NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY WOMAN'S MEDICAL SCHOOL
An institution for the professional education of women, located in Chicago.
Its first corporate name was the "Woman's Hospital Medical College of Chicago" and was in close connection with the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children. Later, it severed its connection with the hospital and took the name of the "Woman's Medical College of Chicago."
Co-education of the sexes, in medicine and surgery was experimentally tried from 1868 to 1870 but the experiment proved repugnant to the male students, who unanimously signed a protest against the continuance of the system.
The result was the establishment of a separate school for women in 1870 with a faculty of sixteen professors. The requirements for graduation were fixed at four years of medical study, including three annual graded college terms of six months each.
The first term opened in the autumn of 1870, with an attendance of twenty students. The original location of the school was in the "North Division" of Chicago, in temporary quarters. After the fire of 1871 a removal was effected to the "West Division," where (in 1878-79) a modest, but well arranged building was erected.
A larger structure was built in 1884, and in 1891 the institution became a part of the Northwestern University. The college, in all its departments, is organized along the lines of the best medical schools of the country.
In 1896 there were twenty-four professorships, all capably filled, and among the faculty are some of the best known specialists in the country.