The Bernard Becker Medical Library

January 13, 2000

Dear Mr. Gholson:

In response to your letter of January 9, I am happy to inform you that I can confirm that Dr. James T. Gholson was a member of the Class of 1879, Missouri Medical College. This college began in 1840 and continued, with an interruption due to the Civil War, until 1899, when it merged with St. Louis Medical College-Washington University Medical Department. The unfortunate fact is that the college apparently created only the most cursory records about its students, namely, a line in a ledger for each year matriculated. I enclose a photocopy of the pages for Dr. Gholson's second and graduating year, 1878-79, where you will find him at no. 165, near the bottom of the page. You can see that he was then 25 years old, hailed from Broughton, Hamilton County, Illinois and that his preceptor (sponsoring physician) was Dr. J. G. Wheeler. There is no information about family or any other personal data, nor is there any data collected later about him as an alumnus.

About Dr. Edward Dawes I regret to have found nothing. Along with our school records I consulted the earliest (1886 onward) national directories of physicians, in which most of the entries indicate the institutions where the practitioners studied. A failure to find a particular name at this time is not unusual: Dr. Dawes might have died by 1886 or--equally likely--he could have practiced without formal training and ( in a time before state licensing) without any professional listing.

I hope that this information helps.

Sincerely,

Paul G. Anderson

Historian

Washington University School of Medicine at Washington University Medical Center

Campus Box 8132, 660 S. Euclid Ave. St. Louis Mo 63110-1093

(314) 362-7080 FAX: (314) 362-0190