter Waltz, Jacob Schnively, and Zachariah Claggett of Washinton County;

Edward Gantt, Charles Worthington, Joseph Hall, Zadock Magruder, Junior, and Charles Beatty of Montgomery County;

Benjamin Murrow, James Forbes and George Lynn of Allegany County;

And such persons as they may, from time to time, elect and their successors, are hereby declared to be one community, corporation, and body politic, forever, by and under the name and title of The Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland, and by and under the same name and title they shall be able and capable in law to purchase, take, have and enjoy, to them and their successors, in fee or for less estate or estates, any lands, tenements, rents, annuities, chattels, bank stock, registered debts or other public securities within this State, by the gift, bargain, sale or devise, or any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, capable to make the same, and the same at their pleasure to alien, sell, transfer or lease and apply to such purposes as they may judge most conducive to the promoting and disseminating medical and surgical knowledge, or to alleviating the calamities and the miseries of their fellow citizens; provided nevertheless, that the said Faculty or body politic shall not, at any time, hold or profess property, real, personal or mixed, exceeding in total the sum of ten thousand dollars, per annum.

And be it enacted, that the members of the said Faculty above designated, may and shall hold their first meeting at the City of Annapolis on the first Monday in June next, or as soon thereafter as a number not less than fifteen of them can be convened, at which meeting they may appoint a President, a Secretary and Treasurer, make a common seal, and may elect into their body, such a medical and chirurgical practitioners, within this State as they may think qualified to become members of the Faculty.

And be it enacted, that it shall and may be lawful for the said Medical Faculty or any numbers of them, then attending, (not less than fifteen) to elect by Ballot, twelve persons of the greatest medical and chirurgical abilities in the State, who shall be styled the Medical Board of Examiners for the State of Maryland, seven of whom shall be residents of the Western and five of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, whose duty is shall be to grant licenses to such medical and chirurgical gentlemen as they, either upon a full examination, or upon the production of Diplomas from some respectable college, may judge adequate to commence the practice of the Medical and Chirurgical arts, each person so obtaining a certificate to pay a sum not exceeding Ten Dollars, to be fixed on or ascertained by the Faculty.

And be it enacted, that any five of the Examiners appointed for the Western and any three of those appointed for the Western Shore, shall constitute a Board on their respective shores for examining such candidates as may apply on the said shores respectively, and shall subscribe their names to each certificate by them granted, which certificate shall be also countersigned by the President of the Faculty and have the seal of the Faculty affixed thereto by the Secretary, upon the payment into the hands of the Treasurer of the sum of money to be ascertained as above by the Faculty, and any one of said Examiners may grant a license to practice until a Board in conformity to this act can be held

And be it enacted, that after the appointment of the aforesaid Medical Board, no person not already a practitioner of Medicine or Surgery, shall be allowed to practice in either of the said Branches, and receive payment for his services, without having first obtained a License, certified as by this Law directed, under the penalty of Fifty Dollars for each offense, to be recovered in the county court where he may reside by Bill of Presentment and Indictment, one half for the use of the Faculty and the other half for that of the Informer.

And be it enacted, that every person, who upon application, shall be elected a member of the Medical Faculty, shall pay a sum not exceeding Ten Dollars to be ascertained by the Faculty.

And be it enacted, that the said Medical Faculty be and they are hereby empowered from time to time to make such bylaws, rules and regulations, as they may find requisite; to break or alter their common seal; to fix the times and places for their general meetings, for the meetings of the Board of Examiners, the modes and times of electing Officers, filling up vacancies in the Medical Boards, and to do and perform such other things as may be requisite for carrying this act into execution and which may not be repugnant to the Constitution and Laws of this State or the United States.

By the House of Delegates                                      By the Senate

January 20, 1799                                                      January 20, 1799

Read and Assented to                                             Read and Assented to

By Order                                                                    By Order

Wm. Harwood                                                          A. Van Horn

Early Black Physicians in Maryland

The history of Black physicians in Maryland is long, but sadly, virtually un-explored.

One of the earliest reports of a Black physician practicing in Maryland dates from 1750. Henry Game, a freed slave in Somerset County on the Eastern Shore, was praised in the October 1750 issue of the Maryland Gazette as a successful doctor. He is also mentioned as a doctor in the register of the Stepney Parish in Somerset County in 1751.

Fast forward to 1818, when two men of color, Drs. Marlborough and Gibson were mentioned as practicing medicine without a license on the Eastern Shore.

In 1832, Dr. Lewis G. Wells was reputed to have attended the now-defunct Washington Medical College in Baltimore.

According to contemporary reports, it was likely that he studied at the university while working as an employee there, and reports also mention that he was one most skillful physicians of the day. He was Baltimore’s only Black physician at the time.

During the cholera epidemic in 1832, he was seen riding up and down the streets of Baltimore, administering to the sick and dying.

Samuel Ford McGill was the first Liberian colonist to receive a medical education in the United States. He also studied at Washington University, in 1836, but he was dismissed due to pressure from white students. He eventually attended Dartmouth University, where he graduated with a medical degree.

He returned to Liberia and became a colonial governor.

In 1882, the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty admitted its first Black member, Whitfield Winsey.

Dr. John Dunbar tutored Dr. Winsey in medicine, and in 1871, Winsey graduated from Harvard Medical School.

He returned to Baltimore and established a private practice on East Fayette Street. In April 1882, Dr. Winsey applied to the Baltimore City Medical & Surgical Society, but his membership was denied. Later that month, Dr. Winsey became the first Black member of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty.

In 1894, Dr. Winsey, along with a group of prominent Black physicians, founded Provident Hospital on Orchard Street, the first private teaching hospital for Blacks in Baltimore.

Although Winsey was employed as a physician at Black institutions such as the Melvale Home for Colored Girls and Provident Hospital, he belonged to white fraternal and professional organizations, including the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty and the Masons. Dr. Winsey provided leadership for many aspects of nineteenth-century Black society in Baltimore.

The second Black member of the Faculty was Dr. Reverdy M. Hall, who became a member in 1884. He attended Howard University’s Medical College and graduated in 1872.

He opened a private practice on Druid Hill Avenue in Baltimore. There is some evidence that Dr. Hall was an OB/GYN, and he published a lengthy article in the Faculty’s 1890 Transactions, entitled “Fibroid Tumors Complicating Pregnancy."

Along with Dr. Winsey, Dr. Hall was one of the founders of Provident Hospital.

The Medical and Surgical School of Christ’s Institution of Baltimore City (also called the Medico-Chirurgical and Theological College of Christ’s Institution) was the first Black medical school incorporated in Baltimore. The school was still in existence as late as 1918. However, it graduated very few physicians and there is scant information about it and it doesn’t appear on the 1909 Flexner Report of Medical Schools.

In 1885, The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland changed its constitution from “gentlemen members” to “persons” due to the number of Blacks and women who were becoming physicians and wanted to join.

Local reference materials list a number of other early Black medical societies, including:

·        The Maryland Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association.

·         The Maryland Colored Medical Association

·         The Maryland State Medical Association

·         MeDeSo – the Medical Dental Society, and finally,

·         The Monumental City Medical Society.

In 1983, MedChi elected Dr. Roland Smoot as its first Black president.

In 1963, Dr. Smoot was appointed chief of medicine at Provident Hospital, the same year Hopkins permitted him to have admitting privileges - a first for an African-American physician at Hopkins. In 1978, Dr. Smoot was named an assistant dean for student affairs at Hopkins and spent the next 26 years recruiting and counseling students at the school. 

MedChi is proud of its long history supporting Black physicians in Maryland.

CPR Article in Baltimore Magazine

Our friends at Baltimore Magazine just published a fascinating article on the local origins of CPR, which was developed here in Baltimore. In 1961, the Maryland Medical Journal published a long, scholarly article on the earliest days of CPR and how several physicians, engineers and scientists created it. 

Baltimore Magazine has done a deep dive into CPR's origin story, and we're sharing it with you. Click on the image above to read the article.

First Quarter Newsletter

Please click on each image to enlarge it. 

If you would like to subscribe to the Newsletter, please send an email here.