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Most of the documents are course catalogs or commencement programs which are arranged in short series according to academic name. There are only a few unpublished items in the collection, including the notes of a Barnes medical student (1899-1900) and several Barnes Dental College contracts (1908-1915 with related letter).

Barnes University formed a dental department, the Barnes Dental College in 1905. It continued under this name even after the parent institution became known as National University in 1912. It ceased to function with the graduation of the class of 1916.

Exactly why the backers of Barnes University chose in 1912 to rename their institution National University of Arts and Sciences is unknown, although it is possible to speculate that whereas construction of the (totally unrelated) Barnes Hospital was by then underway, the hospital trustees perhaps asserted claims to exclusive rights to the Barnes name. National University established an undergraduate college in 1913, with courses initially offered in the medical building, then in 1915 moved to a structure at Grand and Delmar Boulevards. The institution attempted as well to operate a preparatory academy. After Christian Hospital withdrew from administration of the former Centenary structure, what was left of the inpatient facility was renamed National Hospital. Also in 1915, a merger was announced between the medical department and the St. Louis College of Physician and Surgeons, another financially beleaguered independent school. This arrangement failed, however, with Physicians and Surgeons withdrawing its faculty and students in 1916. That year witnessed the end of all the National departments but medicine. In 1918 the last medical class graduated and National’s clinical facilities ceased to treat patients.

This collection consists of 4 photographs and artifacts from a St. Louis Medical Society meeting on January 5, 1971, during which Willard M. Allen was awarded the St. Louis Medical Society Award of Merit.