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| In 1882 the Homeopathic Medical College of Missouri in St. Louis was reorganized when it absorbed the Hering Medical College and the St. Louis College of Homeopathic Physicians and Surgeons. In 1874 the college began to grant degrees to women. In the early 1880s the faculty of the Homeopathic Medical College of Missouri decided that medical education should be segregated by sex because coeducation endangered a woman’s sense of modesty and purity. In the fall of 1883 a sister institution, the Women’s Medical College of St. Louis, opened. However, female students who had already matriculated at the Homeopathic Medical College were not required to transfer to the new school. When a woman, Alice B. McKibben, was elected valedictorian of the co-educational school the following spring, the argument for single-sex schools lost strength and the Women’s Medical College closed. The Homeopathic Medical College of Missouri continued in operation until 1909. |