The St. Louis Medical College was originally organized in 1841 as the Medical Department of St. Louis University. Almost immediately after its founding, and despite the medical department’s nonsectarian board, public pressure (especially from the extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movement known as the “Know Nothing Party”) demanded that the department sever ties with the Roman Catholic university. Succumbing to this pressure, it became an independent institution under the name St. Louis Medical College in 1855. The college affiliated with Washington University in 1891.