James Derham was the first African-American to formally practice medicine in the United States though he never received an M.D. degree.

Derham was born into slavery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. He was owned by several doctors, and one of his owners, a physician named Dr. Robert Love, encouraged him to go into medicine. By working as a nurse, he purchased his freedom by 1783. He opened a medical practice, by age 26 his annual earnings exceeded $3,000.

Derham met with Dr. Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian and a Christian Universalist, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania....

, the father of American medicine, and Rush was so impressed by Derham that he encouraged him to move to Philadelphia. There he became an expert in throat diseases and in the relationship between climate and disease.

He also had no siblings. Derham disappeared after 1802, his fate is unknown.

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