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Newcastle University School of Medicine

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Newcastle University School of Medicine

Newcastle University School of Medicine is the medical school at Newcastle University in England. It was established in 1834 in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and served as the College of Medicine in connection with Durham University from 1851 to 1870 and then, as a full college of the university, Durham University College of Medicine from 1870 to 1937 when it joined Armstrong College, to form King's College, Durham. In 1963 King's College became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The university now uses the name "Newcastle University".

In 1832 a group of local medics – physicians George Fife (teaching materia medica and therapeutics) and Samuel Knott (teaching theory and practice of medicine), and surgeons John Fife (teaching surgery), Alexander Fraser (teaching anatomy and physiology) and Henry Glassford Potter (teaching chemistry) – started offering medical lectures in Bell's Court to supplement the apprenticeship system (a fourth surgeon, Duncan McAllum, is mentioned by some sources among the founders, but was not included in the prospectus). The first session started on 1 October 1832 with eight or nine students, including John Snow, then apprenticed to a local surgeon-apothecary, the opening lecture being delivered by John Fife. In 1834 the lectures and practical demonstrations moved to the Hall of the Company of Barber Surgeons to accommodate the growing number of students, and the School of Medicine and Surgery was formally established on 1 October 1834.

On 25 June 1851, following a dispute among the teaching staff, the school was formally dissolved and the lecturers split into two rival institutions. The majority formed the Newcastle College of Medicine, and the others established themselves as the Newcastle upon Tyne College of Medicine and Practical Science with competing lecture courses. In July 1851 the majority college was recognised by the Society of Apothecaries and in October by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and in January 1852 was approved by the University of London to submit its students for London medical degree examinations. Later in 1852, the majority college was formally linked to the University of Durham, becoming the Newcastle-upon-Tyne College of Medicine in connection with the University of Durham.

The college awarded its first 'Licence in Medicine' (LicMed) under the auspices of the University of Durham in 1856, with external examiners from Oxford and London, becoming the first medical examining body on the United Kingdom to institute practical examinations alongside written and viva voce examinations. The two colleges amalgamated in 1857, with the first session of the unified college opening on 3 October that year.

In 1861 the degree of Master of Surgery was introduced, allowing for the double qualification of Licence of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, along with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Doctor of Medicine, both of which required residence in Durham. In 1870 the college was brought into closer connection with the university, becoming the Durham University College of Medicine with the Reader in Medicine becoming the Professor of Medicine, the college gaining a representative on the university's senate, and residence at the college henceforth counting as residence in the university towards degrees in medicine and surgery, removing the need for students to spend a period of residence in Durham before they could receive the higher degrees.

A separate College of Physical Science was founded in Newcastle in 1871. The medical and physical colleges merged to form King's College, Durham under the Durham University Act 1937, and this became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1963.

From 2001, it operated in partnership with Durham University's recreated medical school based at Queen's Campus on Teesside, until 2018 when Durham completed the transfer of its medical school to Newcastle.

The medical school follows a modern, integrated, systems-based curriculum, and was the first medical school in the country to operate an integrated medical curriculum.

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