A History of Columbia University Roy and Diana Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

The Columbia University Roy and Diana Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S), Columbia's medical school, boasts a rich history dating back over 250 years. Affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, VP&S has evolved from its humble beginnings to become a leading institution in medical education, research, and patient care.

Early Foundations: King's College and the First MD in North America

The story begins on November 2, 1767, with the opening of a medical school at King’s College, marking the first such institution in New York and the second in the American colonies. Peter Middleton, a King’s College professor of physiology, delivered the inaugural address, "Historical Inquiries into the Ancient and Present Systems of Medicine," which became the first medical history published in America.

Modeled after the University of Edinburgh Medical School, then a world leader, the medical program at King's College was the first to open in the Province of New York and only the second to be opened in the American Colonies. In 1770, King's College conferred the first Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in the Thirteen Colonies to Robert Tucker, taking a place at the front line of the evolution of medical education and the medical profession in New York. Prior to King's College of Medicine offering of the M.D. degree, other American and Canadian medical schools had been offering the Bachelor of Medicine degree.

However, the American Revolution disrupted King’s College's operations, forcing its closure in 1776. Some medical faculty sided with the loyalists, while others supported the patriot cause and left New York.

Re-establishment and the College of Physicians and Surgeons

In 1784, King’s College reopened as Columbia College. The medical school resumed in 1791 with a new faculty. By 1800, Columbia was one of only four medical schools in the nation. In his 1769 commencement address, Dr. Bard called for the founding of a hospital to serve the community and to provide clinical instruction for medical students. New York Hospital opened in 1791, the same year Columbia’s medical school reopened. The Almshouse, the city’s home for the poor and forerunner of Bellevue Hospital, offered another opportunity for practical instruction.

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In 1806, the city’s physicians organized a new professional organization, the Medical Society of the County of New York, and elected Nicholas Romayne, MD, a Columbia professor, as its first president. Romayne led the society’s effort to establish a rival medical school.

In 1807, the New York State Board of Regents founded the College of Physicians and Surgeons under a separate charter. The Columbia College Medical School struggled, and in 1814, it merged with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, creating a larger, stronger faculty. The merger would better position the institution against competition from new medical schools in New York and elsewhere in the second quarter of the 19th century. Despite this merger, the College of Physicians and Surgeons retained its independence from Columbia.

Affiliation and Integration with Columbia University

In 1860, the College of Physicians and Surgeons became the Medical Department of Columbia College. The diplomas of the graduates were signed by both the president of Columbia College and the president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1860, VP&S obtained its independence from the Regents and formed a nominal relationship with Columbia. It was not until 1891 that the College of Physicians and Surgeons would be fully integrated and incorporated into Columbia.

Growth and Expansion in the 19th Century

The school’s student body grew as the city around it continued to expand. New York City’s population more than doubled from 1800 to 1820 and more than quadrupled from 1820 to 1850, surpassing half a million inhabitants. As the city grew, so too did the number of medical facilities, including The Lying-in Hospital, the New York Dispensary, and the Northern Dispensary.

In the mid-19th century, VP&S enriched the curriculum with increased attention to and resources for such basic sciences as pathology, physiology, dissection, and microscopic anatomy. Extending the academic calendar went hand in hand with enriching the curriculum. When VP&S opened in 1807, the school term was four months. By 1844, the school added supplemental lectures before and after the four-month term. In 1847, extension of the core term to four-and-a-half months, combined with the supplemental courses, provided a six-and-a-half month academic year.

In 1841, Willard Parker, professor of surgery, organized the College Clinics, an outpatient facility where medical students observed patients treated by the faculty, which included new hires called “clinical professors.” By 1849, Bellevue Hospital permitted P&S medical students on its wards to learn from its 4,000 annual cases. During the Civil War, VP&S, like other northern medical schools, lost students who returned to the South and/or served in uniform. By 1876, VP&S had grown to more than 500 students.

The late 1800s ushered in a significant period of growth for P&S. In 1884, New York philanthropist William Henry Vanderbilt donated land between 59th and 60th Streets and 9th and 10th Avenues, plus $300,000 toward the construction of a new building. With ample space for lecture halls seating more than 400 and state-of-the-art laboratories for chemistry, pathology, physiology, histology, bacteriology, and dissection, VP&S was well-equipped for teaching and scientific inquiry. Vanderbilt family members supplemented the initial gift with funds for two more buildings on the site: one for the Sloane Maternity Hospital, the other for the Vanderbilt Clinic (formerly the College Clinics).

At 59th Street, the medical school’s significantly enriched classroom, laboratory, and clinical offerings warranted extension of the course of study from two to three years, in 1888. Along with other prominent medical schools at this time, Columbia mandated a four-year curriculum in 1894. In 1904, Dean Samuel W. Lambert, MD (P&S, 1885), stepped up the requirements for clinical training to include daily service in hospital wards. However, P&S had more medical students than spots on wards. Lambert recognized the necessity of a close and permanent affiliation with a general hospital.

The Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center

In 1911, Columbia University entered into a "Formal Agreement of Alliance" with Presbyterian Hospital, a hospital founded in 1868 by James Lenox a New York philanthropist. In 1911, Edward S. Harkness contributed $1 million to facilitate a union between Columbia University and Presbyterian Hospital. Ten years later, Harkness and his mother donated 22 acres in Washington Heights for construction of a medical center comprised of P&S, Presbyterian Hospital, and several other institutions dedicated to health care and biomedical science.

In 1928, the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center opened its doors in a building largely funded by Harkness. Set on land in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center was the first place in the world to provide facilities for patient care, medical education, and research all under one roof. It was the first academic medical center and pioneered the practice of combining medical training with patient care.

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Modern Era and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Over the next 90 years, this alliance would produce successive generations of prominent medical leaders, including more than 20 Nobel Laureates, and innovations in training, science, and clinical practice that have resulted in life-saving new treatments and cures for disease.

In 1997, the Presbyterian Hospital merged with New York Hospital (partner of Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University) to form the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. While the two medical schools remain independent of one another, there has been significant cross-fertilization between the two campuses, leading to increasing numbers of shared research experiences and training programs.

At the 2017 Crown Awards, President Lee Bollinger announced that the school would officially be renamed as the Columbia University Roy and Diana Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. This decision was made in response to a gift of $250 million from P. Roy and Diana Vagelos. $150 million of the gift was dedicated to endow a fund to help Columbia eliminate student loans for medical students who qualify for financial aid. The remaining $100 million will be divided equally to support precision medicine programs and basic science research as well as an endowed professorship in the Department of Medicine in honor of the Vagelos family's longtime doctor and friend, Thomas P.

Beginning in the fall of 2009, the medical school implemented a new curriculum that differed markedly from more traditional structures. Columbia is a top 20 medical school with a competitive ~1.9% acceptance rate. The program admitted just 140 students from over 7,000 applicants in the most recent cycle.

Campus and Facilities

Situated on land overlooking the Hudson River and separated from Columbia's undergraduate campus in Morningside Heights by approximately fifty blocks and the neighborhood of Harlem, the Columbia University Medical Center has its own unique standing and identity. Affiliated hospitals include Harlem Hospital, Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut, and Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, New York.

In August 2016 the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center, new 100,000-square-foot, 14-story glass medical education tower opened at 104 Haven Avenue, between 171st and 172nd Streets, near the northern tip of the campus. Housing options on Columbia's Medical Campus include Bard Hall and the Bard-Haven Towers, a complex of three, 31-story apartment buildings overlooking the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge.

VP&S has developed extensive new facilities over the past few years, including the Hammer Health Sciences Center - a 20-story structure housing an excellent medical library, amphitheatre and teaching facilities. Overlooking the Hudson River and George Washington Bridge, the new Psychiatric Institute provides a state-of-the art environment for patient care, education, and research. The approximately 320,000 square feet offer space for 60 inpatient beds, 23 specialized outpatient research clinics, educational facilities, and research laboratories.

Student Life and Traditions

There are student clubs covering a range of professional and personal interests, all of which fall under the umbrella of the P&S Club. One unusual element is the Bard Hall Players, a theatrical group entirely run by the students of the medical campus, and one of the largest and most active medical school theater groups in the country. They perform a musical and two plays each year. Founded over a century ago by John Mott, the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, the P&S Club serves to support and provide activities and organizations for the enrichment of the lives of the College of Physicians and Surgeons students. The P&S Club is well known for its humanitarian aims; most notably the 1917 purchase of a steam launch delivered to Sir William Grenfell, a physician living in Labrador.

Notable Alumni and Faculty

Noted alumni of VP&S include Benjamin Spock, better known as “Dr. Spock”; Robin Cook, author of “Coma” and other medical thrillers; Charles Drew, a pioneer in blood banking; Allen Oldfather Whipple, who developed the Whipple procedure; retired New York Knicks player Ernie Vandeweghe Jr.; Virginia Apgar, who created the Apgar Score; astronaut Story Musgrave; novelist Walker Percy; industrialist Armand Hammer; Olympic swimming medalist Jenny Thompson; and Burrill Crohn, for whom Crohn’s disease is named. Other alumni include astronaut Story Musgrave, Olympic champion Jenny Thompson (twelve medals, including eight gold medals), former Afghan prime minister Abdul Zahir, mayor of the City of Rancho Cucamonga, California (2006-) Don Kurth, and philanthropists Theodore K. Lawless and Jean Shafiroff. George Fletcher Chandler served with the US Army Medical Corps and practiced as a physician and surgeon throughout New York in addition to organizing and serving as the first Superintendent of the New York State Police. Charles W. Serb politician and accused war criminal Radovan Karadžić studied at Columbia for a year.

Prominent faculty members include Nobel Prize laureates Richard Axel, Eric Kandel, and Joachim Frank; author Oliver Sacks; 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction Siddhartha Mukherjee; and Rudolph Leibel whose co-discovery of the hormone leptin, and cloning of the leptin and leptin receptor genes, has had a major role in the area of understanding human obesity. Jean C. Emond, Thomas S. Zimmer Professor of Surgery, participated in the first living-donor liver transplantation in children in North America and established the liver transplant program at Columbia, which has become one of the largest in the United States. Craig R. Smith, Chairman of Surgery, performed a quadruple bypass surgery on former President Bill Clinton in 2004.

Valentine Mott (1806 graduate) is the first surgeon in the world to operate on the innominate artery, a vessel near the heart, to treat an aneurysm. Surgeon Allen O. Dickinson Richards (1923 graduate), left, and André Cournand develop a technique to catheterize the heart, forever changing cardiopulmonary research and patient care. E. Virginia Apgar (1933 graduate) publishes details of her score to assess newborn health. Richard Axel, MD, Saul J. Silverstein, PhD, and graduate student Michael H. Wigler discover a technique, called cotransformation, which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins. These contributions include several made by alumni who were also faculty members.

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