One of the most interesting items in our collection is the our original lecture tickets. What is a lecture ticket? In the 1800’s, many medical schools operated on a lecture ticket system. Instead of paying full tuition, students would pay fees to purchase tickets for each professor, and the ticket would be their admission to their lectures. This system allowed anyone who could pay the fees to attend lectures. In our 1868-1869 catalog, it states, “For the benefit of medical students and others, it has been decided by the Faculty to admit such as are not looking forward to Pharmacy as their calling, to attend the lectures in either of the departments they may wish. Such persons will be ineligible to the degree but will in other respects have the same advantages as regular students of Pharmacy."
Pictured: Matriculation Ticket, 1868-9, to admit Thomas Doliber
Pictured: Lectures on Theory and Practice of Pharmacy Ticket, 1868-9, to admit Thomas Doliber
Pictured: Lectures on Materia Medica, 1868-1869, to admit Thomas Doliber
The particular lecture tickets pictured here belonged to Thomas Doliber, PhG 1869. He was one of the 10 members of the first graduating class and his thesis was titled “Assays of Twelve Specimens of Powdered Cinchona Bark.” Doliber was a member of the MCP Board of Trustees for many years, and was the President of Mellin’s Food Company (Doliber-Goodale Co.).
In 1868-1869, the fees were $10 for each professor’s ticket, $2 matriculation fee (paid once), and a $5 diploma fee. At the time, all lecture tickets needed to be obtained from Professor George F.H. Markoe. Students employed by members of the College were exempt from the matriculation fee, but they had to obtain the matriculation ticket from the Secretary of the College. Additionally, all graduates and students who paid for two full courses of instruction in the College were admitted to the lectures gratuitously.
During our time using lecture tickets, the appearance of them changed over the years. An example of a notable design change is that our early lecture tickets had the original College seal on them, but by the 1870's, the seal was gone, as seen in Samuel A.D. Sheppard's chemistry lecture ticket from 1873.
Pictured: Lectures on Chemistry, Session of 1873, to admit Samuel A.D. Sheppard
Another change is the notation of the "junior" and "senior" classes on the ticket after the creation of two separate classes in 1872-1873. As the Sheppard ticket is from 1873, we didn't update our tickets to reflect the change until sometime after 1873.
Pictured: Blank ticket for Junior Course on Analytical Chemistry (top) | Blank ticket for Senior Lectures and Recitations on Chemistry (bottom)
While the lecture ticket system made medical education more accessible, the system also led to poorly trained practitioners. While lecture tickets were used at some institutions in the United States until the early 20th century, they started to be phased out due to reforms that began in the 1870's. At the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, the lecture ticket system was used in some form until the 1890's.
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