History of medical schools in the UK

History of medical schools in the UK

The first medical school in the United Kingdom was established at the University of Edinburgh in 1726. Medical education prior to this was based on apprenticeships and learning from observation. Professors of medicine did very little if any training of students. Few students graduated as physicians during this earlier period.

The earliest example of this earlier style of medical training in Britain was in 1123 at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, now part of Queen Mary, University of London. The first Chair of Medicine at a British university was established at the University of Aberdeen in 1497, although this was only filled intermittently and there were calls “for the establishment of a medical school” in 1787.

Medical teaching has taken place erratically at the University of Oxford since the early 16th century, and its first Regius Professor of Physic was appointed in 1546. Teaching was reformed in 1833 (and again in 1856), but the current medical school was not founded until 1936.

The University of St Andrews established a Chair of Medicine in 1772, but did not have a medical school (at Dundee) until 1897. The Linacre Readership in Medicine at the University of Cambridge was founded in 1524, and the Regius Professor of Physic was established in 1540.

Teaching was reformed in 1829, but the current medical school was established in 1976. Teaching of apprentices was first recorded in 1561 at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, and formalised between 1693 and 1709.

Surgery was seen as a separate profession, initially learned by barber-surgeons through apprenticeship and regulated by its guild, and later by examination by the Royal Colleges of Surgery in England, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Ireland.

The University of Edinburgh Medical School was founded in 1726 and was the first formally established medical school in the UK.

This was followed by Glasgow in 1744, although the school was without a teaching hospital until 1794. The oldest medical school in England is St George’s, University of London, which began formal teaching in 1751.

In 1768 teaching at St Thomas’s and Guy’s hospitals in London was formalised with the foundation of the United Hospitals Medical School, which lasted until the foundation of a separate medical school at Guy’s in 1825 (now both part of King’s College London).

The London Hospital Medical College (LHMC) was founded in 1785 and is now part of Queen Mary, University of London’s School of Medicine.

In the first half of the 19th century, the newly founded university colleges in London opened teaching hospitals in 1834 (University College Hospital) and 1839 (King’s College Hospital). The Middlesex Hospital Medical School (now part of UCL) was also founded in this period, in 1835.

The London School of Medicine for Women was founded in 1874, the first medical school in Britain to teach women (now part of UCL).

Outside of London and the universities, medical teaching began in Manchester in 1752, and lectures in Birmingham in 1767.

Eight ‘provincial’ medical schools were founded between 1824 and 1835: Belfast (1835), Birmingham (1825), Bristol (1833), Leeds (1831), Liverpool (1834), Manchester (1824), Newcastle (1834) and Sheffield (1828).

Durham University introduced teaching by a Reader in Medicine from its opening in 1833, but had no medical school until the affiliation of the College of Medicine in Newcastle in 1854. In the later 19th century a medical school was established at Cardiff in 1893.

The Medical Act 1858 was a key development in the professionalising of medical practice and training, introducing the General Medical Council and the Medical Register.

Why don’t we train enough doctors?

1. Eight ‘provincial’ medical schools founded between 1821 and 1834: Belfast (1835), Birmingham (1825), Bristol (1833), Leeds (1831), Liverpool (1834), Manchester (1824), Newcastle (1834) and Sheffield (1828).
2. There have been long periods of lack of medical school development in the UK, due to poor planning from the Department of Health and Social Care, and the GMC. This partly explains our inability to train enough doctors for the needs of the country. For example,
   • There were almost no new medical schools for 135 years from 1835 (Belfast) to 1970 (Nottingham); except for Oxford which started in 1946, and Dundee in 1967 (and both were not really new).
   • Four medical schools were founded in the 1970s: Cambridge (1976), Leicester (1975), Nottingham (1970) and Southampton (1971).
   • There were no new medical schools in the 1980s and 1990s (some mergers in 1990s).

Both the ‘official lists’ of UK medical schools – General Medical Council (GMC) and the Medical School Council – are wrong, the latter stating there are 44 medical schools in the UK. There are currently 47 (in 2024).

When does a medical school start?

This is a simple question but quite hard to answer. It also involves how you define the start of a medical school, and what is a medical school. Therefore when one ‘starts’ could be:

1. When the first student started
2. When the medical school was registered by the GMC, and/or the course first approved by the GMC. Many predated the GMC
3. When the medical school was opened (say by a dignitary)
4. When the first complete intake started. If known, this is the year given above.
5. When the first complete intake qualified
6. When it split off a ‘founding medical school’
7. When it merged with another medical school.

This is why the years given above need to be interpreted with caution.

Other resource

Alphabetical list of medical schools in the UK (2024-2025)