Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/89

 “Dr. John Morgan, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic, not being at present within the State, the Trustees consider him reinstated and entitled to continue in his office until his return home, when he is to be waited on by the Committee in like manner as the other Professors have been, in order to know whether it is his intention to resume the exercise of his Professorship as heretofore.”

In October, 1789, Dr. Morgan died at the age of fifty-four years. It is stated that he had retired very much from active life, actuated by chagrin at his treatment by Congress, in removing him from the post of Director General, upon charges from which he was ultimately exonerated. That Dr. Morgan had lost his interest in the duties of his Professorship, would appear from a communication from the Professors to the Trustees of the University in December, 1788, in these terms: “that the Faculty are of opinion that the Medical School suffers for want of a course of lectures being delivered annually on the Theory and Practice of Physic.”

On the 24th of October, 1789, Dr. Rush was elected to the Chair of Theory and Practice in the College; and on the 29th of October, Dr. Kuhn resigned his Professorship and took that of Practice in the University, to which he was elected November 4th, 1789. “At the same time a letter was read from Dr. Wistar recommending lectures on the Institutes of Physic, to be in connection with those of Chemistry by the Professor of the latter branch, which was agreed to.”

On November 17th, 1789, Dr. Caspar Wistar was unanimously elected Professor of Chemistry (to succeed Dr. Rush) and of the Institutes of Physic. Dr. Samuel Griffitts was unanimously elected Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacy; and Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton was unanimously elected Professor of Natural History and Botany.

The Medical School of the College having been thus reorganized, and that of the University continuing in full operation, a rivalship naturally sprung up between the two institutions, or rather it may be called an antagonism, which was singular from the fact of an inosculation existing in the person of Dr. Shippen, who held his Professorship in both.

It has been seen that Dr. Kuhn had joined the University,