Page:Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia - George W Norris.djvu/51

 knowledge of its duties, along with "a grave deportment with well-timed conversation, but avoiding religiously any jokes or jests about the patient or profession," and asking pardon of his class for the liberty he is about taking, slyly intimates that the bad habit of drinking may easily be contracted "insensibly by the foolish custom of taking a dram in a cold and wet morning." As to your fees, he adds, "I give you only one admonition, which is, to charge no one extravagantly, and every one in proportion to their abilities, remembering that by giving your services gratuitously to the poor, you will get much from the rich." On the 17th of September, 1765, Dr. Shippen was chosen Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in the College of Philadelphia, and his anatomical lectures, begun as already stated in 1762, were regularly delivered until the fourteenth course, which was in the winter of 1775–6, when they were suspended by the Revolution. In 1770 sundry malicious reports were circulated of his having taken up bodies from the several burying grounds, and the excitement became so great in the community as to make it necessary for him to come out again in the newspapers with a contradiction of it. This piece he closes with the following words: "I have persevered in teaching this difficult and most