History of Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine traces its history back to 1858 when Elias Samuel Cooper, a physician in San Francisco, California, founded the first medical school in the Western United States. That school went through many changes, including a change of name to Cooper Medical College, a takeover by Stanford University in 1908, and a move from San Francisco to the Stanford campus near Palo Alto, California in 1959.

In 1858 Elias Samuel Cooper collaborated with the University of the Pacific (also known as California Wesleyan College), a Methodist college located in Santa Clara, to establish a Medical Department in San Francisco. The Medical Department of the University of the Pacific opened in 1859 at Mission and Third Streets in San Francisco. It was the first medical school in the Western United States. The Department's seventeen trustees included ten clergy and three physicians.

The following year Cooper founded the San Francisco Medical Press, creating a venue for communication among medical practitioners in addition to the already-existing Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal. Henry Gibbons, Sr. and Levi Cooper Lane (Cooper's nephew) joined the faculty of the Medical Department in 1861.

However, in 1862 Cooper died, and without his leadership the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific ceased operation.

Meanwhile, in 1864 Hugh H. Toland opened the Toland Medical College at Stockton and Chestnut Streets in San Francisco. Lane, Gibbons and J.F. Morse moved from the moribund Medical Department of the University of the Pacific to Toland Medical College. Instruction followed Parisian principles of medical education. In 1873 Toland Medical College became the Medical Department of the University of California, later the University of California, San Francisco.

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