The Medical College

If there be no legal objection the proposition of the Tennessee Medical college should receive the favorable attention of the city council.

As we understand it, as a remuneration for the sale at a nominal price of a piece of property belonging to the city, the college proposes to erect a college building and to have connected therewith a free dispensary and free emergency hospital.

If the proposition be as we understand it, the city could well afford to buy a valuable lot and donate it to the college.  No one who understands the situation will deny that one of the great wants of the city is a hospital fitted in accordance with modern ideas and a dispensary where the poor may secure prescriptions and medicine free of charge.

Aside from the motives of pure humanity, the college should receive the support of the city.  No like institution in the south ever started off with such bright prospects.  Students are here from several states and as the great ability of its professors and the high ideal of its promoters becomes known the number will increase largely.  Those students will necessarily spend a good deal of money and the coffers of Knoxville’s business men will be that much enriched.

We trust, that it will not be necessary to appeal to sordid motives, however, but that pure philanthropy and a high regard for the best interests of our growing city will prevail.

The college should be encouraged and its proposition accepted.

Source:  Knoxville Daily Journal and Tribune, December 8, 1889, page 6