Before his death in 1873, Baltimore financier and philanthropist Johns Hopkins appointed a 12-member board of trustees to carry out his vision for a university and hospital that would be linked to each other by a medical school, which was at the time a radical idea.

Construction of the Johns Hopkins Hospital began in 1877 with the razing of the site formerly occupied by the city's mental asylum, and took twelve years to complete.

[4] Four of the original trustee's daughters, led by Mary Elizabeth Garrett, started a nationwide fundraising campaign to secure funding for the medical school.

[5] The founding physicians of the JHUSOM were pathologist William Henry Welch (1850–1934), the first dean of the school, Canadian internist William Osler (1849–1919), author of The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892), surgeon William Stewart Halsted (1852–1922), who revolutionized surgery by insisting on subtle skill and technique and strict adherence to aseptic technique, and gynecological surgeon Howard Atwood Kelly (1858–1943), credited with establishing gynecology as a specialty and among the first to use radium in the treatment of cancer.

U.S. News also ranked Hopkins #1 in Anesthesiology, #1 in Internal Medicine, #2 in Obstetrics and Gynecology, #4 in Pediatrics, #3 in Psychiatry, tied at #3 in Radiology, and #1 in Surgery.

[16] In July 2024, businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $1 billion gift to his alma mater Johns Hopkins University to make tuition free for all medical school students whose families make under $300,000 a year, beginning in the fall of 2024.