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Chapter Four Maturity and Sectional Eminence hat the Medical College of Georgia survived the death of Milton Antonyand prospered during the next two decades is a tribute to both Antony and the College. The number of graduates of the school increased from eighteen in 1841 to the high thirties by mid-decade and exceeded fifty for the first time in 1848. The 1850s saw the number settle near fifty medical degrees awarded each year, but in 1856 the graduates numbered over seventy—a figure not reached again until 1950.1 But quantity itself means little. More important than numbers is the fact that the College gained academic stature during this period. It became a leader in southern medical education—a statement attested to by the College's role in the forefront of medical reform, research, and publication . Its students during this period, although overwhelmingly drawn from the South, also represented more of an academic cross section than might have been expected in an inland town such as Augusta and at such a recently established school. The quality of the faculty was understood to be of high caliber; the relativelyyoung men who had banded together in the youthful idealism of the 1830s were in the prime of their maturity by the 1850s. The College's museum and library were outstanding, and its opportunities for actual clinical experience eclipsed those of many of the older schools in the North. As Norwood has written in his Medical Education in the United States, the College at Augusta served not just Georgia, but "the South at large." Considering that the school grew from an enrollment of fifty in 1833 to one three times that large by 1850, that roughly one-third of the students enrolled hailed from states other than Georgia, that the quality of the faculty was high and the clinicalexposure 41 T 42 The Medical College of Georgia more than ample, Norwood deemed it "safe" to conclude that the Medical College of Georgia "compared favorably in many respects with Northern city schools."2 Still, it was only appropriate that the College open the new decade of the 1840s by looking backward and doing honor to the fallen Antony. The faculty voted a monument to be put over his grave on the College's grounds, and the family approved the idea of placing a tablet in Antony's "lecture room" as well as "a plain slab over his remains in the College yard." In 1846, Garvin and Paul Eve were appointed to see to the placement of an iron railing around Antony's grave.3 The prominent and distinguished Alexander Means came to the position of chemistry and pharmacy in 1841. The school felt that the occasion was important enough to be recognized in an especially understated fashion. In the Annual Announcement of the College for that year, it was written that Means's "high reputation . . . supercedes the necessity of adding anythingto the announcement of this important acquisition to the Institution."4 By putting Means on the faculty the College added one of the best known medical men in the South. Now that the faculty was becoming more secure in its own mind as to the capacity of the College as a teaching institution, individual members began to take stronger positions on controversial topics. Dugas, for example , while admonishing the graduates of 1841 to remember the College that "looks upon you as her jewels," also felt comfortable in attacking the physician who resorted to prescriptions at the drop of a hat. Too often such practices led to what Dugas called "heroic medicine," a system that teetered on the brink of "cure or kill." If you are uncertain, he counseled, watch and observe carefully until you have the proper information upon which to act. Rather than jump into a situation you do not understand, "seek and hoard up facts with the zeal and prudence of a miser."5 The followingyear saw Henry Fraser Campbell, later to join the faculty and to head the AMA, graduate from the College; in 1843 and 1844 medical degrees were awarded to nearly 40 young men each year. When it is considered that only 18 received degrees in 1841, and that the total number of students at the College had almost doubled (from 73 to 140), an index of the prosperity of the school can be taken. And yet there were many difficulties, too. Finances, as usual, plagued the institution, and there were fears that the College's pride and...

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