sician to the Pennsylvania Hospital, 1753–1778. He was one of the twenty-four founders of the University of Pennsylvania and a trustee (1749–1779); a founder of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and trustee (1765–1796); and one of the founders of the First Presbyterian Church (1742), of which he was a member for nearly sixty years, and in the graveyard of which he was buried.
Dr. Shippen was noted for his splendid health and physique; he rode horseback from Germantown to Philadelphia in the coldest weather without an overcoat and but a short time before his death he took a six mile walk. He never tasted wine or liquor until his last illness, which occurred when he was ninety years old, the end coming at Germantown, November 4, 1801.
Shippen, William (1736–1808)
William Shippen, the first in America to lecture on midwifery and to establish a hospital for its teaching, was born in Philadelphia, October 21, 1736, and went as a boy to an academy kept by the Rev. Samuel Finley, Nottingham, in which John Morgan and Benjamin Rush were also pupils. He received the degree of A. B. from the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1754. He was the valedictorian of his class, and the great preacher Whitefield, who was present, is said to have declared that he had never heard better speaking and urged Shippen to go into the ministry. I He, however, returned to Philadelphia, where he devoted himself to the study of medicine with his father, Dr. William Shippen (q. v.), until 1758, when he went abroad to finish his medical education. Watson (Annals, vol. ii, p. 378, Edition, 1844) quotes a letter written by the father to an English correspondent, in which he writes, "My son has had his education in the best college in this part of the country, and has been studying physic with me, besides which he has had the opportunity of seeing the practice of every gentleman of note in our city. But for want of that variety of operations and those frequent dissections which are common in older countries, I must send him to Europe. His scheme is to gain all the knowledge he can in anatomy, physic, and surgery."
In London young Shippen studied anatomy with John Hunter and midwifery with William Hunter and Dr. McKenzie. He also had an opportunity of seeing much of the work of Sir John Pringle and Dr. William Hewson. He was on friendly terms with Dr. John Fothergill, the famous Quaker physician, a friendship which was fruitful in great benefit to medical education, as Fothergill became greatly interested in the Pennsylvania Hospital, and in the medical department of the College of Philadelphia To the hospital he sent a series of crayon pictures, illustrating the anatomy of the human body, which he had had made by Remsdyck. The pictures are still there and in a good state of preservation.
Before returning to his native land Shippen obtained his M. D. from Edinburgh University, his thesis being "De Placentæ cum Utero Nexu." In Edinburgh he had sat at the feet of Munro primus and Cullen.
Upon finishing his studies in London and Edinburgh he wanted to continue them in France, but, as England and France were then at war, he managed it only by the friendly interest of Sir John Pringle. This great authority on military surgery secured him the position of travelling physician to a tuberculous lady who having court influence, had got George the Second to procure for her a special passport through the south of France. In this capacity Shippen went over and met some of the celebrated physicians of Paris.
In 1762 he returned to Philadelphia, bringing with him the Fothergill pictures, and full of schemes to establish courses in anatomy and midwifery for the instruction of his fellow-countrymen. These plans soon took form and he announced his first course of lectures in a newspaper letter dated the eleventh of November, 1762, in which he stated "that a course of anatomical lectures will be opened this winter in Philadelphia for the advantage of the young gentlemen now engaged in the study of physic in this and the neighboring provinces, whose circumstances and connections will not permit of their going abroad for improvement to the anatomical schools in Europe; and also for the entertainment of any gentlemen who may have the curiosity to understand the anatomy of the human frame. In these lectures the situation, figure, and structure of all the parts of the human body will be demonstrated, their respective uses explained, and as far as a course of anatomy will permit, their diseases, with the indications and methods of cure briefly treated of. All the necessary operations in surgery will be performed, a course of bandages exhibited, and the whole concluded with the explanation of some of the curious phenomena that arise from an examination of the gravid uterus, and a few plain general
