History

Bennett Medical College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery was chartered by the state of Illinois in 1868 and opened in two rooms for 19 students that fall.  The aim of the school was to “furnish instructions of a practical character, so as to send out well qualified practitioners of medicine rather than scientific doctors.”   As an eclectic school, it asserted “the right of private judgment upon all matters of scientific difference.”  The college was open to both males and females.

 

Among listed graduation requirements in 1875 were these: the candidate had to be 21 years old and have “good moral character.”  The student must have completed two courses of lectures, but four years of “honorable practice” could be substituted for one course.  A course of lectures lasted six months.  The candidate had to pass “satisfactory and honorable” exams in each department.  The 1875 graduation class totaled 32, with an additional ad eundem or courtesy degree.

 

The Flexner report of 1910 was not kind to Bennett Medical College, noting that the entrance requirements were “nominal,” that the facilities were in a “wretched condition,” that the clinical experience was “utterly inadequate” for students and that, above all, it was a for-profit venture essentially owned by the dean.  However the school received a grade of “B” from the A.M.A.  But A.M.A. pressures for medical schools to become associated with universities to improve entrance requirements and enhance academic opportunities led to Bennett's becoming the medical college for Loyola University in 1910.

 

By 1913 the graduation requirements had been extended to four courses of eight months each, during which students attended lectures, recitations and conferences and worked in laboratories.  Between the Cook County Hospital and the Jefferson Park Hospital, students received daily clinical instruction.  In 1915 Loyola assumed complete control of the school, and the Bennett name passed into history.