emancipated race. Several medical schools were established in connection
with these institutions. The rise of the Negro physician as a professional
class may be dated from the establishment of these institutions. The School
of Medicine of Howard University, Washington, D.C., and the Meharry Medical
College at Nashville, Tennessee, proved to be the strongest of these
institutions and today are supplying the Negro medical profession with a
large number of its annual recruits.

Dr. Charles B. Purvis, who was graduated from the Medical College of
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1865, is perhaps the
oldest colored physician in the United States; and by general consent ranks
as dean of the fraternity. He shared with Dr. A. T. Augusta the honor of
being one of the few colored men to become surgeons in the United States
Army. Shortly after graduation he was made assistant surgeon in the
Freedmen's Hospital at Washington, D.C., with which institution he was
connected during the entire period of his active professional life. The
development and present position of the medical school at Howard University
is due to Dr. Purvis more than to any other single individual. For several
years he has been retired upon the Carnegie Foundation. Dr. George W.
Hubbard, a distinguished white physician, dean of the Meharry Medical
College, Nashville, Tennessee, has also been a great pioneer and promoter
of the medical education of the Negro race.

At first, the Negro patient refused to put confidence in the physician of
his own race, notwithstanding the closer intimacy of social contact. It
was not until after he had demonstrated his competency to treat disease
as well as his white competitor that he was able to win recognition among
his own people. The colored physician is everywhere in open competition
with the white practitioner, who never refuses to treat Negro patients,
if allowed to assume the disdainful attitude of racial superiority. If