Vanderbilt’s History of Medicine Collections is observing the university’s Sesquicentennial with the continuing exhibit, United in Purpose: 150 Years of Medicine and Nursing at Vanderbilt. The exhibit, located on the first floor of the Annette and Irwin Eskind Family Biomedical Library and Learning Center, explores the history of health care education, research, and patient care at Vanderbilt through photographs, objects, and publications from the History of Medicine Collections.
Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine opened in fall 1874 as a shared program with the University of Nashville’s existing medical department and was located in downtown Nashville. Those 1875 graduates who chose to receive Vanderbilt’s diploma had the distinction of joining the university’s first graduating class. The valedictorian of that class, Dr. William Campbell, gave a speech praising medicine as a noble profession grounded in scientific advancement. He described his fellow classmates—graduates of a grand institution predicted to survive the years—as animated by a sense of duty such that, “though separated in person, we are united in purpose.” Over the past 150 years, that purpose has adapted to and evolved with the times to include nursing, research, and allied health.
The exhibit will remain open until spring 2025 and is also available virtually at exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu/unitedinpurpose-homc. For more information about the exhibit or the History of Medicine Collections, please email christopher.ryland@vanderbilt.edu.