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Although the Jesuit College of higher education had existed in Valletta since the last decade of the 16th century, for a number of years there was as yet no Maltese university or medical school wherein Maltese students could be prepared locally for a medicalThe origins of Malta’s Medical School – December 19, 1676
Although the Jesuit College of higher education had existed in Valletta since the last decade of the 16th century, for a number of years there was as yet no Maltese university or medical school wherein Maltese students could be prepared locally for a medical career. Future doctors had, therefore, to proceed abroad to obtain medical qualifications even though the Order of St John’s Sacra Infermeria – as its hospital was officially called – provided much more than acceptable medical services, as attested by various foreign visitors, including Henry Teonge in 1675 and Edward Brown in 1676. They respectively reported that the infirmary’s beds were “extremely neat, and kept clean and sweet” and that the institution was the “very glory of Malta”. This void was partly amended on December 19, 1676, when Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner founded and endowed the School of Anatomy and Surgery in the Order’s Valletta Infirmary after having, exactly two months previously, appointed Rev. Dr Joseph Zammit as lettore in Anatomy and Surgery. An entry in the Order’s Archives, Volume 262, folio 62r, of the minutes of the meetings of the Council of State, briefly records this important event by... Read more