Missouri Medical College

The first medical school west of the Mississippi River, the Medical Department of Kemper College, was founded in St. Louis in 1840 by Joseph Nash McDowell and John S. Moore. The connection with Kemper College, an Episcopal academy located outside of town, was a formality only. After this first parent institution went out of existence in 1846, McDowell and his colleagues affiliated themselves with the University of Missouri. That connection lasted until 1857, when the school was chartered independently as Missouri Medical College (MMC). Operation was disrupted during the Civil War, when McDowell left St. Louis to serve in the Confederate Army and Union military authorities converted "McDowell's College" into "Gratiot Street Prison." Instruction resumed after the war. Through the latter decade of the nineteenth century MMC survived competition from numerous other schools of medicine. The faculty staffed St. John's Hospital and there were also close ties to St. Louis City Hospital. But the example set by rival SLMC, when that school affiliated with Washington University in 1891, eventually induced MMC to seek a merger. The merger was brought about in 1899.