History

Medical College of South Carolina was founded by members of the Medical Society of South Carolina.  Lectures began in November 1824 with seven faculty members and 51 students.  The initial term was for five months—“a longer period of time than any other medical school in our country.”   The 1825 commencement graduated five doctors.

 

In 1832 a dispute between the faculty and the sponsoring medical society led the faculty to open a competing medical school called Medical College of the State of South Carolina.  By 1839 the M.C.S.S.C. was the only medical school in the state. 

 

Closed during the Civil War, M.C.S.S.C. reopened in 1865.  The 1880 Announcement shows a student body of 72, five of whom were in the new pharmacy program; Twenty-one M.D.’s graduated from the two-year program that year.  The first female students were admitted in 1897, with the first M.D.’s awarded in 1901.  The 1900 announcement shows that the program had been extended to four years.

 

When Flexner visited the school in 1909, he found it much larger. Enrollment was listed as 213, taught by a faculty of 34.  While Flexner found it “not without tradition and present dignity,” he concluded that its “meager” equipment “make the effective teaching of any of the laboratory sciences frankly impossible.”   He was also critical of the “nominal” entrance requirements and of the absence of a school dispensary. 

 

Baird’s Manual shows that four medical fraternities had been chartered: Phi Chi (1906), Kappa Pi (1907) Pi Mu (1908) and Alpha Kappa (1908).

 

In 1912 M.C.S.S.C.saw its American Medical Association rating fall to Class C—making it a school that required a “complete reorganization” to continue.  At this point, Medical College of the State of South Carolina became a part of the state’s higher education system, ending its history as an independent school.  It is now the Medical University of South Carolina with added schools of pharmacy, nursing and dentistry.