The college dates to 1900, when British philanthropist Sir John Berry White, a retired brigadier of the British army and later the civil surgeon of the Lakhimpur district in 1870, contributed his lifetime earning of 50,000 rupees to establish Berry White Medical School. This school heralded the beginning of allopathic medical education by conferring licensed medical practitioner diplomas in Assam. At its annual meeting in 1938, the Assam Branch of Licentiate Medical Practitioners, under the chairmanship of Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi, the premier of the Congress Govt. of Assam, decided to upgrade the Berry White Medical School to a full-fledged medical college, Assam Medical College. Dibrugarh was established on 3 November 1947 in the USmilitary hospital of World War 2 at Borbari, Dibrugarh through a process of up-gradation of Berry White Medical School immediately after independence. The admission of the first batch of students was completed in September 1947 with 6 seats. In 1910 the college imported two X-ray machines from England, which were the first in India, and opened the country's first radiology department. The Assam government has preserved the Berry White Medical School building. On 12 February 2016, Union minister of health and family welfare laid the foundation of 192 bed super-specialty hospital with a 60-bed intensive care unit, a catheterization lab, and specialties in neurology, neurosurgery, cardiothoracic vascular surgery, nephrology and paediatrics.
Courses
The college provides undergraduate and post-graduate education in medicine, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, orthopaedics, cardiology, otorhinolaryngology, general surgery, anatomy, pathology, biochemistry, ophthalmology, pediatrics, microbiology, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, dentistry, neurology, pharmacology, forensics, anesthesiology, dermatology, plastic surgery, radiology, physiology, and psychology.
Patient care
It runs outpatient departments in general medicine, general surgery, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, dermatology, pulmonary medicine, geriatric medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, dentistry, paediatrics, physiotherapy and psychiatry. Special outpatient departments for rheumatology, diabetes, neurology, nephrology, cardiothoraic and vascular surgery, plastic surgery, paediatric surgery, urology, cardiology, neurosurgery runs on specified days of week. Emergency services runs in casualty, paediatric medicine, obstetrics and psychiatry.
