University of Birmingham Medical School

The roots of the Birmingham Medical School were in the medical education seminars of Mr John Tomlinson the first surgeon to the Birmingham Workhouse Infirmary and later to the General Hospital.
 These classes were the first held in the winter of 1767-68. The first clinical teaching was undertaken by medical and surgical apprentices at the General Hospital, opened in 1779.
Birmingham Medical School was formally founded in 1825 by William Sands Cox, who began by teaching medical students in his father's house in Birmingham.
 A new building was used from 1829 (on the site of what is now Snow Hill Station).
 Students at this time took the licentiate/membership examinations of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

In 1836, Earl Howe and a number of prominent local men submitted a memorandum to King William IV and on June 22nd, a reply communicated His Majesty’s acquiescence to become a Patron of the School to be styled the Royal School of Medicine and Surgery in Birmingham.
 There was serious need for a new teaching hospital and in 1839 Sands Cox launched an appeal. 
Sufficient money was raised within a year and the hospital built in 1840-41 was opened in 1841 by Sands Cox.


Queen Victoria who had granted her patronage to the Clinical Hospital in Birmingham also allowed the new teaching hospital to be styled "The Queen’s Hospital." In 1843, the medical school became Queen's College, and students became eligible to be considered for medical degrees awarded by the University of London.

A rival medical school, Syndenham College opened in Birmingham in 1851.
 This merged with Queen's College in 1868 to form a new combined institution, and later merged with another institution, Mason Science College.
 In 1897, the Mason University College Act was passed which made Mason Science College (incorporating Queen's College) into a university college, and this, in turn, became Birmingham University in 1900, and MB ChB degrees were able to be awarded by the new university.

Janet Parker, the last person to die of smallpox in the world in 1978, contracted the disease while working as medical photographer in the anatomy department.