#  Harvard Medical School 

 



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   ![harvard_shield-medical](/sites/g/files/omnuum10876/files/styles/hwp_1_1__100x100_scale/public/harvaus/files/harvard_shield-medical.png?itok=z6FWraAg) 

 

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many more Australians attended Harvard Dental School than Harvard Medical School. A couple of factors probably contributed to this difference. Medical degrees became available in Australia sooner than dental degrees. In particular, the coveted doctoral degree was available to medical students in Australia or Great Britain whereas doctoral degrees for dental students were available only in the United States before the twentieth century. British medical degrees had greater prestige than American degrees, in part, because of the questionable status of some American medical schools. Secondly, as the medical profession became more institutionalized, American medical degrees were usually not recognised as qualifying an individual to practice in Australia.

In the nineteenth century, I have found records of only three doctors with Harvard Medical degrees who practised in Australia: two were Canadians, Hugh Johnstone Speer and Alexander Rankin Hutchinson, and the other was Constant Broyer of Melbourne who is possibly the first student from Australia to have studied at Harvard. Christopher Gunn, who advertised with a Harvard degree in Brisbane and Georgetown (Queensland), was an impostor.



 



###    Class of 1879  expand\_more  

 

#### Constant Broyer

Constant Broyer (1833–1911) was born at Bath, the son of a manservant and a lodging-house keeper. He arrived in Victoria during the gold rush of the 1850s and obtained an apprenticeship in medical botany. In 1874, he was charged by a coroner’s jury with manslaughter for inappropriate medical treatment, although the Crown declined to prosecute. Later that year, he travelled to the United States and obtained a medical degree from the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinatti. He was present at the great fire at the Shaker settlement of New Lebanon and was credited with saving the life of Elder Daniel Boler. He returned to Melbourne in May 1875, only to have his American degree rejected by the Medical Board of Victoria and to be castigated again in a coroner’s court. He then attended Harvard Medical School (1876–1879) and graduated M.D. His Harvard degree allowed him to be registered as a legally-qualified medical practitioner in Victoris. He practised in Carlton, near the corner of Grattan and Lygon streets. In 1896, he was again accused of manslaughter by a coroner’s jury in a sensational case that involved an alleged illegal operation and the exhumation of a mutilated corpse. Once again, the crown declined to prosecute. He died at home in Carlton.



 

 

 



###    Class of 1900  expand\_more  

 

#### John Lambert Nicholson

John Lambert Nicholson (1860–1908) was born at Castletown, County Cork and arrived in Victoria in 1870 (an unreliable obituary gives his birth year as 1865 in Hong Kong). He was probably educated at Grenville College, Ballarat and the Ballarat School of Mines. In 1886, he was licensed as a dispenser of medicines in Tasmania and was briefly a pharmacist at Formby (now Devonport) and a commission agent at Sheffield. In 1889, he married Louisa Forrest Begent, the daughter of a Tasmanian master mariner. A son, Haughton Forrest Nicholson, was born the following year at Bathurst, New South Wales. J. L. Nicholson left Australia in 1896 for the United States. Haughton remained with his father’s family in Victoria. I have found no record of the fate of Louisa Nicholson.

John Lambert Nicholson received an M.D. from Tulane University, New Orleans (1898) and then an M.D. cum laude from Harvard (1900). He served in the United States army as a surgeon with the Twelfth Infantry (1900–1902). For most of that time, Nicholson was stationed in the Philippine Islands. After leaving the Army, he moved to Nogales, Arizona, where his job, as Inspector General of Hospitals for the Cananea, Yaqui River & Pacific Railroad Co. (Ferrocarril de Cananea, Rio Yaqui y Pacifico), often took him into northern Mexico. On one of these trips, he became ill in Sonora. He was brought by special train to Tucson where he died on July 3, 1908.



 

 

 



###    Class of 1908  expand\_more  

 

#### Edward James Curran



 

 

 



 

 

 

 



###    HMS Graduates by Year  expand\_more  

 

(See Individual Bio Statements at Left)

##### 1879  
Constant Broyer, M.D.

##### 1900  
John Lambert Nicholson, M.D.

##### 1908  
Edward James Curran, M.D.