man now showed his own eagerness for further education by renewing study against the advice of his family and without their support. We shall find that Marcus Whitman not only had high ideals, but that his achievement as a student was of high order. There are many collateral reasons to believe that he entered upon his medical study with eagerness and a firm purpose to succeed.
After a period of study and saving of money came the question of choice of a school. In 1825 there were eight medical schools in New England and three in New York state. In all the rest of the United States there were but four more. In that same year two more were started.
Into the choice of a school entered four primary considerations,—proximity, expense, efficiency, and reputation. He chose a school, probably on the advice of his preceptor, that favorably fulfilled for him all four of these considerations. It was a school of which, in all probability, few who read this article have ever heard, but it was one of the most famous medical schools in the United States in the period from 1820 to 1840.
All of the medical schools organized before 1807 were closely associated with colleges of arts and sciences, or of that type now called "university” medical schools, but in 1806 there was the culmination of a long controversy in the faculty of the medical department of Columbia College and a large part of that faculty seceded and wished to start a rival school. The Medical Society of the Southern District of New York applied for a charter which was granted. It constituted all of the hundred and one members of the society as the board of trustees, but it gave them no right to grant degrees. The extent of the authority of the trustees was to recommend candidates for the degree, but the degrees were granted by the state department of education which was then and is still known by a name not understood by many, namely, as the University of the State of New York, an organization that does no teaching, but administers and controls all the educational activities of that state whether public or private.
In 1807 the new teaching medical organization began operation. It had the somewhat cumbersome name of the College of
