In its brief 16-year history, this early program attracted some illustrious teaching physicians who went on to play roles on the national scene, participating in the founding of the American Medical Association and helping set the first national standards for medical education. Locally, they helped found and lead the Rhode Island Medical Society and worked with their colleagues to make Rhode Island Hospital a reality, a goal they achieved after decades of persistent advocacy. The most renowned of them, Dr. Usher Parsons, became Rhode Island Hospital’s first president. Public calls for reviving medical education at Brown began immediately after the school was closed in 1827, and they recurred over 136 years. The appeals came from ordinary Rhode Islanders, from physicians, from hospitals, and from political leaders, all of whom recognized the benefits a medical school would bring to the state – in the caliber and scope of health care, in the number and expertise of physicians, in the growth of hospital programs and technologies, and in the local economy.
