1848

Governor Nelson Dewey includes a medical school in the newly created University of Wisconsin.

1875

Zoologist Edward Birge, the "father of medical education" at Wisconsin, sets up a laboratory in the basement of University Hall (later Bascom Hall) to support a course he offers for first-year biology students. In the 1880s, Birge builds a substantial curriculum to serve future students of medicine. Later he advises university leaders to recruit faculty to expand the "pre-medicine curriculum" that is based in the College of Letters and Science. 

Premedical Special Science Course begins.

1904

With the hiring of Charles Bardeen, the university acknowledges the need to incorporate more human-related studies of anatomy and physiology in the pre-medical biology program. Bardeen teaches anatomy, creates an anatomy department and conducts wide-ranging correspondences with medical educators and state boards of examiners across the country. 

1907

The two-year College of Medicine, consisting of the departments of anatomy, physiology, physiological chemistry and bacteriology and hygiene, is created; Bardeen is appointed dean. Classes are held in the in the attic of historic Science Hall and the old Chemical Engineering building.

1910

In response to the typhoid epidemic and to encourage the development of clinical services in Madison, Bardeen creates the Department of Clinical Medicine (Student Health Service). Other small hospitals on campus follow.

1919

The Mary Cornelia Bradley Hospital — the University of Wisconsin's original hospital for children — admits its first patients.

1924

Wisconsin General Hospital opens its doors, making it possible to institute the four-year medical school a year later.

1926

The school expands its curriculum to a four-year program. The UW Medical School becomes the nation's first to establish statewide teaching sites. The "Wisconsin Preceptorial Plan," which places students under the tutelage of physicians in Madison and across the state, begins "something new in medical education."

1927

Nineteen men and six women become the first graduates of the University of Wisconsin Medical School's four-year program.

1928

Service Memorial Institute, abutting Wisconsin General Hospital, opens, serving as the School’s academic home. Scientific and clinical staff now work together collaboratively.