Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/100

 1797. He continued to practise medicine, however, until within a few years of his death, which occurred in 1819. In his person, movements, and manners, as well as in his mental constitution, Dr. Kuhn was rigid, stately, and punctilious, and has been represented as a “true type of the Old School of Society.”

Upon the resignation of Dr. Kuhn, the duties of his place were performed by Dr. Rush until the year 1805, when the two Chairs—of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and of Institutes and Clinical Medicine—being united, he was elected unanimously to the Professorship.

At the same time a change was deemed to be expedient in the Chair which had been held so long by Dr. Shippen. Surgery, during this period, had remained in association with Anatomy and Obstetrics, when Dr. Physick presented himself, the vindicator of its just claims, and the representative man of its dignity and importance. He was unanimously elected Professor of that branch in the University of Pennsylvania on June 4th, 1805. It may be stated that the Chair of Surgery was created for him and by him.

In 1805 the first action was taken with respect to the position of the University relative to other schools that had arisen in the United States. It appears from the Minutes of the Faculty, December 12th, that the subject was considered as a special one. It is the first time that any action was taken upon the question of the footing upon which students from other schools should be admitted, as follows:—