While the seeds of medical education in South Carolina have long been attributed to Dr. David Ramsay, who successfully lobbied the Medical Society to hold public lectures in medical sciences in 1803, the impetus to establish a medical school did not come until 1821, six years after his death. A variety of economic, political, cultural, and intellectual factors prompted members of the Medical Society in Charleston to secure authorization from the state legislature. Finally, and with the support of a well-respected former state senator, they did so.

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" explores not only the broader, complicated historical context of the school’s founding, but the lives of its founders, the first faculty, and the students who attended the Medical College of South Carolina in its earliest days. Though few records survive from the school’s founding period, this exhibit aims to explore the crucial role these men played in its establishment and the tumultuous historical era in which they founded the first medical school in the southeast.

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for the commencement of the first year of classes at the Medical College of South Carolina. “Medical College of South Carolina.” City Gazette. July 22, 1824.")