Highlights in the History of Black Physicians in Maryland
Coming in a little late for Black History Month with this article, but I just found it in the Archives, and thought I’d share it. Unfortunately, the document was un-dated, but I am guessing it was written sometime in the mid-1980s.
Highlights in the History of Black Physicians in Maryland
The history of Maryland’s Black physicians is long and virtually unexplored. One of the earliest reports of a black physician practicing in Maryland dates from 1750. Creating an accurate and complete chronology will be a challenging and consuming process for social and medical historians. The following chronology, while no means complete, attempts to highlight some of the major events in this history.
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century References to Black Physicians
1750 – Henry Game, a slave in Somerset County, was given his freedom and praise in the October 29th Maryland Gazette, as a successful “Guinea Doctor.”
1818 – Two “men of colour” Marlborough and Gibson, mentioned as practicing medicine without a license on the Eastern Shore.
1832 – Dr. Lewis G. Wells is reputed to have attended the Washington University School of Medicine in Baltimore (now extinct) and to have been Baltimore’s only Black doctor in the ante-bellum period.
1836 – Samuel Ford McGill, the first Liberian colonist to receive a medical education in the United States, attended the Washington University Medical School in Baltimore, until he was dismissed due to pressure from white students. McGill eventually attended Dartmouth where he graduated with a medical degree in 1838. McGill was sent back to Liberia and eventually became its colonial governor.
