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The course of study at the Medical College closely followed the example of other American medical schools of the time. In order to avoid the heat and disease of Charleston summers, the school year commenced in November and ran through April. Lectures were offered all seven days of the week, for five hours on four days, and two hours for three days with afternoons devoted to dissection and practical anatomy. The seven branches of medical study offered at the College were Anatomy, Surgery, Institutes & Practice of Physic, Materia Medica, Obstetrics & Diseases of Women and Infants, Chemistry & Pharmacy, as well as Natural History & Botany. (By 1826, an eighth subject, Pathological and Surgical Anatomy, was added.) Lectures were offered on a ticket system, in which students purchased tickets to attend lectures at the Medical College’s temporary building. (When they began in January, Dr. Elliott’s lectures on natural history were given at the museum of the Literary and Philosophical Society.) These tickets were then endorsed by the faculty member giving the lecture. Students were expected to take two courses in each subject over the course of three years. The public were also invited to attend the college’s lectures.

In addition to coursework, students were also expected to study with a “respectable practitioner”—essentially, a residency—for three years. Finally, upon completion of coursework, students wrote a dissertation or thesis on a subject of their choosing to be submitted by the first of March for review by the Dean and faculty. Unlike modern theses and dissertations, these papers presented what a student had learned about a particular illness, ailment, or affliction and its treatment. It also was not uncommon for students to treat the very illness they had chosen to report on and include their own observations of successful, or unsuccessful, treatment.

(Image Description: Lectures schedule for the Medical College of the State of South Carolina from November 1866. Waring Historical Library, Manuscript Collection, MSS 31.)