Medical training in nineteenth-century America was unregulated and erratic. Future doctors learned their craft from apprenticeships or in medical schools with wildly varying standards.
When U-M came to Ann Arbor in 1837 calls for creating its own medical school were widespread, but it did not open one for another decade. Even so, it rapidly became the University’s largest department and in 1870 became the first medical school in the country to admit female students. The early medical curriculum was centered around lectures and recitations; students seeking more practical training were on their own. Seeking to change this, in 1869 U-M became the first university in the country to open its own hospital. In so doing transformed medical education both for itself but also for the United States.