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results, has proved to be by far the most important—the founder of medical schools. A short statement will show that he founded them in accordance to order, time and place.
The origin of Medical Schools in this country is in two events. Doctor William Shippen, recently returned to the colonies from Europe, commenced, in 1762, the first anatomical course of lectures; and, in his introductory, expressed the belief “in the expediency and practicability of teaching medicine in all its branches in Philadelphia.” The other event was that Doctor Morgan formed, whilst yet in Scotland, the project of engrafting a medical department on the College of Philadelphia. Two are of one accord, to make Philadelphia the American seat of Medical Science. Morgan secured the opinion and recommendation of several influential friends of the institution in Great Britain. They accordingly, by letters, advised the trustees in favour of establishing medical professorships. They, in approval of the plan, appointed Doctor Morgan to the professorship of the Theory and Practice of Physic on the 2d of May, 1765, and Doctor Shippen to that of Anatomy and Surgery on the 23d of the following September. Thus germinated our time-honored Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania,—the parent medical school of America.
The trustees, to conciliate public sentiment, made, through Professor Morgan, an exposition of the adopted plan. His address contained the following prophetic expressions. “Perhaps,” remarks this patriarch of our medical schools, “this medical institution, the first of its kind in America, though small in its beginning, may receive a constant accession of strength and annually exert new vigour.” So it has been. Oak-like, after a slow growth of 39 years, and then ten years of more rapid
