People
Name: McDowell, Joseph Nash
Profession: Medicine
Category: Education
Born/Started: 1805
Died/Ended: 1868
Description: Joseph Nash McDowell was the founder of first medical school in the West. Kemper College, earliest of the predecessors to Washington University School of Medicine, became the Medical Department of the University of Missouri in 1846 and, in 1857, the independent Missouri Medical College. However, it was better known in those years by the popular name, "McDowell´s Medical College."
In 1842, McDowell riled the people of St. Louis with his anti-Jesuit lectures. His opposition to Catholics was based on the opening up of the Medical College of St. Louis University and the removal of McDowell as head physician at City Hospital by a Catholic mayor. Considered eccentric, he started wearing a breastplate and arming himself. He purchased muskets and cannons for his college and mounted two cannons at Christian Brothers College that was built across the road from his medical college.
During the Civil War, the faculty of McDowell’s Medical College served the Confederacy, but eventually federal authorities turned the building into a prison for Confederate officers.
Reference
St. Louis Irish: an Unmatched Celtic Community
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