Medical Education in the United States and Canada

In 1870 there were 474 medical schools in the United States and Canada, three to four times as many as there are today. Most were proprietary--groups of doctors banding together more to enrich themselves than to educate future physicians. Utah was no exception. In 1880 a forty-three-year-old physician, Dr. Frederick Kohler, established the state's first medical school in Morgan, Utah, forty-two miles northeast of Salt Lake City. In 1882 the "college" honored its only graduating class of six students and then closed its doors. In 1904 the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association (AMA) suggested standards of six years for medical education beyond high school and devised a classification system for rating the existing schools. Only 82 of the 160 schools then in existence were found to be acceptable; many others had already closed down. In 1908 the Carnegie Foundation commissioned Dr. Abraham Flexner to assess U.S. medical schools. His report, issued in 1910, revolutionized North American medical education.