Hamilton later achieved great fame as a military surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon, and an advocate of sanitation and antisepsis. As a practical joke on the faculty, the entire medical student body votes unanimously to accept the application of a woman for admission to medical school. The lone dissenter among the students is physically coerced into changing his vote. As a last, desperate effort to obtain the use of local clinical facilities, Geneva Medical College strikes a deal with the Willard State Psychiatric Hospital in Ovid. This measure proves to be too little and too late.
Enrollments continue to slip into the single digits.
The Trustees of Syracuse University approve Towler' s offer to donate the property of Geneva Medical College to SU on condition that SU establish and maintain a regular medical college consistent with AMA standards. First classes held in temporary quarters in the Clinton Block next to the Erie Canal. He retired in 1926 as Professor of Surgery. The College of Medicine moves into permanent quarters at the remodeled carriage factory on McBride Street. Medical faculty mandates compulsory student participation in all autopsies.