Medical Education.

"Orthodox" or "regular" medical practitioners included those who had received recognized training in an apprenticeship, medical school, or both. Medical education was available at only a handful of institutions in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania began offering medical degrees in 1765, but eighteenth-century Americans had no other alternatives except apprenticeship or study in Europe, primarily Edinburgh, London, or Paris. Harvard University offered medical lectures as early as the 1780s but did not offer full medical degrees until 1810. Yale Medical School began offering degrees in 1818. American medical education generally did not include laboratory science other than anatomical dissection until midcentury. Students could acquire their degrees after as little as two sixteen-week terms, mostly spent listening to lectures. Clinical training was not a standard part of medical education until the late nineteenth century, but many (if not most) medical graduates supplemented their education...