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 University of California Medical Department 1870's

      

  Hugh Huger Toland (1806-1880)           R. BEVERLY COLE (1829-1901)

 

The Department of Surgery at UCSF was established in 1873 by two surgeons, Hugh H. Toland and Richard Beverly Cole who were lured to California by Gold Fever.

 

Hugh Huger Toland was born April 16, 1806, the son of a South Carolina planter and banker. At age sixteen he "read" medicine and worked in the local apothecary shop.   Richard Beverly Cole was born in Manchester, Virginia in 1829. His family moved to Philadelphia soon thereafter
 

By 1852, when Toland crossed the 2,000-mile overland route by wagon train and Cole arrived by steamship, the gold reserves were dwindling, leaving both to resort to surgical careers.  Cole became the Dean of the new Medical Department of the University of California, and Toland, the first chairman of the Department of Surgery. 

 

In 1864 Dr. H. H. Toland established the school which bore the name of the Toland Medical College. The first medical school in California was founded by Dr. E. S. Cooper in 1859. It formed the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific. Dr. Cooper's work was later commemorated by the college bearing his name, which was founded by Dr. L. C. Lane. The land and building which Dr. Toland gave to the Toland College were situated on Stockton Street, San Francisco, distant but a few blocks from the bay. This site was then accessible from the business and residence parts of the city.

 

The original Faculty consisted of Dr. H. H. Toland, Dr. John F. Morse, Dr. Robert Oxland, Dr. Brown, Dr. James Blake, Dr. W. O. Ayres, Dr. L. C. Lane, Dr. Thomas Bennett, and Dr. Henry Gibbons. Dr. Toland was elected the first President, and Dr. Ayres the first Dean. The College began in a modest way, the students enrolled for the first session being only eight in number. The Faculty, recognizing from the first the necessity of clinical instruction, sought and soon obtained the freedom of the City and County Hospital for the students.

 

The first graduates of the College were Freeman L. Weeks, John C. Davie, Jr., Amos S. Dubois, Ferdinand Damour, Charles A. Stivers, William P. Welsh, Milo B. Pond, and John C. Handy.

 

At the end of the second session, Professors Brown, Oxland and Ayres resigned, Dr. Price being elected at this time Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. J. Campbell Shorb taking the Department of Physiology. In 1870 the Faculty was reorganized, the Board of Trustees assigning to Professor Toland the Department of Clinical Surgery, Professor Bennett, the Department of Medicine, and to Professor Shorb, Clinical Medicine C. F. Buckley was added as Professor of Materia Medica, and Dr. Vansant as Professor of Anatomy.

 

It was at this time that the first discussion arose about the possibility of affiliating the Toland Medical College with the State University. 

 

Little headway was made, however, until the following year. On June 8, 1870, the Board of Regents of the University received a communication from Dr. Cole, then Dean, expressing the desire of the Faculty that the College be affiliated with the University. At the same time the Board of Trustees of the College, through its President, the late John B. Felton, and its Secretary, Ira P. Rankin, informed the Regents of its readiness to convey the College property, represented by valuable improved real estate in the City of San Francisco. The Executive Committee of the Regents, through its chairman, W. C. Ralston, recommended that the property offered by the Faculty of the College be accepted, and that the College henceforth be designated as the Medical Department of the University of California. The consummation of this plan was temporarily delayed owing to Dr. Toland's disinclination to convey the property unless the College was known as the Toland Medical Department of the University, while the Board of Regents felt unable to agree to this condition. Dr. Toland, however, was persuaded to yield to the condition on which he had at first insisted.

 

On April 1, 1873, the affiliation was accordingly completed; the Regents accepted a gift of the property; voted that a Medical Department of the University be created; that one of the chairs be designated the Toland Professorship; that the building donated be known as Toland Hall; that the Professors be elected by the Regents and hold office on the same terms as other Professors of the University; and that the Faculty of Medicine have the right to control internal affairs of the College.

 

The following gentlemen constituted the first Faculty of the Medical Department of the University of California : H. H. Toland, Professor of Clinical Surgery; R. Beverly Cole, Professor of Obstetrics and Clinical Diseases of Women; C. T. Deane, Professor of Diseases of Women and Children; M. Bates, Professor of Clinical Medicine; W. T. Bradbury, Professor of Therapeutics; E. Bentley, Professor of Pathology ; A. A. O'Neill, Professor of Anat omy; George Hewston, Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine ; Thomas Price, Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology ; M. W. Fish, Professor of Physiology; C. B. Brigham, Professor of Benjamin R. Swan Orthopedic Surgery.

 

The Medical Faculty have steadily striven to raise the standard of professional education. They were among the first in the United States to institute a three years' curriculum and a graded system of study. A four years' course of study is now prescribed. 

 

See the set of lecture cards for the University of California and for Dr. Toland as well as other doctors in this history. 

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Last update: Monday, July 22, 2024