Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/204

 which Anatomy and Chemistry are taught, in Fifth Street, are too small to accommodate them:

“That the room in the University on Ninth Street, in which the other branches of Medicine are taught, is so remote from the Anatomical and Chemical Rooms as to make it disagreeable and inconvenient for the students of medicine to pass successively from one to the other in the inclement season of the year in which the lectures are usually delivered.

“Under these circumstances your petitioners request the appropriation of four rooms on the first floor of the north end of the building in Fourth Street, formerly the seat of the University, exclusively for their use.

“The advantages of this situation for the delivery of their lectures they conceive to be as follows:—

“First. It will be the centre of population of the city.

“Secondly. It is well sequestered from the streets, and unconnected with dwelling-houses, and thus defended from accident, injuries, and inspection.

“Thirdly. It will readily admit of additions, when they shall become necessary, from the extent of the lot westward on which the building stands.

“Fourthly. It will enable the students to pass with ease from one teacher to another, without exposing themselves in a long walk in bad weather; and, lastly, it will establish a relationship and uniformity between the accommodations of the medical sciences and those respectable and decent apartments in which other branches of science are taught in the University.

“The building now occupied by the Professors of Anatomy and Chemistry, your petitioners conceive, may be rented for a sum nearly equal to that which arises from the rent of the rooms which are the objects of the petition.”

This petition appears not to have met a favorable reception on the part of the Board of Trustees, and in 1806 a new proposition was submitted to the Board, by which the medical professors held themselves responsible for the interest of a sum to