Jonathan E. Rhoads

Remarks on the occasion of the bicentennial of the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

OF THE fifty or sixty meetings held by national and international medical organizations in Philadelphia during the Bicentennial year of the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, none is more appreciated than this meeting of the American Surgical Association. Dr. I. S. Ravdin, who has personally participated in just about a half century of the life of this School, foresaw the usefulness of an analytical look backward as we plan for the third century of progress in medical teaching and research. For those of you who are interested in this period of medical history, I would refer you to the very readable account written by Dr. George Corner, Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society and published in January, and the biography of Dr. John Morgan, written by Dr. Whitfield Bell, Assistant Librarian of the American Philosophical Society and published last week. In 1760, eight decades after the founding of Philadelphia, apprenticeship was the order of the day for medical education. Benjamin Rush became apprenticed to Dr. John Redman of Philadelphia in 1761 at about the age of 15 and served 5 years with only 11 days and 3 nights off. However, the most promising of the young men were going abroad after apprenticeship, especially to London and Edinburgh, for special courses with such men as William and John Hunter, and for University degrees. John Morgan, who was another of Redmans apprentices, got out of the office more than Rush did-enough to take courses at the College of Philadelphia, obtaining the B.A. degree in 1757, and to serve for more than a year as apothecary to the Pennsylvania Hospital, founded in 1751, and to catalogue its slender library of 50 books. After military service in the French and Indian WVar he went abroad with a letter to Dr. John Fothergill of London at whose home so many young American physicians found a warm welcome. After participating in study at William Hunters School in London he went to Edinburgh, taking courses with WVilliam Cullen in medicine, Alexander Monro (secundus) in anatomy and others and received the M.D. degree in July of 1763. Thereupon Morgan visited the continent, spending several months in Paris and several more in London, having conversations and correspondence about starting a school in America. By the time Morgan returned to Philadelphia in April of 1765 he was thirty years of age. He had been elected a Licentiate and afterward made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London, and while at sea was elected to the Royal Society-Dr. Franklin having advanced his initiation fee. So well had he prepared the way that he met with the Trustees of the College of Philadelphia, as the University of Pennsylvania was then called, on May 3 and convinced them of the wisdom and feasibility of his plans. He was elected Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic. He was joined by William Shippen as Professor of Anatomy and Midwifery the same year and by Benjamin Rush in Chemistry and Adam