in
treating the cholera during the epidemic of 1854. About this time his
worth to the community was attested by his appointment as a member of the
Subcommittee of Referees who furnished the Municipal Board of Charity with
medical advice as to the needs of white and colored persons desiring aid.
In 1856 he removed to Chatham, Canada, where he practiced medicine a
number of years. Doctor Delany thereafter like William Wells Brown, an
occasional physician, devoted most of his time to the uplift of his
people, traveling in America, Africa and England. He became such a worker
among his people that he was known as a leader rather than a physician. He
served in the Civil War as a commissioned officer of the United States
Army, ranking as major.

Up to this point the colored physician had appeared as an occasional or
exceptional individual, but hardly as forming a professional class.
Following the wake of the Civil War colleges and universities were planted
in all parts of the South for the sake of preparing leaders for the newly
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 th