The University of Pennsylvania had been opened for a quarter of a century and gaining students steadily. So far, the courses had been firmly grounded in the classical subjects, but advances had been made in the field of medicine overseas that compelled John Morgan, who left Philadelphia to pursue a medical education Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England, to return to his home town and urge the Pennsylvania board of trustees to open up their own medical school.

On this day, May 3, in 1765, at the behest of Morgan, who delivered a famous oratory “Upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America”, the first medical school in the United States opened.

Today, the recently renamed Ronald Perelman School of Medicine retains its tradition of serving for other medical  school across the country. Between 1910 and 1940 a strong focus on the fields of neurosurgery, ophthalmology, dermatology, and radiology led the state of American medicine to equal that of Europe, and soon, with the establishment of a department of pharmacology to surpass it. In recent years, the school won a $12.5 million grant for research into fields that, according to their announcement, “have the potential to speed the translation of medical research into improved health ”