In January 1799, the Maryland Legislature approved a petition to incorporate a society of physicians called the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. As written, this special act was intended to “prevent the citizens [of Maryland] from risking their lives in the hands of ignorant practitioners or pretenders to the healing art.” Medchi, as it is now known, was the seventh organization of its kind in the country, and some of its notable achievements include the creation in 1807 of what became the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the establishment in 1830 of a medical library, and the creation of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1839 that was the first institution of its kind in the world. MedChi has been in its current building on Cathedral Street since 1909 and Dr. William Osler, co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is given credit for the creation of its library that is still housed there today. Join us and Medchi historian Meg Fielding on a tour of this fantastic building and extensive library. If we’re lucky, we may even run into MedChi’s resident ghost: the longtime librarian Marcia Crocker Noyes who lived in a penthouse at the top of building and is rumored to make all sorts of noises in the library’s stacks