It was during Dr. Tappan's administration also that the professional departments, as they were long called, came into their own. The Medical School had been organized since 1849, when the first building was completed at a cost of about $9,000; but the work was only fairly under way when he came. The new department was opened in October, 1850, with ninety matriculates and grew with extraordinary rapidity, so that for the first years the enrolment exceeded that of the Literary Department. When Dr. Tappan left the University in 1863 there were 252 students in the Medical Department and by 1866-67 their number increased to 525, the largest enrolment in the history of the School. The creation of a Law Department was considered at the same time the Medical Department was organized, but lack of resources as well as any enthusiastic support from the legal profession in the State postponed its opening for ten years. The growing number of petitions for its establishment, however, finally led to the opening of the School in 1859 with a Faculty of three, and ninety-two students. Hardly less important was the establishment in 1855 of a course in civil engineering. It was organized in connection with the Department of Physics, however, and did not attain to the dignity of a separate department with its own head for many years. Even so modest a beginning as this for technical courses in the University found precedent in those days only at Harvard. Lack of funds and co-operation from the Legislature seems to have been the only reason which led to the abandonment of plans for the creation of departments of Agriculture and Military Science which were seriously considered at that time. The inauguration of these different schools was all a part of Dr. Tappan's scheme for the development of a true university. Though he deplored their necessarily lowered requirements, he saw the day when they would be graduate departments, as in effect the Law and Medical Schools are in the way of becoming now, at least insofar as they require a minimum of two years' work in the Literary College before the student is permitted to enter upon his professional studies. They formed, as it was, with the various scientific courses established in the Literary Department, a significant departure from the single "cast iron" course of the Eastern colleges. By very reason of this innovation Michigan, in President White's words, "stands at the beginning of the transition of the old sectarian college to the modern university." In all this President Tappan's influence was vital. He entered whole-heartedly into the life of the University, displaying a remarkable shrewdness and charity in his dealings with the students, and sympathizing heartily with the work of every professor. One of his students, Byron M. Cutcheon, '61, afterward a Regent of the University, thus describes him: