The Medical Education of William Brooks Bigler (1863)

William Brooks Bigler was born on 6 October 1833 in Fairview Township, York County, Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, he was one of the first to volunteer for the defense of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at the time of the Confederate invasion and was stationed at Camp Curtin for a few weeks. He read medicine under his brother-in-law, Dr. B.F. Porter [1], entered Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1863, and graduated on 10 March 1865. No copies of his doctoral thesis, entitled “Specific Remedies,” are available. After beginning medical practice in East Prospect, Bigler moved to Wrightsville, returned to East Prospect, and finally settled in Dallastown (all in York County, Pennsylvania). He married 6 months after graduation from medical school and had three children. A writer, local historian, school director, and member of the Pennsylvania legislature (1883-1884) [2], Bigler died on 1 April 1915 of “senile debility” at his home in Dallastown [3].

When Bigler entered Jefferson Medical College in October 1863, the midpoint of the Civil War had passed. The battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga were history. Chattanooga was still to come. At the outset of the war, the almost 200 southern medical students left Jefferson Medical College to return home; hence, Bigler's classmates were all northerners.

Jefferson Medical College was founded in 1824-1825 through the efforts of Dr. George McClellan. The medical faculty consisted of six instructors who taught classes by didactic lecture in the Old Tivoli Theater at 518-520 Prune Street (now Locust Walk) [4]. By the time of Bigler's admission in 1863, only one new faculty position had been added to the medical school, which had relocated to 10th and Sansom streets. College clinics were conducted for clinical instruction. Two class sessions, each 20 weeks long, were held every year.

The …