Willamette University Medical Department

In 1864, Governor A.C. Gibbs and a number of Portland physicians requested that the Board of Trustees of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, establish a medical department in Portland, to be called the Oregon Medical College. The department closed soon after its founding due to lack of organization by the faculty. It is unclear whether or not the department ever offered any instruction. By 1866, Willamette University had a new president, Dr. J.H. Wythe, who began efforts to establish a medical department in Salem. A committee appointed by the university’s Board of Trustees ordered the officers of the Medical Department in Portland to surrender the charter granted to them by the university, and lectures began in Salem on March 3, 1867.

On February 8, 1878, the Oregon Medical College was incorporated in Portland. Though it bore the same name as the Portland campus of the Willamette University Medical Department, created thirteen years earlier, the college was an independent entity. The original founders, stockholders and faculty, Rodney Glisan, Philip Harvey, Matthew P. Deady, William H. Watkins, William B. Cardwell, R.G. Rex, William H. Saylor and O.P.S. Plummer, resolved, on April 15, 1878, at a meeting of the faculty, that “the interests of the medical profession of the Northwestern States and Territories adjacent require the maintenance of one institution for medical education and that the city of Portland, by reason of its greater population, the clinical material available in its several hospitals and the greater number of competent resident physicians and surgeons who may be engaged as teachers, is better adapted for the location of such an institution than any point north of San Francisco” (Volume I, p. 23). It was noted in the minutes that the faculty recognized and appreciated the efforts and successes of the faculty at the Willamette University Medical Department, and did not wish to do injury to the existing school in Salem by establishing a medical school in Portland. Therefore it was resolved that a committee of three be invited from Willamette University to confer with a similar committee from the Oregon Medical College to harmonize their efforts. On June 5, 1878, resolutions were made in Portland to accept the recommendations of the President and the faculty of the Willamette University Medical Department, that on the abandonment of the Oregon Medical College, the Willamette University Medical Department would move to Portland. The Oregon Medical College was unincorporated, and stock was canceled at a meeting of the stockholders, June 17, 1878.

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