The Faculty of Medicine was established as the first faculty of McGill University in 1829. It dates its origin to 1823 when four staff members of the recently opened Montreal General Hospital founded the Montreal Medical Institution in order to offer lectures to students of Medicine. In 1833, four years after the institution became the Faculty of Medicine; William Leslie Logie was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, and became the first McGill and the first Canadian medical graduate.

In 1862, the degree was changed to its present designation, Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery, and in 1872, it was conferred upon the faculty's most illustrious graduate, William Osler. Osler served on the faculty from 1874 to 1884 before going on to the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and Oxford University. He was instrumental in developing the Medical Library, which had its origin in the Montreal Medical Institution and which now contains over 216,000 volumes and 2,300 periodicals, and left to it his extensive collection of books devoted to the history of medicine.

The modern era has seen the emergence of hospital based research institutes as powerful forces, making them equal partners with the basic science departments. Support of the Fonds de la Recherche de santé du Québec has been important, as has the continued competitiveness of all aspects of McGill’s science. New institutions have taken up research and the Lady Davis Research Institute of the Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital over the past ten years, has emerged as an equal partner with the two adult institutions. The Research Institute of the Douglas Hospital is recognized throughout the world for its contributions to neuroscience and psychiatric research, and the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children contains one of the largest and most successful units in the world devoted to research on crippling diseases. In addition, new university centres were created in order to promote inter-disciplinary research. The one in the genetics building on the traditions of Clark Fraser and utilizing the talents of Charles Scriver and others, has been widely recognized, but others in the field of cancer, nutrition, medical ethics and law, and non-linear dynamics, have all played a major role in science at McGill.