Time Capsule

This excerpt is from “Thomas Jefferson University - Tradition and Heritage,” edited by alumnus Frederick B. Wagner Jr., MD ’41.

Part I: Jefferson Medical College (1824-1895)
Chapter 1: The Early Struggles

The Jefferson Connection

How the medical institution we call Jefferson today actually got its name is a complex narrative. It involves a relationship of three cities—Canonsburg, Charlottesville, and Philadelphia. It also involves a relationship of three men—Thomas Jefferson, the namesake; George McClellan, the founder; and Robley Dunglison, the bridge.

The first root of the gigantic family tree may be traced to about 1773, when an itinerant Presbyterian minister named John McMillen (1752–1833) traveled to western Pennsylvania to preach the gospel to the Scottish settlers of that area. After founding the Chartiers Hill Presbyterian Church near Canonsburg, he founded Canonsburg Academy in a log cabin around 1780, the first chartered literary institution west of the Alleghenies. The only good road into the area was a military one from Virginia, constructed in 1754 through the forest by General Braddock’s pioneer battalion of 300 axemen. Because the western part of Pennsylvania was largely blocked by impassable mountains, this area was more closely linked to Virginia than to Philadelphia. The Reverend McMillen’s appeal to prominent citizens of Virginia and Pennsylvania for funds and books included Benjamin Franklin, who sent £50 and some books. Shortly after Franklin’s death in 1790 his portrait was sent.

In 1802 the trustees chartered the institution as a college and gave it the name of Jefferson in honor of the then third president of the United States (1801–1809). As a token of appreciation, Jefferson made a gift of some books, and in 1803 sent a portrait of himself by an unknown artist. In spite of the great statesman’s reputed wealth, generosity, and interest in education, he had serious financial troubles. Because of a flamboyant lifestyle, lavish maintenance resulted in a personal debt of $20,000 by the time Jefferson left the presidency. After the British destroyed the Library of Congress in 1814, the former President sold 13,000 volumes from his own library to the nation for $23,950. This temporary relief was erased by the hordes of relatives, guests, and strangers who unashamedly wined, dined, and boarded at his expense, even keeping their horses in his stables. His threatened bankruptcy was saved by a national subscription of $16,500 in 1826, the year of his death. A few months later Monticello itself (now a national memorial), with its furniture, pictures, and silver, was sold to cover the debts. Small wonder that Jefferson was unable to send any money to the college honoring his name.

In 1824 events took place in Canonsburg, Philadelphia, and Charlottesville that marked the birth and aided the future of Jefferson Medical College. It was the year in which Dr. George McClellan negotiated the establishment of the Medical Department of Jefferson College at Canonsburg as the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. His attempts to obtain a separate charter from the Pennsylvania legislature for a second medical college in Philadelphia had been unsuccessful.

In the same year at Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson was busy with the creation of a medical school for the University of Virginia, which had first opened its doors in 1819. At age 76, Jefferson had already designed much of the physical structure and curriculum of his university. Now at 81 years, in full possession of the intellectual energy and humanitarian spirit that characterized his genius, he was searching for the best possible young man “to teach medicine on historical lines with explanations of its successive theories since the time of Hippocrates for the purpose of affording such information as educated persons would want for the sake of culture.” The post was deemed of such importance that the search extended to London, where Francis E. Gilmer, Esq., Jefferson’s representative, enlisted Dr. Robley Dunglison. Dunglison was given academic tenure, with $1,500 annual salary, free rent in one of the University pavilions, and a five-year covenant secured by a guarantee of $5,000. It was the first full-time clinical teaching position in a university medical school in this country.

Within two months of Dunglison’s arrival at Charlottesville, he was summoned to become the personal physician of Thomas Jefferson. Until then Jefferson had distrusted the medical profession, preferring nature’s healing. Yet in his twenties, Dunglison found himself attending the former president of the United States and serving as faculty head in the School of Medicine of the University of Virginia. He faithfully attended Jefferson’s last two years and closed his eyelids at his death on July 4, 1826. Jefferson had arranged for Dunglison to receive as a gift the grandfather clock in his bedroom. The clock is now displayed in the main exhibition hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and its replica stands in the Board of Trustees’ Room of the Scott Administration Building.

Dunglison became a professor at the University of Maryland in 1833 and, in 1836, at Jefferson Medical College, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was just two years younger than McClellan the founder and was the bridge between Jefferson the man and Jefferson the institution.