George Buchanan

Born in Baltimore on September 19, 1763, George Buchanan studied medicine in the years just after the American Revolution and built his career as a physician in Maryland and Pennsylvania. He is remembered as an important figure in the early medical life of Baltimore, where he practiced, taught, and took part in building institutions for medical training and care.

Buchanan served on the faculty of the University of Maryland’s medical department and is associated with some of the school’s earliest years. He also helped found the Baltimore General Dispensary, reflecting a practical commitment to caring for patients as well as teaching students. Alongside his medical work, he wrote and published on professional subjects, which helped spread medical knowledge at a time when American medicine was still organizing itself.

He died in Philadelphia on July 9, 1808. Though not widely known outside medical history, Buchanan stands out as one of the doctors who helped turn Baltimore into an important center for American medicine in the early nineteenth century.