directions in the study and practice of midwifery. The necessity and public utility of such a course in this growing country, and the method to be pursued therein, will be more particularly explained in an introductory lecture, to be delivered on the sixteenth instant, at six o'clock in the evening, at the State House, by William Shippen, Jr., M. D.
"The lectures will be given at his father's house in Fourth Street. Tickets for the course to be had of the doctor at five pistoles each; and any gentleman who may incline to see the subject prepared for the lectures and learn the art of dissecting, injecting, etc., is to pay five pistoles more."
His first course of lectures was attended by ten pupils, but it was not long before larger numbers came. The public was greatly opposed to dissection at that time and Shippen met with violent opposition on the part of the populace, who stoned him and smashed on several occasions the windows of the house in which the dissections were performed. To allay this prejudice he announced in letters to the newspaper that the bodies he used were those of persons who had committed suicide or been legally executed, except "now and then one from the Potter's field."
In 1765 Dr. Shippen began his lectures on midwifery, the first systematic instruction given in obstetrics in this country. He himself engaged actively in the practice of that branch although it was still customary to leave the management of labor cases chiefly in the hands of female midwives. Shippen's lectures were illustrated by the "anatomical plates and casts of the gravid uterus at the hospital."
In connection with his midwifery lectures he also established a small lying-in hospital "under the care of a sober, honest matron, well acquainted with lying-in women."
In May, 1765, the Board of Trustees of the College of Philadelphia had voted to establish a medical school in connection with the College and had elected John Morgan professor of medicine in it. In September, 1765, Dr. Shippen was elected professor of anatomy and surgery. In the introductory lecture to his course of anatomy lectures in 1762 the latter had referred to the importance of establishing a medical college in the colonies and this statement of Shippen's is sometimes quoted to show that the credit of being the founder of the department of medicine of the College of Philadelphia should belong to him rather than to Morgan. There is no doubt, however, that this was merely an expression of opinion and should not be taken as proving the existence of any definite plan for such an institution in Shippen's mind. To John Morgan belongs the sole credit of drawing up the scheme of the first organized medical school in this country.
When in 1779 the Legislature repealed the charter of the College of Philadelphia and recreated it in the newly-created University of Pennsylvania, Shippen was the only member of the faculty who at once accepted a professorship in the new school. In 1783 the friends of the college succeeded in having its charter restored, whereupon the trustees re-elected the professors in the medical school to the chairs they had previously occupied. It is curious to note that Shippen was a professor in both the college and the university, despite the rivalry between them, but in 1791 the College of Philadelphia and the University of the State of Pennsylvania agreed to combine and form one body under the title of the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Shippen held the chair of anatomy, surgery, and midwifery, with Dr. Caspar Wistar as adjunct professor in the same branches.
Shippen served as physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1778 and 1779. He seems to have resigned because of his necessary absence on military affairs. In 1791 he was re-elected to the staff of the hospital and served until 1802, when he resigned.
He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and one of the founders of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, being president of the latter from 1805 to 1808.
Dr Shippen's first military position during the Revolution was that of medical director of the Flying Camp in the Jerseys, and as such he was directly subject to the authority of Dr. John Morgan. When Morgan was dismissed from the position of director-general of the military hospitals and physician-in-chief of the American Army, Shippen was appointed by order of Congress, October 9, 1776, director of the hospitals on the west side of the Hudson River. He was by this order placed on an equal footing with Morgan, whose authority was henceforth to be limited to the hospitals on the east side of the Hudson. Shippen was ordered to report directly to Congress, thus ignoring Morgan, through whom such reports had hitherto been made. Morgan, in his "Vindication" directly accuses Shippen of being the cause of his overthrow, and of aiming at securing the position of head of the department for
