Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/35

Rh It will be perceived that this system differs materially from that now in operation; and the modern has, in several respects, a decided advantage. Perhaps it would have been well to preserve that regulation, which demanded a previous knowledge of the Latin language, the neglect of which is too common among medical students of the present day.

The first medical commencement was held on the 21st of June, 1768, when the following gentlemen received their bachelor's degree:—John Archer of Newcastle county, Benjamin Cowell of Bucks, Samuel Duffield and Jonathan Potts of Philadelphia, Jonathan Elmer of N. Jersey, Humphrey Fullerton of Lancaster county, David Jackson of Chester county, John Lawrence of E. Jersey, James Tilton of Kent county on Delaware, and Nicholas Way of Wilmington.

Such was the origin of a school, which, by the talents and industry of its successive teachers, has attained a station little inferior to that of the most celebrated in Europe; which has for a long time diffused medical knowledge, in copious streams, over the whole of this widely extended country, and given birth to numerous similar institutions, emulous of their parent school in honour and usefulness; which, while it affords to its officers a dignity in rank and an affluence in subsistence beyond any other private association on the continent, at the same time imparts to the city in which it is located, a degree of prosperity and reputation which the most sanguine of its founders never ventured to anticipate from its operations.