Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/839

MORGAN urging a full and enlarged scheme for teaching medicine in all its branches. Morgan retained his professorship until his death, when (q. v.) succeeded. As a teacher he was held in the greatest respect and esteem by his pupils. Not only active in the medical school, in 1772 he actually made a trip to the West Indies and collected subscriptions aggregating over £2,000 for the advancement of the college. He was one of the founders and a very active member of the American Philosophical Society.

Upon settling in Philadelphia to practise he resolved that he would neither compound his remedies nor do any surgical work. He also endeavored to introduce the English custom of presenting the physician with his fee at the time of each visit. In the first two instances he was successful, although he encountered great opposition from the older physicians.

After (q. v.), the first medical director of the Continental Army, had been found guilty of treason and dishonorably discharged, Congress, in October, 1775, appointed Morgan as his successor, and he at once joined the army, then in the vicinity of Boston. From the outset he set himself resolutely to bring order out of the chaos which existed in the army Medical Department. Morgan set to work at the root of the matter by instituting rigid examinations for those desiring to enter the medical service, and by exercising the most vigilant supervision over the work of the entire department. The greatest difficulty confronting Dr. Morgan, however, was that of obtaining hospital supplies. The finances of the Continental Army were never in a particularly good condition; but during Dr. Morgan's career as chief of the medical department they were at a very low ebb. It was the jealousy and insubordination of the regimental surgeons which finally played a large part in causing his dismissal from the post of director-general. On July 17, 1776, Congress passed a law, based on a memorial presented to it some time previously by Dr. Morgan, settling definitely the discipline, pay, and other matters relating to the regulation of the medical service.

The direction of medical affairs in the northern part of New York State was under Dr. Samuel Stringer. Under his management, or mismanagement, things soon fell into a disgraceful state of confusion. Morgan appealed repeatedly to Congress to settle the disputes which were raised by the officiousness and insubordination of Dr. Stringer, and at length Congress appointed a committee to investigate, acting upon the report, with the result that Congress dismissed both Dr. Stringer and Dr. Morgan from their positions. Morgan, in righteous indignation, published one of the most interesting documents in the medical literature of this country, namely, his pamphlet entitled "A Vindication of His Public Career in the Station of Director-General of the Military Hospitals and Physician-in-chief to the American Army," Anno 1776, by John Morgan, M. D., F. R. S., Boston, 1777. What angered him more than any other of the injuries he felt he had received was the appointment, on October 9, 1776, of (q. v.), as director of the hospitals on the west side of the Hudson river. Dr. Shippen had been director of the hospital of the Flying Camp in the Jerseys, and subject to the authority of Dr. Morgan. Dr. Shippen was ordered to report directly to Congress, thus ignoring Dr. Morgan, through whom such reports had hitherto been made. It is sad to find Morgan blaming his quondam friend and colleague in the establishment of the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, as the chief author of his overthrow, but he does so in unequivocal language.

A tardy vindication of his conduct in this and another similar affair with Dr. William Shippen, Jr., although it must have afforded Morgan some satisfaction, yielded him no more substantial benefit. What added to his chagrin was the fact that on April 11, 1777, his rival Shippen was appointed to succeed him in the post of director-general and physician-in-chief of the army, and Morgan withdrew to a great extent from active contact with public affairs. He had been elected physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1773, and he continued to serve on its staff until 1783, when he resigned under somewhat peculiar circumstances, though the minutes of the hospital stating his action add that it was "to the grief of the patients, and much against the will of the managers, who all bore testimony to his abilities, and great usefulness to the institution."

Morgan possessed an ample fortune. He is said to have been the first man in Philadelphia who carried a silk umbrella. He had a collection of valuable works of art, but that, together with his fine library, was destroyed by the enemy, partly at Bordentown, New Jersey, and partly at Danbury, Connecticut, to which places they had been removed to secure them from the very fate they met.

In 1765 he married Mary, daughter of Thomas Hopkinson, who died in 1785. They had no children. Dr. Morgan died on October