Our City
Located in the historic City of Philadelphia, where American medicine has its roots, Temple’s School of Medicine has recently celebrated its centennial anniversary. Throughout its history, Temple University School of Medicine has been known for its faculty’s uncommon interest in and concern for students, as well as its teaching hospitals and affiliates and its commitment to the highest quality of care for all people.

Our Beginning
The Rev. Russell H. Conwell, the founder of Temple University, established a medical school for the “common man.”
In order to accommodate the students’ day jobs, classes were held on nights and weekends, and total tuition and fees for the five-year program was a modest $635. Medical practitioners taught classes at College Hall, next to Pastor Conwell’s Baptist Temple on what we now call Main Campus. Samaritan Hospital, two miles up Broad Street, was the site of clinical instruction. Anatomical dissections were performed in a hayloft on cadavers delivered in pickle barrels.

The school opened on September 16, 1901, with 31 students, and was lit by gaslight. The faculty consisted of 27 lecturers, demonstrators, and instructors. According to admissions materials, “matriculates of academic or scientific colleges, or graduates of reputable high schools of the first grade, or a normal school established by State authority, of both sexes, are admitted to the first year class without examination.”

There were 15 required textbooks; the five-year curriculum required 700 hours of work each year; and the first entering class had 31 students. W. Wallace Fritz, MD, DDS, was the first dean. He also served as professor of anatomy and clinical surgery.

Our Reputation
From such modest beginnings, Temple University School of Medicine has emerged as a school of national reputation. One in every five people who applies to medical school in the United States applies to Temple. Some 708 graduates are on faculty at medical schools across the nation, 31 are department chairs, 2 are deans. Temple grads don’t stray far from their alma mater – many physicians in the Philadelphia region graduated from Temple – but others head biotechnology firms across the land, and other serve as doctors in countries as far away as Hong Kong, Isreal, and the Ivory Coast.