John Morgan: Continental Doctor [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512800319

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1. Philadelphia Boyhood
Chapter 2. Frontier Surgeon
Chapter 3. London Friends and Physic
Chapter 4. Student at Edinburgh
Chapter 5. The Grand Tour
Chapter 6. A Plan for Philadelphia
Chapter 7. The Charter of Medical Education
Chapter 8. “The Birthday of Medical Honors”
Chapter 9. Physician and Teacher
Chapter 10. Interests of an American Philosopher
Chapter 11. Director-General
Chapter 12. Vindication
Chapter 13. Counter-Attack
Chapter 14. Physic and Philosophy Once More
Chapter 15. Last Years
Appendix
Notes
Index

Citation preview

JOHN MORGAN Continental Doctor

Washington

County

J o h n Morgan, 1764 By Angelica Kauffmann

(Pn.) Historical

Society

and

Frick

Art

Reference J.ihrmy

JOHN MORGAN Continental Doctor by

Whitfield J . Bell, Jr.

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

©

1965 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Published in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan by the O x f o r d University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi Library of Congress Catalog Card N u m b e r : 65-12020

7479 Printed in the United States of America

T o the memory of John Farquhar Fulton

Preface

John Morgan's is a significant name in both the general history of early America and the history of medicine in this country. Benjamin Rush spoke only the truth when he declared in a eulogy of his old teacher and colleague that Morgan's name should be linked forever with that period in America when medicine was first studied and taught as a science. This judgment has been echoed by subsequent historians. Charles D. Meigs pronounced Morgan in 1827 "the unquestionable founder of American Medicine." George W. Norris gave Morgan a prominent place in his account of medicine in early Philadelphia. On the inauguration of the Medical Bulletin of the University of Pennsylvania in 1888, the editor paid Morgan the tribute of the institution "which it was his distinguished honor to establish." Despite such estimates, however, Morgan has never had popular fame. No biography longer than a chapter or an article has ever been published. Even an appeal to erect a memorial monument failed, though it was supported by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Sir William Osier, and Provost Edgar Fahs Smith. The reasons are not hard to find. Morgan left no family to perpetuate his name and memory; there is no collection of manuscripts to invite a biographer; while his bitter quarrels with fellow-Philadelphians cast a cloud on his reputation which never entirely lifted. Only in the bicentennial anniversary year of his election as professor 7

PREFACE

of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania is this neglect being in some measure redressed at last. W h a t this book owes to the librarians and staffs of many institutions, to scholars interested in medical history, and to some friends and colleagues I can only suggest by formal acknowledgm e n t I have been served and aided at the Acadέmie de Medicine, Paris, by Dr. Maurice Genty; at the American Philosophical Society Library, by Mrs. Gertrude D. Hess and Mrs. R u t h A . Duncan; at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, by Dr. W . B. McDaniel, 2nd and Mrs. M . S. Maines; at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, by Mr. J. Harcourt Givens and Miss Catherine H . Miller; at the Library C o m p a n y of Philadelphia, by Mr. Barney Chesnick; at the Library of Congress, by Mrs. Dorothy S. Eaton; at the Pennsylvania Hospital, by the late Miss Florence M . Greim; at the Pennsylvania State Records Office, by Dr. Henry H . Eddy and Miss Martha L. Simonetti; at the University of Pennsylvania, by Dr. Leonidas Dodson and Mr. John C. Hetherston. For allowing me to use manuscripts in their possession I am especially indebted to Mr. R a y m o n d L. H a n b u r y of A l l e n & Hanbury's Ltd., London; the Hon. Jasper Y. Brinton of Cairo; Mrs. Dick-Cunyngham of Prestonfield, Edinburgh; the late Dr. Robert P. Elmer of Wayne, Pa.; Mr. J. Morgan H a r d i n g of Haverford, Pa.; and Mr. David M c C o r d of Cambridge, Mass. For informed advice, criticism, and encouragement of various kinds, I am grateful to Dr. L y m a n H. Butterfield of The Adams Papers; Dr. Douglas Guthrie of Edinburgh; Professor Brooke Hindle of N e w York University; the late Dean W i l l i a m Pepper, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School; the late Henry Schuman of N e w York; Dr. Charles Coleman Sellers of Dickinson College; Dr. Richard H. Shryock of the American Philosophical Society; Miss Elizabeth H . T h o m s o n of the Yale University School of Medicine; and Professor Herbert W i n g , Jr., of Dickinson College. T o Miss Jane D. Carson of Colonial

8

PREFACE

Williamsburg I am especially indebted for a rigorous reading of the manuscript. A n d it is owing to Dr. Roy F. Nichols of the University of Pennsylvania if the book appears in a dress not entirely unworthy of the subject and the occasion. T h e McGraw Hill Book Company have allowed me to quote Boswell's estimate of Morgan from Boswell in Holland, and Dr. Lloyd G. Stevenson, editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, has given permission to use Chapter 13, which first appeared in that periodical. Some of the material in Chapters 3 and 4 was found in England and Scotland while I had a grant from the Penrose F u n d of the American Philosophical Society. A l l other costs of every sort were borne by me. Whitfield

9

J.

Bell,

Jr.

Contents

CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER

1. Philadelphia Boyhood 2 . Frontier Surgeon 3· London Friends and Physic 4· Student at Edinburgh 5· T h e Grand T o u r 6. A Plan for Philadelphia 1- T h e Charter of Medical Education 8 . " T h e Birthday of Medical Honors" 9· Physician and Teacher ίο. Interests of an American Philosopher 11. Director-General 1 2 . Vindication 13· Counter-Attack 1 4 . Physic and Philosophy Once More 1 5 · Last Years Appendix Notes Index

17 30 44 54 76 100 116 129

151 164 178 206 220 240

255 265 267

29З

List of Illustrations

John Morgan, 1764

Frontispiece

The following illustrations appear as a group after page 128: Dr. John Fothergill Sir Alexander Dick Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Pennsylvania Hospital Mary Hopkinson Morgan Angelica Kauffmann Benjamin Rush William Shippen, Jr. Continental Army Medical Return, 1776 John Morgan [?] John Morgan, about 1787

JOHN MORGAN Continental Doctor

Chapter

1

Philadelphia Boyhood

ON

THE

AFTERNOON

OF

OCTOBER

15,

1789,

AN

URGENT

summons was delivered at the door of Dr. Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia's best known and busiest physician. A patient, who was also a professional colleague and an old friend, was seriously ill. John Morgan had not been in good health, but Rush had seen him at a public meeting only a week before; this illness must have come suddenly. R u s h hurried along the streets to Morgan's house, but he was too late. T h e r e was nothing to do, not even a widow or daughter to comfort; and so, leaving a few instructions, Rush returned home. A t his desk that evening he opened his commonplace book and began to write: T h i s afternoon I was called to visit Dr. Morgan, but found him dead in a small hovel, surrounded with books and papers, and on a light dirty bed. He was attended only by a washerwoman, one of his tenants. His niece, Polly Gordon, came in time enough to see him draw his last breath. His disorder was the Influenza, but he had been previously debilitated by many other disorders. What a change from his former rank and prospects in Lifel T h e man who once filled half the world with his name, had now scarcely friends enough left to bury him. 1 T w o days later he attended the funeral at St. Peter's in T h i r d Street, where Morgan was buried under the floor near the p u l p i t n e x t to his wife. T h e following week Rush was elected to succeed Morgan as professor of the theory and practice of medic i n e in the College of Philadelphia; and on November 2, open17

J O H N MORGAN: CONTINENTAL

DOCTOR

ing his course of lectures, he read a eulogy of his teacher and predecessor to the students, faculty, and trustees. 2 Rush reminded them of Morgan's early career and character, how as a youth he had revealed "a strong propensity for learning"; how his teachers respected and loved him; how, having studied medicine with an able physician and been graduated in the first class of the College of Philadelphia, he had "acquired both knowledge and reputation" as a surgeon in the Provincial forces on the Pennsylvania frontier. T h e n Morgan had gone abroad to study, first at London, then at Edinburgh, where he was graduated with great reputation. He studied anatomy at Paris, made the grand tour to Italy, and, returning through Switzerland, spent an afternoon with Voltaire at Ferney. After five years in Europe Morgan had come home, "loaded with literary honours," and been received "with open arms by his fellow citizens." As Rush spoke, the years fell away and his audience forgot the prematurely old man who had just died alone and neglected. Instead they recalled the bright, earnest young doctor who twenty-five years before had "advanced in every part of Europe the honour of the American name." T h e moment he returned to Philadelphia Morgan had called for the establishment of a medical department in his college and was appointed its first professor. Not only did he teach medicine but, almost single-handed, tried to raise the status of the profession in America by establishing a medical society whose license should be a guarantee of professional competence throughout the colonies. Three years later he saw the "first fruits of his labours for the advancement of medicine" when ten young men received the first medical degrees conferred in the American colonies. " T h e historian, who shall hereafter relate the progress of medical science in America," Rush continued, "will be deficient in candor and justice, if he does not connect the name of Dr. Morgan with that auspicious era in which medicine was first taught and studied as a science in this country." 18

Philadelphia

Boyhood

Morgan had touched the life of his time and place at other points. He had promoted silk culture and encouraged the manufacture of iron. He was a connoisseur of painting, had experimented with balloons, and collected prehistoric bones and fossils. He had written a prize-winning essay on Anglo-American union and invested and speculated in western lands. He was an eighteenth-century philosopher, a younger contemporary of Benjamin Franklin, who was his friend, and he has properly, if loosely, been called the father of medical education in America. Nodding in agreement, Rush's hearers also recalled how vanity and jealousy had clouded the bright promise of Morgan's career; how, as Director-General of the Hospital in the War for Independence, he had had to face problems that could not be solved; how, removed from his post, he had plunged into a bitter wrangle with Congress and his colleagues, winning a grudging vindication and forcing Congress to order his successor to trial. T o these episodes the speaker charitably made no allusion; but every man in the lecture room that day knew them and pondered, with Rush, the complexity of human character, the inconstancy of fame and power. John Morgan was born in Philadelphia on October 16, 1735. His father was Evan Morgan, who came to Pennsylvania about 1 7 1 7 with his father, David, and at least one brother, Thomas. Grandfather David Morgan soon returned to Wales, leaving his American family the proud legacy he inscribed on the flyleaf of the family Bible: I, David Morgan, Gentleman of Wales, bequeath to my descendants in America the comfortable certainty: They came neither from Kings or Nobles but from a long line of true Gentlemen and women with unstained Names. This same pride in their race was expressed by John's youngest brother George, who once wrote that their "ancestors retired to the mountains rather than be enslaved by William of Normandy, called William the Conqueror." 8 19

J O H N MORGAN: C O N T I N E N T A L DOCTOR

Evan Morgan bought a lot and built a house in Chester in 1725, and soon acquired other property there as well. By 1730, however, he was a shopkeeper in Philadelphia, prospering as the town grew. At the Sign of the T w o Sugar Loaves in Market Street (where for a time the mathematician Theophilus Grew was his partner), he dealt in a wide variety of goods, which he advertised from time to time in Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1734, for example, he offered looking glasses, loaf sugar, window glass, currants, raisins, Holland duck, Russia linen, French poplin, long and short tobacco pipes, wool cards, pins, needles, writing paper, quarto Bibles, pepper, nutmegs, cinnamon, pickled codfish, iron pots, brass pans, coarse and fine salt, and a good many other articles, "besides all sorts of haberdashery ware, . . . also a choice parcel of English stays and women's boddices, and all sorts of stay trimmings." Once, during a period of religious revival, Evan Morgan appended to an advertisement an acid reminder to those indebted to him to come and pay their said Debts, without any further Notice, in order to prevent further Trouble. As there has been a great deal of Talk of Religion, of Faith, of Good Works, &c. in our Days, methinks it would do well amongst other Things, that People would Remember the apostolical Injunction in Rom. 13. v. 7, 8, 'Render to all their Dues, owe no Man any Thing, but love one another.'4 Evan Morgan had married in 1724 Joanna Biles, granddaughter of William Biles, one of the earliest Quaker settlers of Bucks County, who had preceded William Penn to America. William Biles was a justice of the Upland Court, and it was at his house that the first known meeting of Friends at the Falls of Neshaminy was held in 1683. Of Joanna's great-grandfather Blackshaw, family tradition states that he was a country gentleman of Cheshire, who commanded a company in the army of Charles I. Randall Blackshaw, son of the Cavalier captain, became a Quaker and, in 1682, migrated to America, where he purchased 1,500 acres of land near the Falls of Neshaminy. J o anna Biles was thus descended from two of the earliest and 20

Philadelphia

Boyhood

staunchest Quaker families in the colony. When she married Baptist Evan Morgan she was, of course, promptly disowned. She remained Quaker, however, and reared her children in the Friendly way. A member of Joanna Biles's family had inscribed a Bible, too—with a stern Protestant warning against priestcraft and holy water.5 Evan and Joanna Morgan had nine children. Morris, the oldest, "open, generous & brave," died of yellow fever in the West Indies, and his only son died young, as a family record states, by some unspecified "Act of Bravary." Young Evan, also older than John, was a storekeeper in Philadelphia, but died childless at the outbreak of the Revolution. Thomas, younger than John, died of yellow fever in Jamaica. Benjamin was lost at sea in 1762, while John was studying medicine at Edinburgh. The youngest boy, George, had a long career as an Indian trader, land speculator, and scientific farmer, and left his name at Morganza in western Pennsylvania. He and John were often associated, and his son was John's principal heir. Of the three daughters of Evan and Joanna Morgan, Martha married, Mary remained single, and Hannah became the wife of Dr. Samuel Stillman, a Boston minister described as "one of the best of Men," with whom John and his wife often corresponded.6 Joanna Morgan died in 1743 bearing her ninth child and sixth son. Left a widower with several small children including the baby, Evan Morgan rewrote his will to provide for them. In 1748, when John was a schoolboy of thirteen and George, the youngest, was only five, Evan Morgan died. In addition to the house and store, he left five or six other "tenements" in Philadelphia, four acres of well-fenced pasture on the Lower Ferry Road, the house in Chester, a quarter-interest in the Mount Holly Iron Works, ten acres in the Northern Liberties of the city, a ground rent in Delaware worth £ 18 a year, some servants, and a Negro woman, twenty-one years old, "very fit for town or country business." His personal property and store inventory were worth more than £i,ooo. 7 They were not rich, but that 21

J O H N MORGAN: CONTINENTAL

DOCTOR

they would never want was another "comfortable certainty" of the Morgan family. T h e bulk of their father's estate was divided equally among the six sons. Morris and Evan, the oldest, received additional specific bequests, while to John and the three youngest boys their father left a silver spoon each. By the terms of the will the children's uncle, Thomas Morgan of Chester, and Evan's friend, Samuel Hazard of Philadelphia, were named executors. In addition Evan appointed four trustees for the minor children. One of these was the Baptist minister Jenkin Jones; another was William Allen. 8 A neighbor of Evan Morgan in Water Street, William Allen was said to be the wealthiest merchant in the city; and to the direction of his business and the management of his properties he added careers of distinguished public service and of liberal patronage of worthy causes. A student in the Middle Temple and sometime pensioner of Clare College, Cambridge, Allen had traveled in France before he returned home in 1726 to enter business. He was soon elected to the Provincial Assembly and then chosen mayor of Philadelphia. At the time of Evan Morgan's death he held the judicial post of Recorder of the city; two years later, in 1750, he was named Chief Justice of the Province. All the while, Allen was taking a lively interest in education and the arts and sciences. He was a trustee of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, making the largest donation of any of the trustees and lending a warehouse for the first classes in 1 7 5 1 . He was the most generous contributor to the Pennsylvania Hospital when that institution was founded. He supported Philadelphia's project to find the Northwest Passage in 1753, and, applying the new English agricultural science at his country place at Mt. Airy, was a spirited cultivator of "Colly Flower" and "every sort of Cabbage that is esteemed to be very good." In 1748, when Allen became young Morgan's trustee, another Philadelphian, John Redman, was completing his medical stud22

Philadelphia

Boyhood

ies at Leyden with the aid of a loan from Allen. Ten years later William Allen would be one of those who sent Benjamin West abroad, providing the young painter with a drawing account "lest such a Genius should be cramped for want of a little Cash." Generous, intelligent, humane, a man of many gifts and strict integrity, William Allen was just the kind of man to whom a father might confidently entrust his sons. For twenty years he was John Morgan's guardian, patron, and friend.® Penn's fair, green country town had grown in fifty years into a commercial city of 10,000 persons, built of solid red brick, steadily growing. It breathed prosperity. Its rich countryside generously supplied the stalls of the great market which stretched up the High Street; while commerce with Europe and the West Indies and the constant but undramatic coastal trade with Boston, New York, Charleston, and a dozen lesser ports brought the city profits as well as goods, and ideas as well as profits. For to wealth Philadelphians now added culture. Science, the arts, education, and a deepening concern for the unfortunate were distinguishing features of the city in which John Morgan was born and reared. The library Franklin and his friends had established was four years old when Morgan was born. The boy was eight when Franklin projected the American Philosophical Society, and sixteen when the Academy was opened and the Hospital was founded. Benjamin West, three years younger, had begun to paint at his home in Swarthmore before Morgan started to study medicine. From his farm on the Schuylkill John Bartram was corresponding with a score of botanists, British and Continental. It seemed that the new spirit of the age had caught everyone. Across the river in New Jersey the Presbyterian minister in the village of Maidenhead spent laborious hours through many years writing dissertations on Indian philology, amphibious boats, American union, fish ladders, and the limitations of Newton, which he forwarded through Franklin to the Royal Society of London. This was the city which formed John Morgan, and he repaid 23

J O H N MORGAN: C O N T I N E N T A L DOCTOR

his debt to Philadelphia by helping to make it in the latter years of the century the first Athens of the western world, the first American capital. Where John received his earliest schooling is not known. His mother may have sent him to one of the Quaker schools, or he may have been enrolled with one of the many private masters in Philadelphia. In any case, he early displayed a bookish bent. His father determined he should enter one of the professions, and, probably as early as 1745 or 1746, sent him to the school kept by the Reverend Samuel Finley at West Nottingham in Chester County, some fifty-five miles from Philadelphia. J o h n was then ten or eleven, not too young to be sent away to school, especially where other Philadelphia boys were studying. Dr. William Shippen's son, for example, who was a year younger than Morgan, was preparing for college at Finley's academy; so was young Ebenezer Hazard. Samuel Finley was a Presbyterian clergyman of Scots family and Irish birth who was called in 1744 to be minister of the West Nottingham congregation. Partly to augment his income and partly to prepare young men for the ministry Finley, as was the practice of the clergy, opened a boarding school in his house. Not an original thinker, he was nevertheless a learned man and a natural teacher, with a modest manner but firm convictions. 10 Wishing his boys to become respectable scholars, Finley taught them at every opportunity. At his table he instructed them daily by little homilies about Will Slovenly and J o h n n y Courtly, and he entertained them with sallies of wit, for he believed a hearty laugh aided digestion. Finley's formal instruction was essentially in the classical authors, although the sciences were not forgotten, and one of Morgan's contemporaries remembered Finley taught English reading, writing, and speaking "with great care and success." T h e father of a new student was told his son would need a Vergil in the Delphin edition, Sallust with a translation, Bishop Wetenhall's Greek grammar, John Stirling's System of Rhetoric, and, next term, a Greek 24

Philadelphia

Boyhood

Testament and lexicon, Terence, and Horace. When one of his students applied for admission to Princeton, Finley wrote that at West Nottingham the boy had read the common Latin and Greek classics, excepting only Longinus, and studied logic, arithmetic, geography, some geometry, "part of Ontology, & Natural Philosophy, in a more cursory manner, as far as Opticks in Martin's Order." 1 1 John followed such a course of study as this. By his "uncommon application to books" and his aptness for learning good manners he won first his master's praise and then his interest and confidence. More than fifteen years later, Morgan remembered to send his old teacher a copy of his Discourse on the Institution of Medical Schools in America, and Finley sent his son to Philadelphia to study medicine as Morgan's apprentice. The letter entrusting the boy to Morgan was signed "your Steady friend." 1 2 Why and when John Morgan decided to study medicine we do not know. It may have been Finley who encouraged him to become a physician, as Finley later urged his own nephew Rush into medicine. In any case, when John completed his work at West Nottingham and returned to Philadelphia, he was apprenticed to Dr. John Redman in 1750. Now a man of twenty-eight, John Redman had studied anatomy under Monro at Edinburgh, taken his doctorate at Leyden in 1748, and walked the wards of Guy's Hospital in London. In Philadelphia his practice grew rapidly; he acquired reputation, and when the Pennsylvania Hospital was opened in 1752, he was named one of the six attending physicians. Sound in theory and cautious in practice, his mere presence in the sick room inspired confidence. Morgan was one of the first in a line of apprentices so long that when Redman became president of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1787, he addressed his colleagues as "my professional children." 13 Philadelphia in 1750 was a good place to study medicine. All the Hospital physicians had studied at European universities. 25

J O H N MORGAN: C O N T I N E N T A L DOCTOR

The Hospital itself afforded opportunities for clinical observation—physicians took their students there to see the sick and occasionally one of the older men performed a post-mortem examination. A few men maintained professional ties with physicians abroad: Thomas Bond described a worm found in a human liver in a paper published in the first volume of the London Medical Observations and Inquiries in 1757, and Cadwalader Evans presented in the same journal an account of his use of electric shock on a patient suffering from convulsions, a treatment in which Franklin acted as technician. Learned Philadelphia laymen like Isaac Norris read and annotated medical books in their libraries; sometimes they even attended medical lectures with the students. John stayed with Redman six years, serving in the multiple role of "servant, coachman, messenger-boy, prescription-maker, nurse, and assistant surgeon." The work was hard and confining, for Redman treated his apprentice as a member of the family, imposing strict discipline and only rarely allowing him to be away from the house. Morgan learned how to pulverize the bark and roots that came in crude form from the London apothecaries, how to make tinctures, ointments, and extracts, how to compound prescriptions. He spent many hours in the shop serving his master's patients. From time to time he was given a medical text to study—Boerhaave, Van Swieten, or Sydenham; and he fixed its contents in mind by writing summaries of some portions, memorizing others. As Morgan grew more experienced he was allowed to hold instruments in minor surgery, to bandage wounds and, later, to bleed and cup, pull teeth, dress wounds, and even assist in surgical operations. Accompanying his master, he visited the poor sick in the Hospital and private patients in their homes; and in the latter years of his training he sometimes attended them alone, usually as a nurse, but occasionally as a physician in Redman's place. The young man pleased his master. He was intelligent, he 26

Philadelphia

Boyhood

learned quickly and worked hard, and patients seemed to like him. Unexpectedly, in March 1 7 5 5 , he was given an opportunity to increase his medical knowledge and experience. T h e apothecary of the Pennsylvania Hospital resigned his post, and Redman urged Morgan to apply. As Hospital apothecary he could observe the practice of other physicians in the city and gain insight from their treatments. This would be valuable experience of a kind no other medical apprentice in Philadelphia could get. Morgan accordingly made application. On March 29, "having heard a good character of him," the Managers hired him at £ 1 5 a year. His duties were to be present at the Hospital at regular times to receive and compound the prescriptions of the staff and to give medicines to the patients according to the physicians' directions. Morgan later cited this experience as one of the principal steps in his professional education. One of the first things the new Hospital apothecary did was to make an inventory of the drugs in his shop and prepare a list of those which he thought were needed. T h e Managers, on the advice of the physicians, sent an order at once to their London suppliers, Silvanus and Timothy Bevan of Plough Court. T h e n Morgan turned his attention to a pile of some fifty medical books, once the property of Dr. Benjamin Morris, which had recently been presented to the Hospital by Morris's sister. He catalogued the collection and made it a library. 14 J o h n Morgan was not only a medical student and, part-time, apothecary at the Pennsylvania Hospital; he was also a student of liberal arts and a candidate for a degree at the College of Philadelphia. In January 1 7 5 1 , soon after Morgan entered Redman's shop, the Academy of Philadelphia was opened, offering instruction, as the Trustees announced, in the Latin, Greek, English, French, and German Languages, together with History, Geography, Chronology, Logic, and Rhetoric; also Writing, Arithmetic, Merchants Accounts, Geometry, Algebra, Surveying, Guaging, Navigation, Astronomy, Drawing in Perspective, and other mathematical Sciences; with natural and mechanical 27

JOHN MORGAN: CONTINENTAL

DOCTOR

Philosophy, &c. . . . at the Rate of Four Pounds per annum, and Twenty Shillings entrance. 15 T h e Academy was successful from the beginning. W i t h i n a year there were 145 students, who came from as far away as the West Indies and included two M o h a w k Indians sent to Philadelphia by Conrad Weiser to learn English. In 1754 the Trustees appointed as provost and teacher of logic, rhetoric, ethics, and natural philosophy a young graduate of the University of A b e r d e e n with original views on education. O u t of the Academy and around the character and personality of Provost W i l l i a m Smith there soon arose a college. T h e prospect of securing a baccalaureate degree by continuing literary studies in the very place where he was a medical student attracted Morgan. It was an ambitious program, but R e d m a n was willing to allow him the time he needed. 1 6 Little is known of the precise quality and extent of instruction in the College in these years. A l t h o u g h it was the intention of Franklin, a principal founder of the institution, that the course of instruction should be essentially an English one, designed to train young men for careers in business and civil office, the classical curriculum was dominant and modern subjects were not encouraged. T h e r e was one exception: the Provost lectured five or six weeks each spring on natural philosophy and demonstrated some of the basic experiments in physics. 17 From time to time, partly to test the students but more especially to advertise the work of the institution he directed, Provost Smith conducted public examinations and exhibitions. In these, two of Morgan's classmates usually had prominent roles: Jacob БисЬё, w h o had been a tutor in the Academy's Latin School, and Francis Hopkinson, son of the late T h o m a s Hopkinson, a lawyer who had been a trustee of the Academy; b u t in no published account of the exhibitions does John Morgan's name appear. Possibly this was because, unlike his classmates, he could not give all his time to college studies. By the spring of 1756, the class had reached the point where 28

Philadelphia

Boyhood

the Provost believed it was ready for final examination and graduation. Morgan did well and Smith commended him warmly for his "Genius & Application." But smallpox broke out in the city, and plans for the commencement were cancelled. J o h n Morgan had now acquired a fairly systematic working knowledge of medicine, and he had received a course of training in the liberal arts. T h e philosophical principles he had been taught and the medical texts he had read had given him a sound basis for practice. His observations at Redman's side and in the Hospital had provided him with as much practical experience as any apprentice was likely to get. Had his ambition or resources ended here, Morgan could have secured Redman's recommendation and become an acceptable, even a successful, practitioner, either in the neighboring counties or in Philadelphia itself. B u t Morgan's ambition did not stop here. On May 1, 1756, he informed the Managers of the Hospital "that he had a prospect of Business more advantageous than his present Employment & desired to be discharged." T h e Managers released him from his post and ordered the treasurer to pay him £ 1 6 5s. for thirteen months' service. 18

29

Chapter

2

Frontier Surgeon

THE

PROSPECT

OF

MORE ADVANTAGEOUS

EMPLOYMENT

WAS

AS

regimental surgeon of Pennsylvania Provincial troops. T w o years before, in 1754, French and Virginia forces had clashed on the southern approaches to the Forks of the Ohio; less than a year before, leading his army against Fort Duquesne, which the French had built at the Forks, the English General Braddock had met death in battle ten miles short of his goal. T h e war which thus began in the American forests erupted in new conflicts in Europe, Asia, and the West Indies. Britain had to defend its empire and Pennsylvania its frontiers. T h a t colony was especially deeply involved, since the key to the western country which both England and France claimed lay within the area whose ownership it disputed with Virginia. T o Philadelphia, therefore, on business with the Pennsylvania Assembly came a succession of officers of the Crown and representatives of neighboring colonies. At each arrival rumors and alarms ran through the city, mingling with authentic intelligence to add the color and confusion of wartime to the quieter patterns of the Quaker City. In one letter to a friend, Morgan reported that " M r . Franklyn" had come to town from Fort Allen, where he had left the men in high spirits, and that Major Washington was in Philadelphia on some Business with our Assembly, but what it is I cant say; but Conjecture that he wants his Hands strengthen'd that he may be enabled to distress the French & Indians in their Interest towards 30

Frontier

Surgeon

Fort Duquesne. This seems more probable, as he has lately been into the Country of the Cherokees, 8c 'tis said that they have offer'd to go out in very large Bodies, & resolve if possible to Penetrate even Fort Duquesne if they receive suitable Encouragement.

As he watched these men come and go Morgan felt the pleasant sensation of being near important decisions and great actions. But for bright uniforms, military dash and swagger, he had a civilian's scorn and envy: The Officers in Town seem to do much more Execution amongst the Girls than ever they did among the Indians, & if they dont leave their Hearts quite behind them, I hope they will give the pretty Nymphs, as good Proofs of their Courage next Campaign in the Field of Mars, as they have done here of their Feats under the Banner of Venus. 1 Already, in January 1756, the Iroquois had requested Governor Morris to construct a fort at the junction of the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna, which the Indians called Shamokin. In March, recruiting officers in Philadelphia had begun to enlist men in Colonel Clapham's battalion for the purpose. In the Provincial military service Morgan saw an opportunity both to extend his professional experience and to support himself on the modest but regular salary of a military surgeon. It was not difficult for a man with his training to obtain the appointment. A t the same time, friends secured an ensign's commission for him so that he might have the rank and income of an officer. T h e focus of medical care in the Provincial troops was the regimental hospital and its surgeon, who was assisted by mates appointed as need arose. Unlike the British establishment, no examination was required, with the result that the Provincial regiments were staffed with ill-trained, often untrained, surgeons and mates. T h e appointment of a good man like Morgan was more the result of accident than of any sound program of recruitment. O n e reason military service was so unattractive to physicians was that the pay was poor; old soldiers could remem-

31

J O H N MORGAN: CONTINENTAL

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ber when a surgeon in the British army received no more than a subaltern and usually less than a chaplain. Another reason was his status in the regiment—so low that in the regular army the youngest ensign might give him orders and the colonel might have him flogged like a common soldier. Even in Morgan's time a surgeon could achieve a respectable status and income only by adding an ensign's commission to his professional appointment. Small wonder, then, that the director of British army hospitals in North America complained to General Amherst in 1762 that it was hard to get "Physical people" to join the service. In the British army, general hospitals were established only in time of war. Some physicians and officers opposed them even then, believing them to be less healthful than the smaller regimental hospitals, which were likely to be airier and cleaner. This view was warmly supported by Sir John Pringle, formerly physician-general of the British armies in the Low Countries, who asserted unequivocally that it was desirable to carry "at all times, as many of the sick along with their regiments as can easily be transported." Pringle's recommendations carried great weight with the army surgeons in America. 2 What this meant on the American frontier, where a regiment might be divided into small detachments, was that the surgeon made his headquarters with the regimental commander but traveled from post to post where sickness broke out. Medical provisions in the separate units of a regiment were like those of an aid post or temporary sick ward; detachments were generally without a surgeon, often without a mate. T h e sick and wounded were thus often left untended for days at a time, except that serious and persistent cases might be evacuated to a main regimental hospital at a permanent camp to the rear. In these circumstances a medical vade-mecum like the Medulla Medicinae Universae: or, A New Compendious Dispensary, prepared by order of the commanding general of the British army and published in 1747, was indispensable. Designed for both military surgeons and intelligent non-commissioned officers when no 32

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surgeon was present, this little volume contained lists of simple and compound medicines, prescriptions, and diseases with their indicated treatments. Morgan's appointment was made on May 4. T h e next three weeks he passed in busy preparations to join his regiment. For his surgeon's chest he purchased from Dr. Redman's shop medicines and instruments to the value of £40 15s. H e packed these, his clothing, some books and other belongings into a bag, a bundle, and a caskhead and, by B e n j a m i n Franklin's kindness, sent them forward to Harris's Ferry on the Susquehanna. Just before he set out from Philadelphia he received his commission as ensign, signed by Governor Robert H u n t e r Morris on May 24. From this time forward John Morgan appears in the military records of the Province sometimes as Doctor, sometimes as Ensign. 3 Morgan had scarcely reported at Fort Hunter, the general rendezvous of Clapham's battalion a few miles above Harris's Ferry, w h e n the troops advanced up the river to Armstrong's. T h e camp there was a busy place. Carpenters sawed and hammered timbers for boats and g u n carriages. A t the river's edge, under the early summer sun, the quartermaster's men tugged at the boxes and barrels of flour and flints and other supplies which twenty bateaux and two canoes were fetching up regularly from Fort H u n t e r and Harris's Ferry. Settlers who had fled their frontier farms in fear of the savages n o w began to return, taking confidence from the presence of the troops. 4 H e r e Ensign Morgan performed military duties, while Doctor M o r g a n tended the men who came down with fever and dysentery, and packed and repacked his drugs and instruments for the next march. John Morgan remembered his friends in Philadelphia, wrote Provost Smith a letter full of gratitude for his teacher's interest in him. Smith replied with a warm, encouraging note. You do me no more than Justice to own I was anxious for your making a Figure at our public Examination. This you did; but it 33

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was o w i n g more to y o u r own G e n i u s & A p p l i c a t i o n , than any End e a v o u r s of m i n e . Y o u r Expressions of G r a t i t u d e speak the G o o d ness of y o u r H e a r t ; b u t my Services to y o u h a v e n o t been so disinterested as you imagine. I have a h i g h e r D e m a n d u p o n y o u than any pecuniary R e t u r n w h i c h your present or f u t u r e Fortunes w i l l ever enable y o u to give. ' T i s y o u r F r i e n d s h i p , & constant Endeavours to act a w a r m 8c w o r t h y part in every u s e f u l Scene of L i f e ; b o t h w h i c h I d o u b t not of o b t a i n i n g . 5

Early in July, leaving a small garrison at Armstrong's with a civilian complement to complete the fort, Colonel C l a p h a m ordered his battalion to proceed overland and by bateaux to Shamokin at the Forks of the Susquehanna. Shamokin was one of the most strategic locations in Pennsylvania's western country. Here the North Branch of the great river joined the West, and a portage of only twenty miles bound the West Branch to the headwaters of the Allegheny. Several important Indian trails converged at Shamokin, tying that region to the Six Nations' homeland in N e w York and to the great Indian town of Kittanning to the westward. T h e area was thus a natural focus of French and Indian hostility and a natural base from which to thwart the enemy's designs. By mid-July Clapham's battalion was encamped at Shamokin and had begun the construction of the fort, which was named Augusta. T h o u g h Clapham was a good Indian fighter in a forest, he was unsuited to the unexciting tasks of garrison life. H e was soon damning the Provincial service, which gave h i m neither materials for his work nor thanks for his "incredible Fatigues," and threatening to leave it to become an Indian trader. He did not push the men to complete the fort; he neglected to drill them. T o w a r d s his fellow-officers he was quarrelsome and abusive, cursed them all as a pack of rascals, and even threw some into the guard-house. From such treatment only Morgan and another ensign were excepted. T h e y were the colonel's favorites. Clapham's disaffection and inability to handle his officers were revealed a few weeks after Morgan joined the battalion. Visiting the camp at Shamokin on July 12, the paymaster in34

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formed the officers that they would be paid at the rate of 5s. 6d. a day for lieutenants and 4s. for ensigns, instead of 7s. 6d. and s. 6d., as they believed they had been promised. " T h e whole Corps of officers were much displeased," observed Captain Joseph Shippen, Jr. Clapham joined in the complaints of unjust treatment by the Province. T h e next day, following the colonel's bad example, the "Gentlemen Officers . . . Unanimously Determin'd not to serve longer on these terms," approved a remonstrance to the Governor, and asked leave to resign on August 20. Every officer at Fort Augusta, including John Morgan, signed the protest, which was carried to the Governor with an insulting letter from Clapham. T h e Governor denied that he had promised officers the higher pay and declared that, in any case, in view of the condition of the defenses, he would accept no resignations before Fort Augusta was completed. Perhaps by now ashamed of their conduct, Morgan and his brother officers silently acquiesced and continued at their posts. Clapham, however, was unmollified; taking leave at the end of the year, he resigned from the service soon afterwards, unregretted.® His successor, Major James Burd, pushed the fort to completion as rapidly as the weather allowed. He ordered general parades, inspected weapons and equipment, drilled and trained the men. T h e "heaps of nusances" which Clapham had allowed to accumulate were carted away. Details were sent to cut firewood and to hunt for game in the neighboring fields and forests. Burd even ordered regular church services and directed Morgan to preach and read prayers until a proper chaplain could arrive. 7 But the care of bodies—not souls—was Morgan's principal responsibility. Shamokin was so unhealthful that even the Indians were said to quit the place in August and September. Salt meat and ill-heated barracks in winter produced scurvy, dysentery, and fevers. There was no fresh meat except occasional small game, and no fresh vegetables at all. Only the officers enjoyed the few eggs Colonel Clapham's chickens laid and the 35

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little milk "the province C o w " produced. 8 T h e hospital was filled as soon as it was completed in J a n u a r y . It proved to have been badly constructed, with such poor drainage that water collected in pools beneath the flooring. When several men died early in February, Morgan insisted to Major B u r d that fresh meat and vegetables must be found. Fully agreeing, Burd replied that he intended to move the hospital to Fort Halifax or Fort Hunter as soon as the weather permitted. Unless that were done, Morgan assured him, "many would loose their lives." 9 T w o weeks later, on February 23, Morgan carried the sick down the river. At Fort H a l i f a x he found men suffering from scurvy, "their teeth ready to drop out of their mouths and their flesh as black as coal." From Fort Hunter on March 11 he sent B u r d a full report: On my Arrival here, the Number of Sick amounted to 24, two of them are since dead, vizt Nicholas Balitz who grew worse upon his Removal, 8c died in a few Days after. The other is John Doughartv of Capt. Lloyd's Сотру, whose Death, I am sorry to say it, was in my Opinion, owing to Excess of Liquor. T h e Number of Patients now on my List are Ten, most of them in a good Way of Recover), exclusive of two or three with sore legs, all of them on the mending Hand. There remain at present but four in the Hospital; who may be call'd bad & I am in great hopes that a few Days longer will make a considerable Alteration in their Cases for the better. One of the Four is John Watkins of the Col's Company: I am afraid a Return to Shamokin would be very prejudicial to him, 8c as his Time will be out the first of April, he begs that I would intercede with You to send him down a Discharge, or if you please a Furlough to go home for the Recovery of his Health, which I am of Opinion is the only probable Method of obtaining any Considerable Benefit, as he can there be supply'd with many Conveniences which he must want here, 8c he is not likely of doing any Service in the Regiment. Mr. Crostin has not been here since I came down, so that I have been oblig'd to procure Necessaries for the Sick at my own Expence, tho' not without great Difficulty. 10 While he was at Fort Augusta, Morgan was the principal actor in two incidents, of which one was at worst serious, the other at best thoughtless. On some occasion he refused to act as 36

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captain of the guard in his turn. Although he held an ensign's commission, he asserted he was in fact the surgeon of the regiment and in that capacity should be required to perform none but professional duties. A surgeon's first responsibility, he pointed out, was to the sick and wounded, and he should have no other. Major Burd could have replied that to act as captain of the guard would not interfere with Morgan's medical work, that anyhow he had performed regular military duties for almost a year while the battalion had been at Fort Augusta. Morgan was adamant, Burd considered that the discipline of the battalion was involved, but, after consulting Captain Shippen, wisely resolved not to make an issue. Old Edward Shippen of Lancaster, to whom both Burd and Shippen reported the matter, approved their decision, saying that as Morgan was a Gentleman of good parts, and of pretty school education, he will improve that act of indulgence to his own advantage; first of all, the thoughts of it will fill him with Shame as you had no regard to the Lex talionis; and then if he has any ingenuity he will naturally at his leisure make a proper Concession, and behave . . . excessively well for the future. T h e elder Shippen's estimation proved to be sound. A t least Major Burd later commended Morgan as " A Gentleman of Education & does his duty very well." T h e second episode in which Morgan was involved was an act of petty selfishness of the kind which lonely, hungry soldiers sometimes commit, but their fellows do not forget. During Colonel Clapham's absence from camp in the winter of 175657, John Morgan and Ensign McKee lived, by the Colonel's permission, in his quarters. In a small pen outside several hens belonging to Clapham each week laid a few eggs, which were one of the most welcome additions to the officers' mess. Unable to resist the tempting thought of fried chicken, Morgan and two others secretly killed and cooked the birds, but shared the delicacy with none. T h e diners paid for their feast the next day; but an attack of intestinal "gripes," the other officers muttered angrily, was too light a punishment for such a deed. 11 37

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T h r o u g h the late winter of 1757 Morgan looked forward to visiting Philadelphia in May. C o l o n e l C l a p h a m had promised h i m leave; he hoped, he told M a j o r B u r d , nothing would hinder his g o i n g as he planned, "as I have a pressing Call there on several Accounts; amongst others, I want if possible to get a fresh Supply of Medicines. . . ." A n o t h e r reason, of which he said nothing, was to attend the College commencement to receive his degree. B u r d was not sure he could spare his surgeon—Fort Augusta had forty sick on A p r i l 6, many with dysentery and scurvy. A n x i o u s to have h i m at the C o m m e n c e m e n t , Morgan's friends in Philadelphia appealed to the G o v e r n o r in his behalf, then to B u r d himself. O n May 1 the R e v e r e n d R i c h a r d Peters, Secretary of the Province and president of the C o l l e g e Trustees, wrote M a j o r B u r d : Dr. Morgan's Business very much requires his coming here & particularly his Attendance at the Commencement 8c I would fain have persuaded the Governor to order him down, but he did not chuse to do it, on receit of your Letters. I think if you woud so far favour him as immediately to order him on the Recruiting Service here it woud at this time be particularly kind & serviceable to him. You can judge best of the Circumstances of your Command but if those will admit his Friends here who are all yours desire that he may not let slip the taking his Degrees at the Commencement. 12 M a j o r B u r d accordingly ordered M o r g a n to Philadelphia on recruiting service. T h e C o m m e n c e m e n t exercises—in two parts, morning and afternoon—were held on M a y 17. W i t h full appreciation of the significance of the event, the Provost delivered a sermon in the m o r n i n g " O n the P l a n t i n g of the Sciences in A m e r i c a , and the Propagation of Christ's Gospel over the U n i n h a b i t e d Parts of the Earth." In the afternoon he charged the graduates: Consider yourselves, from this day, as distinguished above the vulgar, and called upon to act a more important part in life! Strive to shine forth in every species of moral excellence, and to support 38

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the character and dignity of beings f o r m e d f o r endless duration! T h e Christian world stands much in need of inflexible patterns of integrity and public virtue, and no part of it more so than the land you inhabit. 1 3

Morgan's military duties kept him in Philadelphia another two weeks. Happily, they were not absorbing, and he passed the time agreeably. On May 27, collecting his pay for a year, he found himself richer by £ 1 4 7 15s. 14 He visited relatives and friends, including Chief Justice Allen and Dr. Redman, relating experiences and observations in a region few of them had seen. At the Hopkinson home he again saw Molly, his classmate Francis's sister, now approaching fifteen. Early on the morning of June 4, with seventeen recruits in charge of two sergeants, Morgan turned back toward the frontier. At Lancaster he picked up ten more recruits who had been enlisted by Captain Shippen. T h e party reached Fort Augusta on June 24. T h e garrison was in a state of alarm, for only the day before the Indians had attacked the cattle guard and killed or wounded nine men. 15 Morgan visited the hospital at once. He kept busy all summer and fall. " T h e Extream Sickness of the Garrison" at Augusta continued, and increased daily at both Fort Hunter and Fort Halifax, where so many were down in August that the commanding officer was able to mount but two sentries and they were "geting sick dayly." With Burd's approval, Morgan engaged an assistant, partly at his own expense. There was now so much medical work to be done that Morgan had no time for the duties of an ensign. Accordingly he resigned his commission in September and at the same time asked the Governor to authorize a surgeon's mate. T h e Governor supplied a stock of medicines, but refused to accept Morgan's resignation, suggesting that he employ an assistant out of his combined pay as surgeon and ensign. On April 1, 1758, Morgan was commissioned a lieutenant, and the increased income made it easier for him to provide the assistance he needed. 18 Events on the western frontier now began to take a new turn. 39

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T h e energetic measures adopted by William Pitt were showing results in America as elsewhere in the world-wide war with France. England passed from the defensive to the offensive as heavy attacks were projected against Louisbourg, Quebec, and Fort Duquesne. Brigadier John Forbes was sent to the frontiers with orders to destroy the Indians' power in the West and dislodge the French from the Forks of the Ohio. With his coming, the posts awakened to new activity in the spring and summer of 1758. An air of expectancy hung over the Pennsylvania forests. Couriers sped tirelessly along the roads and woodland paths. Supplies were mounted. Troops assembled for the advance. T h e major portion of the Augusta garrison marched to Carlisle on May 24. Ordered to accompany the regiment westward, Morgan stripped the medical stores of everything he might need for sick and wounded, to the dismay of his successor when he discovered the depleted stocks. Morgan soon had use for all his supplies. Dysentery broke out among the troops at Carlisle in July, dysentery and smallpox at Raystown. Morgan did as much as he could, but he could not be everywhere, and troops at distant posts often went without medical care. Hearing there were surgeons farther east, Colonel Hugh Mercer, who had been treating the sick in his own regiment, asked sarcastically whether the Province paid surgeons to frolic their time away in quarters, "when the lives entrusted to their care, demand their attendance upon the frontiers." 17 Despite sickness among the troops and the General's own illness, Forbes's troops moved westward with mounting confidence. By mid-August more than 2500 men were at Raystown, and the engineers were cutting a road to the Loyalhanna. Here, some forty miles from Duquesne, a fort was begun in a strategic situation. What made it more attractive, Major Burd told his wife, was "the western breezes carrying with them the Smell of French Brandy." 1 8 From the camp on the Loyalhanna, on September 9, Major James Grant led a force of 800 Highland and Provincial troops against the French. Intoxicated by the 40

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western breezes, Grant incautiously exceeded his instructions, was ambushed, and lost about a third of his force. As the exhausted, frightened survivors were fleeing back into camp, Morgan wrote a report to a friend: The whole fought bravely. T h e Officers animated the Soldiers by their Example, & the Soldiers fought resolutely for their Officers, but after an Engagement of near an hour in which Time they kill'd great Numbers of the Enemy they were entirely surrounded by their superior Force, which was strengthened every moment from the Fort, & were oblig'd to give Way; some of them took to Trees & renew'd the Battle, but were overpower'd by their amazing Numbers &: most of them Cut off. The Officers expos'd themselves in a particular manner & few of them escap'd. There is scarcely a Captain remaining among them. A strong Detachment has been sent from hence to cover their Retreat. I hope they will save Numbers . . . but by a Soldier who made his Escape here I am told that the Enemy persued 8c tomahawk'd all the wounded for ten Miles. This is the first Intelligence, but I hope it is not so bad. 19 H e could write n o more, he explained, for he was getting his kit ready, expecting to be sent forward that very day to care for the wounded. T h e main army under Forbes reached Bedford on September 15. T h o u g h drawn on a horse litter, the General was in good spirits, determined to push forward as far and as fast as he could. O n October 12, 1400 French and Indians attacked M a j o r B u r d with great fury on the Loyalhanna. " B u t in return for their most immelodious Indian Musick," B u r d reported with grim humor, "I gave them a N u m b e r of shells from our Morters which made them retreat soon." 2 0 O n N o v e m b e r 3, the army reached Fort Ligonier on the Loyalhanna. T h r e e weeks later, still steadily building his road before him while protecting his communications behind, Forbes arrived at Fort Duquesne. Unable to defend it, the French had abandoned the post. N e x t day the British marched into the smoking ruins and at once set about rebuilding the fortification. T h e y renamed it Fort Pitt. 2 1 41

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Morgan spent most of the winter of 1758-59 at Fort Bedford. There, as elsewhere among the western posts, shelter and clothing were inadequate. Not even in the hospital were there blankets. T h e troops at Ligonier suffered so badly from jaundice that their commanding officer pleaded that the garrison be relieved so the men might forage for cider and fresh vegetables to restore their health for the next campaign. Sickness and hard duty, Captain Lloyd reported to Burd in April, had carried most of Burd's old battalion to the grave. 22 During the spring and summer of 1759 Morgan traveled among the frontier posts. As least once he was sent to Carlisle in response to Colonel Armstrong's plea that he attend the latter's troops and family, who were suffering from measles. Late in the fall he was again in the west, at Fort Bedford. Meanwhile at the Forks of the Ohio Fort Pitt was nearing completion. General Stanwix, who took command in the late summer of 1759, hoped that by the beginning of the year it would be strong enough to maintain "undisputed possession of the Ohio." 23 Part of this strength would come from an adequate provision of medical services. T w o surgeons—Morgan and John Blair—were at Fort Bedford in mid-December when Stanwix's order was received to send a surgeon to Fort Pitt. It was Morgan's turn to go forward, and Blair was anxious to get a leave to Carlisle, where his family were reported to be in a distressed situation. But Colonel Armstrong had promised Morgan a month's leave in Philadelphia. Neither the medical needs at Fort Pitt nor a fellow-soldier's distress meant anything to Morgan. He protested against being ordered to the Ohio, held Colonel Armstrong to his promise, and went off to Philadelphia. "Had I seen Dr. Morgan," Armstrong wrote Colonel Shippen at Fort Bedford, " I cou'd in a Moment have convinc'd him, that a Short T o u r at that place, wou'd have best Answer'd all his purposes, publick & private, Male, & Female. Please pay him my Compliments." 24 In the late winter of 1760 orders came to disband the Pro42

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vincial forces. T h e war was over in America. There was no further opportunity for Morgan to increase his medical experience as a military surgeon. He must either settle in his profession—he was twenty-five—or get a medical degree abroad. In the army he had met English surgeons, seen them practice, watched them operate. They had assured him that only in Europe could a physician acquire the training and the diploma needed to carry him to the top of the profession. T h e older doctors in Philadelphia—Redman and the other Hospital physicians—had studied abroad. Morgan decided to do what they had done, what his fellow-student young William Shippen was already doing—study anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics in London. He resolved to achieve a reputation as great as any physician in Philadelphia—or greater. It was an agreeable spring for Morgan, filled with dreams and aspirations and with the hard facts that were making those dreams real. T h e College made him a master of arts on May 1. He courted Mary Hopkinson, now seventeen, and she gave him a miniature of herself and a promise to marry him when he returned from Europe.

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3

London Friends and Physic

MORGAN

SAILED

FROM

PHILADELPHIA

IN

MAY

1760.

SAFELY

packed in his bags with a dozen letters for William Shippen were introductions to Thomas Penn, Principal Proprietor of Pennsylvania, to Silvanus and Timothy Bevan, the prominent Quaker merchant-apothecaries whose drugs he had compounded as an apprentice at the Pennsylvania Hospital, and to Pennsylvania's agent in London, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. London in 1760 was nearing the peak of its eighteenthcentury glory. This was Britain's great day, halfway between the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the Great War of the French Revolution and Napoleon. T h e accession of George III at last brought an English king to the British throne, Canada and India were both now Britain's, and English liberty and empire were the pride of the nation and the envy and fear of Europe. Ships of the whole world came and went at the bustling wharves of London. Humanitarian impulses were breaking out in a dozen projects for the improvement of men and institutions. Garrick was playing in Drury Lane, Johnson had published his dictionary, the fashionable of London whom Reynolds painted strolled along the walks and heard the music of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, while the crowds listened to Wesley and Whitefield preach in Moorfields. Brilliant capital of a proud empire, London had a special meaning for Americans, for London was the capital of Britain and Britain to a colonial was home. No matter to Morgan that 44

London Friends and Physic he had no close relations there, Britain was the country from which his grandparents had come, the country he and his class in Philadelphia held to be a very model and standard in a hundred things. Americans knew England from their parents' stories and the correspondence which so many maintained with cousins or the merchants of London and Bristol. Though some things were strange, as Connecticut's ways were strange to a Virginian, coming to England for Morgan was like coming home. He would make the most of the hospitality and opportunities that might be offered him, for having been "home to England" would add to his reputation when he began practice in Philadelphia. London offered medical students unequaled facilities for study, for the city was not all wit and brilliance. Gin Lane was thronged with the awful procession of the improvident, sick and poor. The streets served as sewers. Half the infants born died before they were five; only now after mid-century were deaths beginning to fall below the number of births in the "great wen" of England. Dysentery, typhus and typhoid, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, deformities, and the cruel fractures of the draymen and carters filled the hospitals of the great metropolis with such a number and variety of cases as Morgan could not see in all America in a whole lifetime of practice.1 Morgan arrived in midsummer. He spent most of the first week finding lodgings, delivering the letters he carried, presenting himself to those to whom he brought introductions. Dr. Franklin in Craven Street, full of friendly advice to a fellowtownsman who was also the son of an old friend, sent Morgan at once to Dr. John Fothergill, instructing him to follow Fothergill's recommendations as to a course of medical study. Dr. Fothergill personified much that was best in eighteenthcentury England. Prominent as a physician, he was an accomplished man of science as well, and his unflagging concern for the Quakers' Holy Experiment made him an influential figure in the later history of colonial Philadelphia. 2 A graduate of Edinburgh in 1736, Fothergill had established his professional 45

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reputation in the ensuing twenty years by contributions to medical literature and devoted service to the poor. He soon had one of the largest practices in London. A wide correspondence with physicians and men of science in Europe and America— among them Franklin, Cadwallader Colden of New York, and Dr. Lionel Chalmers of Charleston—kept him informed of the world of medicine and natural philosophy. On his estate at Upton he cultivated American plants, which he received through Peter Collinson from J o h n Bartram. His library contained a collection of drawings of natural objects which at his death Catherine of Russia purchased for some £2300, while his private museum contained specimens of shells, minerals, animals, and reptiles from all over the world. It was his agreeable practice to send young medical students down to the wharves to bring him as quickly as possible the exotic specimens ordered from America and the East. In general Fothergill preferred students to get a season of practical work in London, taking a course in anatomy from a private teacher and walking the wards of one of the hospitals, before proceeding to Edinburgh for the theoretical courses leading to a medical degree. On his advice Morgan registered as a pupil at St. Thomas's Hospital, where Fothergill himself had studied. 3 As a hospital pupil in the winter of 1760-61, Morgan's "business" was "only to look on, and to make such an enquiry as he shall chuse of the surgeon who is there attending." Morgan attended the hospital on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the sick were received and the outpatients were prescribed for, and on Saturdays, when the entire medical and surgical staffs—carrying their gold-headed canes—made a solemn progress through the wards, consulting together on every difficult case or where surgery was indicated. When an operation was to be performed, a notice was posted on the operating-room door, and all pupils attended who wished. When an accident case was brought in, if there was time, an attendant called the "surgery-man" gave Morgan 46

London Friends and Physic and the other pupils personal notice. T h o u g h surgery in the days before anesthesia and antisepsis was often cruel and always dangerous, St. Thomas's had a good record for successful operations, especially for removal of stones in the bladder. Relatively few post-mortem examinations were made, however, because permissions were hard to get. Because so few were possible, some physicians and many students inclined to think them of little value. 4 While Morgan was walking the wards at St. Thomas's he was also a student of Dr. William Hunter, most famous and ablest of the private teachers of anatomy in London. When Morgan became his pupil, Hunter was already preparing his great \vork on the anatomy of the gravid uterus, and his reputation as a manmidwife was sealed in the following year by his appointment as physician-extraordinary to the Queen, with "sole direction of Her Majesty's health as a child-bearing Lady." As a student Hunter had attended "one of the most reputable courses of Anatomy in Europe"; yet the professor had had only one dead body on which to demonstrate the organs and a foetus for the nervous system, while the operations of surgery were explained on the body of a dog. Anatomy in London was no better taught: the best professor had only two bodies for an entire course. " T h e consequence was, that at one of these places, all Avas harangue; very little was distinctly seen: in the other, the course was contracted into too small a compass of time, and therefore several material parts of Anatomy were left out entirely." 5 Hunter himself had changed all this. Where his teachers of 1740 had had only one or two bodies to demonstrate, Hunter now provided a constant supply for his students. T h e y had treated the subject of anatomy in less than forty lectures; Hunter lectured twice as often and each lecture lasted two hours. His course, which generally began in October and continued, with a short break at the middle of January, until late spring, consisted of eighty-six lectures on the anatomy of the 47

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circulatory system, glands, bones, muscles, internal organs, nerves, and the operations of surgery from amputations to sutures, including instructions in bandaging. 0 For this talented Scot Morgan acquired a deep respect, and, like other students in Hunter's school, adopted for his own his master's encouraging cry, " G o on and prosper!" 7 W h e n the lectures began Morgan moved into apartments attached to the lecture room and laboratory in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, where Hunter's brother John also lived. Shippen had lived there the year he studied with Dr. Hunter. One of Morgan's fellow-lodgers was William Hewson, an able and promising anatomist whom Dr. Hunter put in charge of the dissecting room when Mr. Hunter, fatigued by pneumonia and overwork, went abroad with the army. Left without his brother's aid in the laboratory, Dr. Hunter felt himself unable to cope with both his teaching and the demands of an ever-growing practice. He decided to give up his lectures after the fall term of 1760. T h e students were dismayed. Rallied by John Morgan and some others, they begged Hunter to continue, and Hunter acquiesced. T h e students responded gratefully by subscribing for a handsome, finely chased silver loving cup which Morgan as their spokesman presented with a generously-worded address in token of appreciation. 8 Morgan's days in London were filled with hospital observation, Hunter's lectures, and laboratory dissection. Evenings he transcribed his notes, discussed medicine and surgery with Hewson or, occasionally, with Dr. Hunter himself. Joseph Shippen, passing through London in January 1761, reported that his old comrade-in-arms was "as industrious as a Bee under Dr. Hunter's anatomical operations & Lectures." 9 How to make anatomical preparations by injection and corrosion John Morgan learned from Dr. Hunter and Mr. Hunter —"those unrivalled brothers in anatomical skill," he called them. By this method the vessels of an organ were filled with a warm liquid, which hardened as it cooled; the organ was then

48

London

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placed in an acid bath which ate away the tissues, leaving only a cast of the vessels. W i t h preparations of this kind anatomists could illustrate the delicate interlacings of the arteries, veins, and capillaries as they could not do with ordinary dissections. T h e art of anatomical injection had developed in the seventeenth century as a result of Harvey's demonstration of the circulation of the blood. Almost every anatomist in Holland and England had experimented with making such preparations, which Hunter called one of the most important advances in anatomy in that century, an improvement that had "really been of infinite use . . . especially in the hands of teachers." Some important discoveries were made through anatomical injections. T h e bronchial arteries, for example, were revealed; the connection between the vas deferens, epididymis, and testis was demonstrated; questions about the circulation of the blood itself were answered. Yet, however skilfully these preparations were made, the smallest injected vessels could be studied only if the surrounding tissues were transparent. W h a t was needed was a method to free the injected vessels from the matter through which they ran. Dr. Frank Nicholls, a lecturer on anatomy in London, seems to have been the first to prepare injected vessels by corrosion; he may have been the first in the world to prepare the smallest vessels in this way. One of his students was William Hunter. H u n t e r developed more delicate techniques. Where Nicholls had used wax, resin, and turpentine, Hunter discovered a superior fluid could be made from a mixture of glue, isinglass or gum arabic, and turpentine thickened with a little resin. Using corroded preparations to supplement the fresh cadaver, William Hunter demonstrated their usefulness almost daily. Unlike some earlier injectors who kept their methods secret, he devoted several lectures each year to the process of injection and corrosion, assuring his students "there is no making a good practical anatomist without it." 1 0 Under Hunter's instructions Morgan became skilled in making such preparations. H e appre-

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ciated how he could use them in teaching medical students in America. Twenty-five years later he wrote a detailed account of the technique, f u l l of practical advice f o r A m e r i c a n anatomists. . . . by dissection, the larger vessels only are preserved from the knife, and for the most part all the smaller are unavoidably cut away. On the contrary, in anatomical preparations by corrosion, even the very small vessels may be kept entire, and we can see, at a cast of the eye, the course and distribution of all the vascular system even to the size of an hair, called capillary vessels, and those too disengaged from the surrounding parts, which otherwise wholly conceal, or make them difficult to be perceived. It is impossible that with only the assistance of a dissecting knife, any person should be able to lay open to view all those smaller vessels, however skilful and experienced the hand may be that directs it. T h e exact and perfect imitation of nature which this sort of preparation presents, the ease with which they are made, and their extraordinary beauty and neatness, render a knowledge of this art so much the more desirable. 1 1 In addition to studying with the Hunters in L o n d o n d u r i n g the winter of 1760-61, M o r g a n spent some time d u r i n g the following summer in C a m b r i d g e and O x f o r d , where he was "principal dissector to the celebrated doctors C o l l i g n o n and S m i t h . " T h e s e preceptors were Charles Collignon, professor of anatomy at C a m b r i d g e since 1 7 5 3 , the author of several short and inconsequential treatises on anatomy, and Dr. W i l l i a m Smith, surgeon of O x f o r d , who was admitted a m e m b e r of the University in 1764. Morgan could work only a few weeks with each man, but that was long enough to add O x f o r d and Cambridge to the list of his academic honors. 1 2 As an A m e r i c a n J o h n M o r g a n moved in a well-defined social and political circle. F o r letters, news, and companionship he went regularly to the Pennsylvania C o f f e e House in Birchins L a n e , off Fleet Street. H e dined several times with the Proprietor T h o m a s Penn, w h o was " v e r y much pleased" with h i m . 1 3 H e was often a visitor at Plough Court, L o m b a r d Street, where 50

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Silvanus and Timothy Bevan conducted their pharmaceutical business; and sometimes of a Sunday afternoon they all went out to Silvanus' country place at Hackney, where Morgan relaxed, played with Timothy's seven-year-old son Joseph Gurney Bevan, and talked of Pennsylvania and America. Like John Fothergill, the Bevans were Friends; as purveyors to the Pennsylvania Hospital they had a special interest in the Quaker City and its citizens.14 Although the Bevans introduced Morgan to others who were interested in medicine and science, they never made him part of that tightly-knit society which revolved about Gracechurch Street and the Devonshire Meeting, for he was not a Quaker. He was, nonetheless, an intimate in the household of the Quaker hosier Robert Crafton, described as "a gay, sensible and indeed witty Gentleman [with] a great stock of Spirits and very entertaining," who drew all the Americans in London to his home in Chapel End, Moorfields. 15 Americans always had a cordial welcome from Dennys DeBerdt, a merchant in the North American trade, later special agent for Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia at the time of the Stamp Act appeals. At the DeBerdts* town house in Artillery Court or at their house at Enfield, ten miles in the country, Morgan might find William Shippen or Thomas Ruston of Philadelphia, Arthur Lee of Virginia, and other medical students. Samuel Powel, a wealthy young Philadelphian making a leisurely journey through Britain and Europe, was often a visitor at DeBerdt's. There, among informed and sympathetic friends, the young men discussed American affairs, Parliament's policy toward their country, their own ambitions for it. They enjoyed an agreeable social life as well: to Esther DeBerdt Morgan wrote gratefully of "the pleasing Scenes of Enfield or Artillery Court" and the "hours of Satisfaction & delight which your hospitable roof afforded," and Joseph Reed of New Jersey, a student at the Middle Temple, eventually married her. 16 As Morgan's second summer in England drew to a close and he was preparing to go to Edinburgh, London was engulfed in 51

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the pageantry of the king's coronation. T o Morgan the people seemed coronation-mad. C o u n t r y noblemen and distinguished foreigners crowded into the city to see the show. Lodgings could hardly be found, and one person was reported to have refused five hundred guineas for the use of his house on Coronation Day. Morgan had a good view of a part of this "most magnificent, grand & pompous C e r e m o n y . " Dr. Shippen, (who arriv'd from Scotland but the Day before) & myself with a couple of Ladies, were happy eno' to have a good sight of the Procession, just opposite to Westminster Hall, which it came out of. It is impossible by words to give any Idea of the richness of the Coronation Robes of the King, the Queen, the Peers & Peeresses &c. or of the august appearance they all made. Nothing could Exceed it. I dont remember on any Occasion to have ever seen one fourth of the Number of People that had crouded together that day to get a sight of it. T h e Queen is rather a little woman than otherwise, Her Face not remarkably handsome, but has great Sweetness and affability in her Looks—a fine slender waste, her carriage, air & manners incomparably easy, & genteel; I think majestic—upon the whole an amiable woman to look at 8c one that at the same time seems to claim your Respect, and Command your Esteem. 17 Morgan and Shippen were together in L o n d o n for more than a month in September and October 1761. Morgan inquired eagerly about Edinburgh, the professors, the citizens he should meet, where he might find comfortable lodgings in a city notoriously ill provided with accommodations for travellers. T h e y o u n g men discussed their work—Morgan's in London, Shippen's in L o n d o n and Edinburgh. As they contrasted the advantages of Britain with the pitiful opportunities for medical education in America, they resolved to do something to improve them when they returned home. T a l k i n g about medical education in the colonies whenever they met during these weeks, they carried their concern and aspirations to Fothergill. T h e older man tempered their indignation and enthusiasm, helped them turn their soaring hopes into practicable goals, their goals into

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plans, and gave the plans his cautious approval. Morgan had come to London to prepare for practice; as he turned north toward Edinburgh he had another purpose—to fit himself for a career as a teacher of medicine in his own country. He made his farewells, packed his clothes and books, called for his letters of introduction. Dr. Franklin had several, the more valuable as he had visited Edinburgh only two years before. T o Dr. William Cullen of the Edinburgh Medical School Franklin presented Morgan as a young gentleman of Philadelphia, whom I have long known and greatly esteem; and as I interest myself in what relates to him, I cannot but wish him the advantage of your conversation and instructions. I wish it also for the sake of my country, where he is to reside, and where I am persuaded he will be not a little useful.18

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4

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M O R G A N MADE T H E J O U R N E Y T O EDINBURGH W I T H O U T STOPPING

to visit or sight-see on the way. Tired though he was when the coach finally rolled into the ancient Scottish city, he was struck by the most breath-taking skyline of all the capitals of Europe. Overlooking the city on the east was massive Arthur's Seat; dominating it on the west was the Edinburgh Rock itself with the grim castle standing guard above. T h e city was built on a narrow spine of land which fell away steeply on both sides, to the swampy Nor' Loch on the north, to the Meadows on the south. From the Castle this ridge descended for a mile, under the names of the High Street and the Canongate, until it splayed out in a plain at the foot of Arthur's Seat where Holyrood, the empty home of Scotland's vanished kings, marked the eastern extremity of the town. But if many visitors, like the English poet Thomas Gray, thought Edinburgh the most picturesque of capital cities from a distance, others thought it certainly the nastiest when near. For Edinburgh had grown up, not out. Clustering close to the Castle for protection, making use of every square foot of ground, reaching ever higher, six-, eight-, ten-, even twelve-storey tenements had arisen. What appeared to be tunnels through the walls of these houses on the main streets led to still other houses in dank, stinking wynds where no ray of sunlight fell, save briefly at high noon, and the very paving stones gave back the smells of centuries. Food and water had to be

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carried up the common stairs of these towering structures; each night the household slops were thrown into the streets and courts below, where every morning except Sunday the refuse \vas shoveled away. Though this foul practice was giving way to more sanitary arrangements, there were few citizens who had not been showered at least once in their lives with "the flowers of Edinburgh." Luckless students good-naturedly reported how they had received "the freedon of the city." 1 Morgan Avas driven through the Canongate, where ancient coats of arms carved above the doorways betokened the quality of some of the residents within, passed under the Netherbow Port in the eastern wall of the old city, and stood at last in the High Street proper. From the busy scene that met his eye he might have thought he was at a fair. In the narrow High Street, made narrower still by the market booths constructed in its center near St. Giles' Cathedral, the citizens of Edinburgh did most of their business and much of their social visiting. Morgan had come to the old Edinburgh, when few persons had yet moved from the High Street to the more spacious Brown and George Squares, before the "great flitting" to the New T o w n produced a major revolution in the manners and customs of the place. Judges in their wigs and advocates in their gowns, stately old ladies with pattens on their feet and canes in their hands moving with dignity down the steep declines or over filthy places, ministers in black gowns and bands, swaying sedan chairs carried by rough Highland porters shouting Gaelic warnings, here and there a hackney coach, and everywhere caddies scurrying on a dozen errands—the inhabitants mingled and jostled in intimate, friendly confusion on the street as they did in their tenements. But Morgan was tired. T h e sights, sounds, and smells of Edinburgh could wait. William Shippen had particularly recommended the house of Mrs. Stewart, a "room-setter" in World's End Close near the Netherbow Port. A caddy led Morgan there. On October 3 1 , he wrote Samuel Powel that he had 55

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arrived safely in Edinburgh; Powel in London drank a toast to his absent friend, "the honest little Man in the Land of Cakes." 2 T h e Edinburgh to which J o h n Morgan came in the fall of 1761 was entering on its golden age. By union with England in 1707 Scotland had lost its political independence irrevocably, as the failure of the Jacobite risings of 1 7 1 5 and 1745 clearly demonstrated. T h e great Parliament House off the High Street seemed too vast for the functions it housed. T h e energies the Scots formerly devoted to war and politics had now to find service with the English or be diverted into the ways of peace. Some took the road to London: Scotsmen set about learning English; philosophers, great ladies, and distinguished lawyers practiced English pronunciation like schoolboys learning Greek, and were much pleased when they could write a page without a single Scottish word. In Scotland the loss of political independence was followed after a generation by a magnificent intellectual flowering. Here, as nowhere else in the world, someone observed, one could walk a few blocks and grasp fifty men of genius by the hand. T h i s was the Edinburgh in which William Robertson, principal of the University after 1762, had completed his history of Scotland and would soon write his great histories of Charles V and of America. Robertson's good friend David Hume, who had won a reputation in philosophy, was now finishing a history of England. From the pulpit of the High Church of Edinburgh the Reverend Dr. Hugh Blair each week delivered sermons of an eloquence, Boswell heard someone say, that would stop hounds; while in his study Blair enthusiastically argued to believing friends that the poems of Ossian were the work of an actual but forgotten bard. Lord Kames of the Scottish bench, to whom Franklin had given Morgan an introduction, 3 published his Elements of Criticism in 1762. Another Scottish lawyer, Sir David Dalrymple, was collecting the annals of medieval and early modern Scotland; and the eccentric James Burnet, later

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Lord Monboddo, was writing a treatise on the origin of human language which would reach four volumes and advance the astonishing notion that men are descended from orang-utans. Professor Adam Smith of Glasgow and the Reverend John Home, extravagantly hailed as the Caledonian Shakespeare, were both well known in the city where they eventually made their homes. Intimations of genius were pricking at a young law student in Edinburgh whom Morgan probably met—James Boswell. And just outside the city Sir Alexander Dick, president of the Royal College of Physicians, kept hospitable state at Prestonfield for visitors to the northern capital. Presiding over all was that benign genius George Drummond, six times Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the very personification of public spirit. 4 Like the city itself, the University was approaching a pinnacle of fame. " ' T i s now in the zenith of its glory," one medical student wrote at this period. " T h e whole world I believe does not afford a set of greater men than are at present united in the College of Edinburgh." 5 Students came not only from the remotest parts of Scotland but from England and Ireland and from the Continent and from America as well. "Americans and West Indians," wrote a Danish student in 1765, "Portugese and Italians, Frenchmen and Englishmen, Irishmen and Dutchmen, Germans and Swiss, Russians and Danes wandered together" in the great fraternity of learning at Edinburgh. 6 Into this university John Morgan matriculated in the fall of 1761. With his fellow-students and the faculty he made his way through the cramped, decaying College Wynd. There was a little ceremony in the library. T h e Provost read the formal Latin obligation, asking each of the students to apply himself to his studies, obey the rules of the University and pay respect to its officers, and neither make nor participate in any riot or tumult. John Morgan stepped forward in his turn, took the pen and signed the matriculation book in his firm, clear hand. 7 T h e theory of medicine was probably taught better at Edinburgh than anywhere else in Europe. In London a student 57

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received practical instruction and experience, but the Scots presented medicine as a systematic science related to the great laws of natural philosophy. One of the influential eighteenth-century systems of medicine—John Brown's—was evolved at Edinburgh, and it was an Edinburgh graduate—Benjamin Rush—who devised another system, which dominated American practice for nearly two generations. London and Edinburgh thus complemented one another in medical education. Some students criticized their Edinburgh professors as being too fond of theory and speculation, but most Scots concurred in R o b e r t Whytt's warning, that "many of the English Physicians run down all Theory in Physic so much, that either they, or the Successors, if they tread their steps, will soon become mere Empiricks." 8 London hospital practice without Edinburgh lectures was, in the old analogy, like going to sea without having studied navigation; while to attend lectures in the Scottish university but never do practical anatomical and clinical work of the kind which London offered Avas like not going to sea at all. T h o u g h some preferred Edinburgh theory and others London practice, most of the Americans in this period, like J o h n Morgan, studied at both places. Emphasis on theory was not the only reason Edinburgh neglected the practical aspects of medicine, in comparison with London. T h e Scots prejudice against dissection severely limited anatomical demonstrations, making student work on "fresh subjects" virtually impossible. " A student would R u n the risk of being Banished, if not of his life," one American wrote home in 1763, "if it was known he had a Bodie in his possession." 9 As a result, a student counted himself fortunate if he could come by a skull and a few bones; any dissections he made were on animals. Even if this objection had not prevailed, Edinburgh's small population—no larger than Philadelphia's at this t i m e could not have provided enough material for the two hundred students who annually attended Monro's course in anatomy. A few criminals were condemned to be anatomized after execu58

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tior.; only rarely was there a suicide; occasionally but not often a post-mortem examination could be made at the Royal Infirmary by a member of the faculty or a favored pupil; and that was all. T h e Edinburgh Medical School originated in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when Sir Robert Sibbald, a graduate of Leyden and a prominent practitioner of Edinburgh, founded the Royal College of Physicians, and three other men, two of them graduates of Leyden and the third a former member of its faculty, were appointed professors of medicine by the Edinburgh T o w n Council. T h e professors received no salary and did little if any teaching. T h e Royal College was expressly forbidden by its charter to offer instruction, and so, despite brave beginnings, there was no proper medical school, and training remained largely a matter of individual interest and arrangement. In 1720, at the prompting of J o h n Monro, a retired military surgeon of good family, the T o w n Council appointed his son Alexander professor of anatomy. A student of Cheselden in London and of Boerhaave in Leyden, the young man had been trained for the post by his father. He lectured to fifty-seven students the first year, to 182 in 1749. Encouraged by Monro's success, four more physicians, all graduates of Leyden, in 1726 petitioned the T o w n Council to be named professors. This was done, and thus the Edinburgh Medical School was established. When J o h n Morgan matriculated at the University in 1 7 6 1 , Alexander Monro had been joined in the chair of anatomy by his son Alexander, denominated secundus.10 Abler than his father, he had studied in London with William Hunter, and at Leyden and Berlin. He had discovered the foramen of Monro and did original work on the lymphatics. A skilful demonstrator and popular lecturer, the younger Monro had the formal, slightly oracular manner which the taste of the time so highly approved, and for forty years his classes were thronged by students from half the countries of Europe and from America.

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Feeling that his anatomical training with the Hunters was sufficient, Morgan did not enroll in Monro's course at Edinburgh. He did, however, procure notes of the lectures. Monro secundus directed his first-year students to read Jean Palfyn, his second-year students to read Winslow. In sharp, concise vignettes he sketched the founders of anatomy. Vesalius, for example, was "the great restorer of Anatomy who first dared to contradict the received Infallability of Galen." In his plates every muscle was "swelling with Life," so that almost all others', compared with them, "became Paultry, & you cannot bear the Sight of them." Monro had the gift of quiet humor and striking statement which students remember. " T h a t our Body is a System of Pipes," he assured his classes, "is all we can, or need say of it: which you May equally assert of Vegitables: but we are Distinguished from Vegitables, by some Things, which Matter have not." His illustrations were likely to be memorable as well: " A Master of a small Vessel resisted a privateer of much superior Force. He was cut down with a Cutlass, the Wound about the Middle [of the] os Frontis." 1 1 Of all the members of the Edinburgh faculty William Gullen, who lectured on chemistry, made the deepest and most lasting impression. 12 His success was not owing to talents as a lecturer, for some thought him stiff and even a little dull on the platform; but his undoubted mastery of his subject, the clarity of his thought and speech, the charm of his personality swept all before him. He had a passion for systematizing and his lectures were famous for logical organization as well as for content. As a teacher he used to call students up before the whole class to question and examine them—an experience from which they learned more than chemistry. Morgan had heard about this remarkable teacher from Franklin, who had met him two years before, from Shippen and from the Americans already at Edinburgh. He looked forward to meeting him with anticipations of pleasure and profit, not unmixed with apprehension, for even so self-confident a young

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man as Morgan knew that Cullen was a great man. W h a t he did not know was that he was also a kindly one; and so he was not quite prepared for the moment when, having rapidly scanned his letters of introduction, the famous Dr. Cullen took him by the hand in the warmest manner imaginable, welcomed him to Edinburgh, the University, and his house, and commanded him to visit him often. Morgan registered for his course. 13 Although less esteemed than the formal academic lectures, clinical observation and instruction at the Royal Infirmary were an integral part of the Edinburgh medical course. A b o u t 800 patients a year were treated at the hospital at this period; their cases were of every kind—curable and incurable, medical and surgical, mental, venereal, and obstetrical. Every day or two the Infirmary physicians, David Clerk and C o l i n D r u m m o n d , visited the sick; they were sometimes accompanied by students; at least once they allowed John Morgan to make a post-mortem examination. 1 4 Clinical instruction of a formal sort had been given at the Infirmary since 1748, when a ward was set aside for the use of John Rutherford, professor of practice. " I shall examine every patient appearing before you," Rutherford told his students at the beginning of each clinical course, that no circumstance may escape you. I shall give you the history of the disease, enquire into the cause of it, give you my opinion as to how it will terminate, lay down the indications of cure which will arise or, if any new symptoms happen, acquaint you of them that you may see how I vary my prescriptions. If at any time you find me deceived in giving my judgment, you will be so good as to excuse me, for neither do I pretend to be, nor is the Art of Physic, infallible. 15 B u t Rutherford was a follower of Boerhaave who practiced the most reasonable doctrines of several theories. W i t h no allinclusive, all-answering theory of his own, he offered few of the allurements of a systematist like C u l l e n . T h e students, believing that the latter was an inexhaustible fount of medical knowl-

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edge, wished Rutherford to make way for a younger man. When Cullen, the elder Monro, and Robert Whytt eventually succeeded this worthy old Hippocrat as clinical lecturers at the Royal Infirmary, a strong, fresh impulse was given to the study of practical medicine at Edinburgh. T h e four men jointly taught a five-month course each year, each lecturing for five wreeks in his turn. John Morgan attended these clinical lectures during his first year at Edinburgh. 1 6 Morgan was soon hard at work. He read prodigiously and copied for his own use many volumes of notes of University lectures and Infirmary case histories. He had little time to write his friends in London; when he did, it was usually a brief excuse that he was too busy. 17 On April 9, 1762, Morgan was elected a member of the Medical Society, unanimously as its by-laws required, and made still another advance toward his goal of professional reputation. T h e Medical Society was the oldest, best organized, and most respected of the student societies at Edinburgh. 1 8 An unofficial but almost necessary adjunct to the medical course, the societies provided opportunities to discuss and exchange medical theories, facts and opinions. T h e y were encouraged by the faculty, most of whom were members, and did their work with notable intelligence and seriousness. Morgan's fellow-members included Williams Smibert of Massachusetts and Samuel Bard of New York, Thomas Percival, William Withering, and Andrew Duncan. T h e Society met every Saturday during the term in a room in the Royal Infirmary, which also housed its library of several hundred volumes. Each member had to write three papers—on a case in practical medicine, on a medical question, and on one of the Hippocratic aphorisms. One of Morgan's fellow-students, for example, had to describe a case of diabetes with its causes, diagnosis, symptoms, prognosis, and methods of cure, answer the question what was the most approved cure for hemorrhoids, and comment on Hippocrates' aphorism, that "an erysipelas in

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the womb of a child-bearing woman is fatal." For a week before the meeting at which they were to be read, the papers circulated among the members, who came prepared with questions and objections. " I n this Exercise of Disputing we spend about 4 hours," one student explained, and I really think to very good purpose, for we are obliged to muster our whole stock of knowledge to Defend our oppinions, which are never allowed to pass with out being thoroughly examined; and as there are allways a Number of Members who are near graduating, and Men of real knowledge, we young Members are not allowed, to be carried away by false reasoning, or led into Errors instead of Truths. 19 Here, in an atmosphere of earnest give-and-take, John Morgan first discussed the formation of pus. T h e topic was a live one, another American member of the Medical Society treated it in one of his papers, and Morgan finally developed it into his graduation thesis. Membership in "the juvenile Medical Society" of Edinburgh, Morgan told Sir Alexander Dick, was one of his principal recommendations on the Continent. 20 J o h n Morgan's lodgings in World's End Close were comfortable. R o o m and board cost him £ 1 0 or £ 1 1 a quarter—a little less in the months when he dined out with the American students in one of the city's taverns. T h e food Mrs. Stewart served was good and plentiful, although the fatty solan goose, cockyleaky, and haggis were not to the taste of all of the American and English boarders. Mrs. Stewart herself was a vigorous woman, forthright and earthy in speech, who, taking Morgan into her confidence, revealed that she expected a generous bequest from a brother in Jamaica. Her daughter Betty completed the household, a young woman from whose "little pouting lips" at least one of her mother's lodgers longed to have a kiss; but not J o h n . He was pledged to Molly Hopkinson. 2 1 T h e pledge was tested during Morgan's first year at Edinburgh. Somehow Molly learned that J o h n had never been baptized. T h e omission was understandable enough. His mother 63

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was a Quaker—Friends do not believe in baptism; his Baptist father believed in adult baptism; and, besides, both parents died when John was still a boy. His guardians either felt their trust did not extend as far as baptism, or thought the rite unimportant. But Mary was sure it was essential, and told him so. A man of tw-enty-six, with no deep religious convictions, Morgan had no inclination to submit to a rite normally practiced on infants. But he was in love and wanted to please Molly Hopkinson, so he sought advice from his friend and classmate Jacob БисЬё, now assistant rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia. He asked what baptism meant, declared he did not believe it would make a bad man good, and inquired whether it was true, as he had heard, that Molly did not join in family prayers, which he thought far more useful and meritorious than baptism. Since Duche was married to Molly's sister, Molly learned at once of John's inquiry, and she was outraged. Of course she joined in family prayers, she retorted angrily; no one reared as she had been, no rational being indeed, would ever neglect to implore the protection of the Almighty or express gratitude for His mercies. As for baptism, she admitted that no wicked man can gain Heaven simply by being baptized, but neither did she believe that a good one would neglect so positive a command. It had never occurred to her, she went on, that John could have any objection to being baptized. But he must never submit to it just because that was her wish—she would never have that!—but because it was a command of the Savior of the world. " I once more therefore," she concluded imperiously, "commend you to the Direction of Heaven, and of your own Conscience." Whatever Heaven or his conscience might say, Mary Hopkinson left poor John no choice. He was baptized. 22 In August Samuel Powel burst cheerfully into World's End Close. Morgan, who had not seen him since the Coronation in London the preceding October, showed him the sights of the northern capital and introduced him to his Scots friends. Powel 64

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found them " f a r more polite & hospitable to Strangers" than the English. H e was flattered by their assurances that he "spoke with as true a twang as if . . . bred in the Highlands," and passed his time among them "most agreeably." 2 3 Then they were off on a three-weeks' tour to St. Andrews, Perth, Stirling, and Glasgow—about the same circular tour, but in reverse, which Benjamin Franklin and his son had made three years before. Crossing the Forth to the Fife coast, they made their way to the ancient university town where Franklin had been made a guild brother and been formally received by the faculty. St. Andrews' glories had departed, the town had fallen into mossy decadence, and annually at the end of term the students used boisterously to hurl stones through every window in the college. Thomas Simson was teaching medicine here, but no record survives that Morgan called on him. Through the Perthshire Highlands—a country that was romantic and barren and fertile by turns—the Philadelphians traveled to Stirling. Like Edinburgh, Stirling had a castle, a great church, walls, and narrow streets. And, like Edinburgh, it had one of the finest views in the world. Powel thought it "the most beautiful Prospect" he had ever beheld. Eminent citizens of Stirling, who had met Morgan and Powel in Edinburgh, were expecting them and had arranged a signal honor. T h e y were, Powel reported, "most elegantly entertained by the Lord Provost & Magistrates, who crowned their uncommon Civilities by presenting us with the Freedom of their City." Each American received a heavy parchment certificate, dated at Stirling September 2, 1762, with the seal of the Corporation attached by a light blue ribbon. By it Morgan was received and admitted "to the liberty and freedom of a Burgess and Gild brother of the said Burgh, with power to him to use and [exercise] the whole Libertys, priviledges and Immunitys thereto belonging. . . , " 2 i T h e new burgesses of Stirling then journeyed to Glasgow, which reminded them of their native Philadelphia, inspected 65

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the cathedral and visited the university in the High Street, where Cullen's pupil and successor Joseph Black was teaching chemistry and medicine. Before the end of the month they were back in Edinburgh. Morgan found a letter from Dr. Franklin awaiting him. From Portsmouth on the day he sailed for home, Franklin had sent him good wishes for " a prosperous Completion of your Studies, and in due time a happy Return to your Native Country, where if I can be of the least Service to you, I shall be glad of the Occasion." 2 5 Morgan resumed his medical work at once, following Clerk and Drummond once more on their rounds of the Royal Infirmary. On the evening of September 25, a child died there, in horrible torment, from the bite of a mad dog. Despite the popular notion that hydrophobia was contagious—or perhaps because of it—Morgan asked permission to make a post-mortem examination. He suffered no injury, and his report, full and vivid, was entered into the great series of ledgers in which the Infirmary's case records were kept. By this act he won reputation both as an "intrepid operator" and a careful pathologist. 26 T h e lectures of the second year began in November. Morgan enrolled again in Cullen's course in chemistry, for it was the practice to fix the contents of important courses firmly in mind by taking the same course two, three, or more times. Once or twice a week Cullen invited his second-year students to his house. Here, while his admiring pupils listened in respectful, almost enraptured silence, Cullen lectured for an hour on what he called chemical pathology. A second hour was spent "in an easy Conversation upon the subject of the last evening's lecture," with every one "incouraged to make his Remarks or Objections with the greatest freedom & ease." 27 Morgan also took Robert Whytt's course in the theory and practice of medicine, as physiology and pathology were then called. His third course this second year was botany, taught by J o h n Hope, King's Botanist for Scotland, an earnest teacher, well liked by the students, the man who had introduced the 66

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Linnaean system of plant classification into North Britain. Finally, electing a course in the College, Morgan attended the lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres which Hugh Blair was delivering for the first time as a professor in the University. "Thy Enterprising Genius, Morgan, I find has led thee to attend Whytt, Cullen, Hope, Blair, fee.," exclaimed William Hewson, his friend from the Hunters' school; "that is to say, thou won't be satisfied without being a Physiologist, Chemist, Physician & Rhetorician. Mercy upon us, where will you end?"-'8 The formal matriculation ceremony took place in December. Once again Morgan promised to apply himself to his studies and obey the rules of the University. On the roll of Whytt's students a clerk inscribed the name "John Morgan." In his own hand Morgan added "College of Philad. A.M." There was more to getting an education than taking courses in medicine, as John Morgan's election of Blair's course in rhetoric indicated. Edinburgh, like London, offered plays, concerts, and a cultivated society. During Morgan's first Christmas season, for example, The Beaux' Stratagem and The Merry Wives of Windsor were played in the Concert Hall, Canongate. The Musical Society each season usually performed two or three Handel oratorios, as well as other compositions. Before Morgan left Edinburgh the Society opened its own concert hall, with an organ, space for an orchestra, and seating for five hundred. Once a week during the winter the Assembly met in Bell's Wynd under the stern sway of Miss Nicky Murray, Lord Mansfield's sister, as Lady Directress. Oliver Goldsmith, lonely and embarrassed, thought the Assembly a dull show, but Morgan, who had proper introductions, relished it. 29 His introductions, as usual, were the best. Sir Alexander Dick, who had been Franklin's host on his first visit to Scotland, extended Morgan a warm welcome to Prestonfield. Though he had given up practice, Sir Alexander remained interested in professional matters, was elected president of the Royal College 67

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of Physicians of Edinburgh seven times in succession, and, as a philosopher, experimented with new agricultural methods and products, expecially rhubarb. In this amiable man's comfortable seventeenth-century house, situated in its own park, with Arthur's Seat looming up outside the very dining room windows, Morgan enjoyed the society of a cultivated Scots family and acquired still more of that polish and knowledge of the world, which was one of the reasons and one of the advantages of going abroad. 30 From George Drummond's friendship Morgan received similar benefits. " T h e good old Cato," as he called the Lord Provost with affectionate respect, spent much of his time in 1762 at his villa Drummond Lodge. Here, as at Prestonfield, Morgan was often a guest. W h e n Drummond began his final term as Lord Provost in 1763 Morgan lamented that he would have fewer occasions to visit agreeably in the country, since Drummond would be spending more time in town. T h e "crouded Civilities" which Morgan received in Edinburgh were crowned on May 11, 1763, when, in company with Powel, he appeared before the Lord Provost, the latter commanding in impressive robes of office, and was formally admitted a freeman and guild brother of the city. 31 Because he had wealthy and influential friends in Scotland, he was able to help in a financial campaign in behalf of the College of Philadelphia. Provost Smith came to Edinburgh in the late fall of 1762, sought out his former pupil, and planned with him how to solicit the interest of the great and charitable for the new seminary at Philadelphia. A t the same time, John Inglis, a trustee of the College and native Scot, reached his homeland on a visit and offered Smith his help. Drummond, Principal Robertson, and several of the clergy promised their support. With the ground thus prepared, Smith returned to London, while Morgan and Inglis pressed the campaign and personally raised subscriptions among their friends. From London on January 3, Smith reported to the Trustees that Morgan 68

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was "now collecting somewhat occasionally for us." 32 T o other friends the Provost reported that Morgan "was very well and in great Esteem" in Edinburgh, was "like to make a very good Figure in his Business," and retained "all his affection for a certain Lady in Philadelphia." 33 When John Morgan described himself on the roll of Whytt's students as a master of arts of the College of Philadelphia, he was not only insisting on an honor and distinction which were his, he was proclaiming himself an American. Awareness of his American nationality was an important element in Morgan's achievement in Europe. Since the late 1750's Americans had been coming to Edinburgh in increasing numbers. Before Morgan matriculated in 1761, seven had already taken degrees. Arthur Lee, George Gilmer, and Theodorick Bland of Virginia and Williams Smibert of Massachusetts were all beginning their second year when Morgan entered. During his second year there were thirteen Americans at the University. Living, dining, meeting together often, they were virtually an American club. 34 Among these young men, as from older citizens of Edinburgh, Morgan won respect at once. His intelligence, knowledge, and industry impressed them. He seemed to know what he wanted. They did not resent his ambition and applauded his successes. Young Samuel Bard, who entered the University in 1762, informed his father that he dined at a tavern where Mr. Morgan also took his meals. T h e Philadelphian was "a person of distinguished merit, who knew our family, and has taken particular notice of me; and as I can with more freedom apply to him in any trivial matter, than to a professor, I promise myself much advantage from his friendship." Old Dr. Bard in reply hoped that Samuel had "lade a foundation of a Lasting and Uninterupted Friendship" with "the Ingenious Mr. Morgan." 3 5 Similar expressions of admiration came from William Hewson in London when he was called on to lecture and demonstrate in the place of Dr. William Hunter, who was attending 69

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Queen Charlotte in her confinement in the winter of 176263. " I did not think I could go through with it with so much steadiness," he confessed to Morgan. I had you in my Eye. I was not a little encouraged by your Example. I had not forgott Your Speaking our Sentiments to Dr. Hunter, &c. 8cc. You are the Man, Morgan, that have set out in a right road. With pleasure therefore I return your animating Expression "Go on & Prosper." 36 T h e Americans worked hard because success would both increase their individual reputations and profits and also redound to the benefit and glory of their country. T h e y were a selfconscious group, intensely proud of their American birth, eager and determined to do credit to their homeland. More hardworking than the Irish students, who were said to revel in "public scenes of dissipation and debauchery," living more genteelly than the impecunious Scots, who were resolved to get as much learning as they could in the shortest time possible, the Americans were distinguished alike " f o r their close application to their studies" and as gentlemen fit for polite society. Morgan wore a sword on formal occasions, Theodorick Bland even had a Negro valet. 37 Discussing medicine and the medical profession in their lodgings or in the oyster cellars in the Cowgate, the students compared America with Britain. T h e y were dismayed and ashamed to have to admit that "by the exactest information and best intelligence" only one or two physicians in all Virginia, for example, had been properly educated and received a degree, "i.e., the sanction of the most eminent and approv'd physicians for that purpose." T h e y resolved to do something about it. " I don't doubt," Bland wrote his father in 1 7 6 1 , but in a few years, we shall not only in that [medicine], but in many other professions, be able to supply the necessity of our country, and in some measure to extirpate those numerous troops of impostors who daily pour in upon us, and who, I am told, profess what from their education they must be entirely ignorant of, or but meanly qualified f o r . . . ,38

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The American students were aware that their Edinburgh training was a special privilege. They had a special obligation to their country, therefore, to uphold high professional standards. T h e least they could do to maintain the dignity of the profession was to adopt the Edinburgh standard and refuse to practice the manual arts of surgery, or to become merchants selling drugs. Since 1750 the Royal College of Physicians had barred from its fellowship anyone who was already a member of the Corporation of Surgeons; in 1754 it had resolved that its fellows must not join pharmacy with medicine; and on November 7, 1761, at the very moment when John Morgan arrived in Edinburgh, the Royal College made a public statement that medicine and pharmacy were different arts and should be kept separate. In this spirit the Virginia students at Edinburgh organized a club for mutual improvement in anatomy and bound themselves, for the honor of their profession, "not to degrade it by hereafter mingling the trade of apothecary or surgeon with it." So strongly did they feel on this point that they would admit no visitor to the club's demonstrations except on condition that he take this pledge too.39 T h e resolutions of British medical societies and the sentiments of idealistic students were not likely to make a revolution in American medical practices. Even in Great Britain not every physician could refuse to operate. A n d how were the sick to receive medicines in rural communities where there was no apothecary, if not from the physician? What the American students really wanted was to restrict medical practice to qualified men, that is, to men pretty much like themselves. T h e y wanted to rid their country of the host of medicine men who practiced to their own profit and the people's harm. Merchants who sold drugs and medicines, if they prospered, might, like the elder William Shippen of Philadelphia, become medical practitioners and call themselves doctor. "Doctor" indeed, when young men in 1760 spent five or six years of hard study and a thousand pounds as well to earn the title I Young gentlemen should be 71

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encouraged to study medicine. T h e y would hardly do so if they had to compete with quacks and charlatans. T h e r e were no medical societies in America to license physicians as the Royal Colleges licensed them in London and Edinburgh. A Boston medical society had failed in this purpose in 1 7 4 1 ; but, thought the students, perhaps the colonial legislatures could issue such licenses. In 1761 or 1762, accordingly, the Virginians at Edinburgh petitioned the Virginia Council and House of Burgesses to enact laws to "prevent any one for the future from professedly practising medicine who has not received a public testimony of his abilities, being properly licensed and honored with a doctor's degree." T h e legislature took no action on the students' petition, however, nor on a subsequent suggestion by Arthur Lee that physicians be required to register their diplomas in the courts of their respective counties. 40 So jealous indeed were the Americans of their reputations, so ambitious for the profession which they intended to improve and adorn, that they once publicly protested that Edinburgh's standards were not high enough. T h e faculty chose to graduate one Pulteney by examination alone, waiving the requirement of attendance at lectures. Arthur Lee drafted the remonstrance, prevailed on other Americans to sign it, and \vas one of the committee who presented it to the faculty. T h e y had acted, he explained afterwards, solely "with a view to maintain the dignity of the practice of medicine in Virginia." 4 1 These were the ideas the American students were discussing at Edinburgh when John Morgan was there. T h e separation of medicine from surgery and from pharmacy seemed the very hallmark of professional dignity. Licensing and the protection of the medical diploma were essential means to this end. Morgan listened, argued, and refined his own thoughts and aspirations. But why, the Americans asked one another, why should they not establish a medical school of their own? T h e colonies were coming of age. America should be independent in scientific and cultural matters as in other activities, supplying her own needs 72

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in medicine from her own local institutions, as she supplied her own food, ships, iron goods. Arthur Lee was confident "of one day seeing a Mead, a Cullen, or a Fothergill in America." In London, where they met in the wards of St. Thomas's or over breakfast at Dr. Fothergill's, in their lodgings in Edinburgh, in dark taverns on the High Street, on some glorious afternoon when they walked together down to Leith or up to the Pentland Hills, Morgan and Shippen and Lee and Bland and the others talked and dreamed and planned as young men do. When they returned home they would establish a medical school for America. They even decided what each should teach. Shippen should have anatomy and obstetrics, Morgan theory and practice, Lee botany, and Bland materia medica. Samuel Bard heard these plans enviously; he would complete his course too late to have a place in the new enterprise. 42 Writing the thesis required for his degree filled a good deal of Morgan's second year. T h e topic he selected was the formation of pus. He had become interested in the subject while a student of William Hunter in London. By late fall of 1762 he was working steadily at it. William Hewson offered to send him from London as much pus as his experiments might require; and he prepared a short paper on the topic for the Medical Society. T h e subject was important because medical authorities were in disagreement as to how pus was formed. Boerhaave, for example, taught that it was generated from liquids which are constantly carried into a wound. Grashuis' opinion was vague and uncertain. One of Simson's four dissertations de Re Medica, originally published in 1726 and well known to the Edinburgh students, hinted at the true origin. After considering these theories and the results of his own experiments, Morgan concluded that none of the theories was adequate or even accurate. On the contrary, he demonstrated that the formation of pus "is an effect of animal economy, very closely analagous to a secretion, or indeed actually a secretion of a special fluid from the blood, produced by a quality of the blood vessels which is the sequence of an earlier state of in73

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43

flammation." T h e point of his theory, Morgan explained, was that pus is formed neither in the blood nor outside the vessels, but within the inflamed vessels themselves. A century later, when more precise instruments and measurements were available, Cohnheim's researches corroborated Morgan. Morgan admitted he did not understand the process by which pus was produced, "or even exactly what it was." But he did show in his thesis that it is always preceded by inflammation and that fluids of many other kinds are constantly secreted in animal bodies. He pointed out some corollaries of his theory and raised several questions for others to answer in the future. T h e essay was well organized, clearly written, cautiously phrased, and it acknowledged indebtedness to the works of Ruysch, Boerhaave, and von Haller, and to hints thrown out in class by Dr. Cullen. Whether Morgan had taken his basic thesis from another man was a moot question. A few years after the dissertation was published J o h n Hunter hinted that Morgan was indebted to him for ideas and evidence. " T h e Idea of Matter being produced by Secretion is not new," Hunter informed his class in surgery in 1775. He had had it in his M i n d in the Y e a r 1759 at which time he lodged in the same house w i t h Dr. M o r g a n but whether he Mentioned it to Dr. Morgan or whether he took it u p of himself he cannot pretend at this time to determine. H o w e v e r he has no D o u b t but what the formation of Pus is by Secretion, as he has n o Conception of the fluids becoming Pus Spontaneously. 4 4

T h o u g h the subject of pus was closely related to those researches on the absorbent tissues which Hunter made in 1758 and 1759, there is no evidence that he ever publicly taught that pus is a secretion of the blood vessels until long after 1763. On the other hand, he received credit for the discovery for more than a quarter of a century until James Curry of Guy's Hospital rediscovered Morgan's work in 1817. 4 5 Morgan completed his thesis in the early summer of 1763. He 74

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checked its references and polished its Latin. It was read and approved by his professors, who gave permission to have it printed. T h e final examination was in several parts, private and public, oral and written, and every part of it was conducted in Latin. T h e first session was a private, oral examination by the professors. It began with general definitions, then proceeded to anatomy, physiology, specific diseases and specific remedies. In the second session Morgan had to write and defend commentaries on two Hippocratic aphorisms. Finally, he was required to comment in writing on two practical cases, and to explain and defend his papers. T h e n he was ushered into the public hall of the University. Here, before the faculty in formal array, in the presence of students, physicians and citizens of Edinburgh, he was questioned closely about the subject of his thesis by Monro secundus, who did not believe he had proved his point. Morgan replied to the objections with spirit and was passed in triumph.4® He was formally graduated on J u l y 18, "with an Eclat almost unknown before," Powel told a mutual friend. " T h e Professors give him the highest character you can imagine." T o his uncle Powel wrote that "Dr. Morgan has graduated at Edinburgh with such Reputation as few, if any, have ever obtained. T h e Professors speak of him, as a Man high in the List of Physicians." Amid such plaudits Morgan replied to Dennys DeBerdt's congratulations "that the Cap and Gown added nothing to his knowledge or abilities." 4 7

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The Grand Tour

T H R E E WEEKS A F T E R HIS GRADUATION A T E D I N B U R G H D R .

MOR-

gan was on the North Sea on his way to the Continent to spend the winter studying at Paris and to travel through France and Italy. From the Paris hospitals he would derive an increase of professional knowledge and reputation, while the classic Grand T o u r would, in the words of Thomas Nugent's popular guide, "enrich the mind with knowledge, . . . rectify the judgment, . . . compose the outward manners, and . . . form the complete gentleman." 1 Morgan had scarcely reached Rotterdam when he met an ambitious German full of grandiose schemes for establishing iron manufacturing in the American colonies. Peter Hasenclever was looking for capital to support a company to work the iron deposits in Pennsylvania. Catching some of the promoter's infectious optimism, Morgan gave him a letter of introduction to Thomas Penn in London as the one whose countenance would be "the surest means of giving his Plan success."2 At Rotterdam, too, he encountered a young Scotsman, just arrived on a ship from Harwich, who was on his way to Utrecht to study law. James Boswell had been a law student at Edinburgh when Morgan was in the medical school there. T h e American proposed that the two make a short tour through Holland. Miserable at the prospect of spending the winter in the Low Countries, Boswell agreed, without enthusiasm. He let Morgan make all the arrangements. "I remembered an advice 76

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of yours," he told a friend, "and did not go but was taken." Together they visited Gouda, Haarlem, and Amsterdam and spent a day or two at Utrecht. Even in a mood of gray depression, Boswell was good company. " I made the Tour of Holland in Company with Mr. Boswell, Lord Augenleck's Son," Morgan informed Sir Alexander Dick, "whose spirited & agreeable Conversation gave me more Pleasure than any other I met with in Holland." Boswell's comment on Morgan was less flattering: he thought the doctor a conceited fool—"un fat bonhomme" he called him—and reminded himself that he must not joke with the American.® A month later, in October, Morgan was at Antwerp, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Powel from London. A lonely traveler in a foreign land, Morgan complained irritably of his disagreeable Situation, . . . being quite solitary, without either a Companion or any Acquaintance to whom I can speak, in a Country, the Language of which I cannot understand; & in a Tavern where there is a perpetual Jargon of unknown sounds, with a continual hurry & succession of Strangers coming in & going out.4 Powel arrived at last, after a stormy crossing of the Channel in a small ship whose cabin he shared with twelve Italian organgrinders and their four dancing bears, eight monkeys and two lap dogs. As Powel recounted this diverting episode Morgan recovered his good humor, and the friends set out for Paris in high spirits.6 During the first weeks Morgan and Powel conscientiously "visited all the Royal Palaces, 8c the fine Gardens in the Environs of the City." With Sir William Forbes they spent several days at Fontainebleau, where the French court then was. The Americans watched the royal family dine in public, they attended a baptism in the royal chapel where the King and Queen stood as godparents, and, in the forest one day, they caught a glimpse of the King and nobles riding by "a-hunting" —a romantic scene, Morgan thought it. As he strolled through the palace grounds someone pointed out David Hume, secretary 77

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to the British ambassador. Just come from two years in Edinburgh, which he considered a kind of home, Morgan was pleased to see a fellow-citizen, though he "had not the Honour of being personally acquainted with him, therefore . . . did not speak to him, . . ." At Fontainebleau Morgan delivered a letter from Sir Alexander Dick to Senac, the King's Physician. A n affable, agreeable man, Senac kept Morgan nearly two hours with a score of questions about medicine and the Scottish physicians. What improvements had been made in practical medicine, he wanted to know. What could Morgan tell him of Dr. Clerk's experiments? What important books had been published lately in Great Britain? " H e was very inquisitive about the State of the University at Edinburgh, the College of Physicians & the Reputation 8c Abilities of the Professors, in which I satisfied his Curiosity as well as I could." 6 A few days later Morgan moved his lodgings to the home of Jean-Joseph Sue, chief surgeon of the Hotel de la Charite and a distinguished member of a distinguished family of surgeons. From November until mid-February he attended Sue's anatomical lectures and observed the practice of the hospital. La Charite at this time had 193 beds, cared for about 3000 patients each year, paid attention to hygiene and sanitation, but suffered from friction between the lay surgeons and the monks who directed the hospital and, though not skilled in surgery, sometimes insisted on performing operations. 7 "Lectures in the different Branches of Medicine are given in Paris," Morgan informed Sir Alexander Dick in February 1764, but in such different parts of the Town, & with so little Connection with one another, that I cannot but prefer the Advantages of studying at Edinburgh as highly superior. Medicine does not seem to be in great Vogue here, nor is the Practice in the Hospitals comparable to that in Edinburgh. The Hotel Dieu seems to be rather a pest house than an Hospital. The Patients are crammed three, four, & sometimes five & six in a bed, that it is no wonder if a kind of gaol fever is for ever in that Hospital, where many more dye of the Hospital, than get cured of their original Diseases. 78

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In contrast, surgery seemed to be in greater esteem, Morgan thought, with the Royal Academy of Surgery taking pains to make improvements and encourage merit. 8 Unlike Boswell, M. Sue liked the earnest American doctor and treated him as a son; Mogan was soon calling Mme. Sue his "mama." More than this, Sue respected him. T h e two men had one important anatomical interest in common—the art of injecting parts of the human body, a subject on which the Frenchman had already published a book: Anthropotomie, ou I'art d'injecter, de dissequer, d'embaumer et de conserver les parties du corps humain, fcc. Morgan was able to tell him about Dr. Hunter's methods and formulas, which were unknown in France, and Sue included them in the second edition of his book, on which he was then working, with an acknowledgement to Morgan for the information. 9 Meanwhile Morgan continued to experiment with anatomical preparations and, as he had sent all his books and notes home, asked his friend Hewson in London for information about how Dr. Hunter made them. Before Hewson could reply Morgan succeeded in preparing several specimens; and he incorporated his experience and Hewson's data into a paper he had begun to prepare for the Acadέmie Royale de Chirurgie, where Sue had already taken him. On January 26, 1764, he formally presented a memoir on suppuration, based on his Edinburgh thesis; the Academy did him and Sue the honor of beginning to read it in their presence. A month later the "Scots doctor," as the minutes identified him, submitted the paper on anatomical preparations, illustrating his remarks with a piece of prepared kidney. "As the Academy were perhaps not well acquainted with that species of preparation before," he reported to Sir Alexander Dick, "they were pleased to say, many of them, that it exceeded any preparation they had ever seen, & that it was equal to any Injection which Ruysch had ever made." At the same time Morgan sent the Academy a copy of his printed Edinburgh thesis, with a French translation. These writings were presented, the secretary recorded, "in the mistaken hope

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that for this work he would be made a member of the Academy and that his dissertation would be printed in the next volume of its Memoirs." 10 Sue was asked to review Morgan's corrosion paper. He praised the author highly "for having first divulged to us the knowledge which he has acquired in this matter" and recommended that the Academy elect him to membership—"a place to which his personal merit and accomplishments, his works, and his respect for the Royal Academy of Surgery at Paris seem justly to entitle him." Sue forwarded a copy of this recommendation to Morgan, who had by this time left Paris. Morgan sent a copy to Philadelphia, where it was printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette (and reprinted in the New York Gazette) as an "Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in Paris, to his Friend at Philadelphia," and so added to Morgan's growing reputation in America. 11 Obviously Sue's recommendation owed something to personal friendship. Obviously, too, Morgan's unconcealed ambition had irritated some of the Fellows of the Academy. Before they would consent to Morgan's dedicating his paper on anatomical preparations to the Academy, they insisted on seeing the dedicatory address. On the question of his election as a foreign member, they were non-committal. Morgan submitted the required dedication, apologizing to the secretary that he had had to write it in English; while to Sue he confessed that the delay in his election was a matter for chagrin, for membership in the Academy was an honor he had "entertained some hopes o f " and which his ambition had "eagerly aspired after." 12 His ambition was to be partly satisfied a few months later. Unknown to the Academy, Morgan's paper had embarrassed and irritated both Hunter and Hewson. Receiving no reply to a letter to the latter asking whether Hunter would object to his publishing what he knew about the injection and corrosion method, Morgan had assumed permission, completed his paper, and turned it in. A few hours afterwards Hewson's answer ar80

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rived, with his own and Hunter's views unequivocally stated. H u n t e r was displeased because Morgan had not mentioned Nicholls, who had taught H u n t e r the principles of anatomical preparations; Hewson was angry because Dr. Hunter's name appeared nowhere; and both men resented Morgan's apparent representation that he had made discoveries worth reporting when he had not and when, in fact, the discoveries were those of other men. In addition H u n t e r chided Morgan for offering his paper to a French journal instead of submitting it to the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions. Morgan denied bad intentions: he had not known that Hunter's methods were not entirely of his own devising, and he explained the omission of Hunter's name from the French translation of the paper as a copyist's oversight. H e even laid the blame for his embarrassment on Hewson because the latter had been so dilatory in replying. Since he was not allowed to withdraw the manuscript from the Academy, Morgan continued, he could only add a statement that "Dr. H u n t e r avowed Dr. Nicholls to be the Person from whom he received his first Knowledge" of the art and that Nicholls was probably the discoverer of it. H e resented the charge that he had made n o significant contribution to the art of preparing anatomical specimens and reminded Hewson in a long letter of explanation and apology that, without notes or Hewson's directions, he had succeeded in making by himself "three finely injected preparations of the kidney" and so was entitled to communicate his findings. "Let me ask you, my Friend," Morgan went on, if simply acquainted with a fact or Discovery, what should hinder an ingenious person by repeating the same Experiments with others —or varying them somewhat—I say what should hinder him from making usefull Reflections? It is not allways the Case that a Man who first starts a Subject carrys it to its full Length. Arts generally take their Rise from one man starting a Subject, another adding to it, & a third improving on them both. In the Name of Science, if a Subject usefull for Mankind to know is started by one, & comes to the Knowledge of another without any sinister practice, what is to

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h i n d e r h i m f r o m p r o s e c u t i n g the I n q u i r y , if the o r i g i n a l I n v e n t o r is silent a b o u t it? Is it to dye w i t h h i m , & are m a n k i n d f o r b i d to m e d d l e w i t h the s u b j e c t if he does n o t choose to d o it? O r w h e r e is the H a r m , if a f t e r a C o u r s e of 10, 12, 15, or 20 Years, w h e n the S u b j e c t is k n o w n to m a n y & the A u t h o r gives n o signs of his c a r i n g a b o u t it, if a n o t h e r s h o u l d disclose w h a t he neglects, p r o v i d e d he d o Justice to the A u t h o r to the u t m o s t of his K n o w l e d g e . 1 3

O n February 25, 1764, Morgan and Powel took their places in the Lyons diligence, which set out from the Hotel de Sens near the Ave Maria. T h e carriage was overcrowded, the company mixed and not wholly congenial. T h e travelers were hurried out of bed at four, three, even two in the morning; they bounced and swayed over rutted roads; they were served French food, which, as Englishmen, they found distasteful. Yet it was spring; Morgan and Powel were young and healthy; and their journey was something of an adventure. Amid the discomforts of traveling they rejoiced in the gentle beauty of the broad Saone Valley, so different from the bare, misty Highlands they had viewed together two years before. Nugent's volumes, which Morgan had conscientiously procured to tell them what was of interest in each of the towns where they stopped to dine or sup, provided him with the very words and phrases he used to describe them in letters and journal. 14 O n the afternoon of the fifth day the diligence reached Lyons, 287 miles from Paris. Morgan carried a letter of introduction to Claude Bourgelat, for more than twenty years director of the Acaddmie d'Equitation at Lyons, now director of the newly-established Royal Veterinary College there. Bourgelat showed him through the school, which had an enrollment of ninety-seven that spring, and explained his work and his aspirations. T h e American reciprocated by demonstrating his method of preparing anatomical materials. 15 From Lyons the tourists' route led through Vienne and Valence to the ancient walled city of Avignon. From Avignon they made an excursion to Nimes, eating their lunch beneath 82

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one of the arches of the Pont du Gard. In the famous old medical center of Montpellier, where Dr. F r a ^ o i s Rabelais had taught the precepts of Hippocrates, Morgan called on M. Imbert, chancellor of the University, Senac's son-in-law, one of the inspectors of military hospitals in the south of France. Again he demonstrated the corrosion process, "which the older man applauded in flattering terms. 16 At Antibes they boarded a felucca for Italy, preferring an open boat to the dangers and uncertainties of mountain roads. A dozen hearty oarsmen drove it steadily and swiftly, hugging the shore, and brought the travelers to Genoa on April 1, in time to witness an eclipse of the sun. Morgan and Powel continued by felucca to Leghorn. 17 Here they had expected only to make some financial arrangements with the English merchant firm of Jackson and Rutherford, who had served Joseph Shippen on his Italian visit, and to present their letters to Consul John Dick, a cousin of Sir Alexander's. On the day they arrived, however, the Duke of York, younger brother of King George III, reached the city on a leisurely tour of Italy. T h e Consul presented the Philadelphians to His Royal Highness, and the Duke graciously asked them to join his party. Morgan and Powel were thereafter "invited," as the former put it, "with the English Nobility & Gentry present to the Balls, Concerts, Conversations &c. made for the entertainment of his royal highness." 18 T h e Duke lingered three days at Leghorn before moving on to Florence, where Sir Horace Mann, the British Resident, was waiting impatiently for him. In every kingdom and duchy there were elaborate receptions and lavish entertainments. At Lucca, for example, an escort of the local nobility in ceremonial dress had met the English a mile outside the city. As the ducal party approached, cannon fired a salute from the walls. His Royal Highness was scarcely settled in the inn where he insisted on staying, rather than in the palace prepared for him, when fifty liveried servants appeared, carrying gifts of oils, wines, hams, 83

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wax candles, and other local products. An entertainment had been organized in a spacious palace, beautifully furnished and brightly lighted for the occasion. As the Duke entered the assembly room, music burst forth, the company bowed and curtsied, and the ball began. His Royal Highness danced with a number of the ladies until eleven o'clock, when the guests were summoned to another room for a concert of vocal and instrumental music by artists brought from Genoa for the evening. This interlude allowed time to lay a sumptuous supper in the assembly hall. Sixty persons sat down at midnight and scores pressed behind the diners, leaving hardly enough room for the waiters to serve. At three in the morning the Duke returned to his inn with the same elaborate ceremonial. 19 In Rome they were entertained even more elaborately and often. T h e English colony, its numbers swelled because of the Duke's visit, and leaders of Roman society vied with one another to entertain him with dinners, balls, and concerts. The party had scarcely reached Rome when David Garrick called to pay his respects to His Royal Highness, as did Dr. Richard Huck, physician of St. Thomas's Hospital, who was also touring Italy. Though somewhat curtailed because of the famine in central and southern Italy, the solemn spectacles of Holy Week added their color and character to the city. Morgan, Powel, and some of their fellow-travelers attended "the grand functions at which the Pope assists in Person—next to the Coronation," Morgan judged, "tis one of the finest sights I ever saw." One night at the house of the wealthy banker Signor Barratzi, where the Duke stayed, the Americans "had the honour of dining on a Sturgeon which had received the Pope's benediction & was made a present of to the Duke." They delayed their departure from Rome three days to accept an invitation in honor of His Royal Highness at the Palazzo Corsini, where, Morgan smugly assured a correspondent, all the most fashionable foreigners in Rome would be present. 20 Taking leave of the Duke, Morgan and Powel turned south 84

The Grand Tour toward Naples. There were wonders here that surpassed Rome's, but they saw something more than the conventional sights shown to conventional tourists. They peered into the mouth of Vesuvius, at the flickering sulphur flames in a thousand crevices; they visited the Grotto del Cane and the burning Solfatarra; and Morgan acquired a boxful of lava so large that, with a marble bust, some paintings, and forty-two medals, he had a problem in sending the souvenirs home. Signor Camillo Paderni, chief antiquary to the King of Naples, "was very polite," conducting them through Herculaneum and Portici; and they saw a dozen ruined temples and palaces on a "Most pleasant Excursion" to Pozzuoli, Baia, and Cumae. T h e walls of Nero's Prison were covered as high as a man could reach with the signatures of ten thousand Englishmen who had preceded them. As Morgan gazed at them idly, wondering whether there was room for his own and Powel's, two names leaped o u t Joseph Shippen's and John Allen's, Morgan's fellow-at-arms of Fort Augusta and the Chief Justice's son, who had gone to Italy on business and pleasure three years before. 21 Soon after the middle of May the friends were in Rome again, studying art and history and conscientiously following the patterns of the grand tour. With two other Americans, both New Englanders, the Philadelphians engaged James Byers to guide them through the galleries and instruct them in standards of artistic excellence. A native of Aberdeenshire and one of the Roman characters of his day, Byers had spent forty years collecting antique sculpture and delivering lectures which formed the taste of two generations of his countrymen. Thanks to him, Morgan wrote to Sir Alexander Dick, the travelers had "access . . . to all the Palaces & Cabinets of Curiosities, Antiquities, Statues, Painting, Architecture & Sculpture at Rome." From ten to two each day under Byers' direction they inspected the treasures of the past. Systematically Morgan made note of the history, description, and quality of every piece, but if he felt any thrill of emotion or had a personal reaction, he could not find words 85

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to express it. Nothing was "more simple, beautifull, or sublime" than the Apollo Belvedere, which was "proof of Simplicity being a Source of Sublimity." Rome was full of astonishments and pleasures, and St. Peter's was the most stupendous achievement of all—"oh, qu'elle est belle!" Morgan exclaimed. 22 Evenings he and Powel spent at the English Cafё in the Piazza di Spagna or at some private party. " I seek the company of the nobility," Morgan told Sue, as though he collected notabilities as he collected academic honors, "and am at all the distinguished Conversaziones." English noblemen and other gentlemen in Italy, he wrote Dick, "have treated me with great politeness, so that by their means I have been presented to . . . several Italian Princes & princesses, whence the Entertainments of Italy are well opened to me." He was presented even to Pope Clement, in a private audience with Powel and their two Bostonian companions. "He was affable and courteous," reported this son of a Quaker mother. 23 Moving easily among the philosophers of Rome as a member of the highly respected English community, Morgan was constantly associating with men who were members of the Accademia degli Arcadi. A literary club dedicated to reason, it was composed of men of letters and science of all kinds—physicians, lawyers, poetasters, artists, and churchmen who dabbled in verse. Each assumed for the occasion a pastoral pseudonym. Distinguished foreigners were sometimes admitted—the Duke of York was made a member when he reached Rome, Lords Spencer and Palmerston were numbered among the Arcadians. Morgan and Powel were elected through the interest of the АЬЬё Peter Grant, a Scots Roman Catholic clergyman, well known in Roman society, and a great favorite of the Pope. T h e two Philadelphians attended as members at least one meeting of the Arcadians, at the villa of Cardinal Albani, when the King of the Romans was invited to membership. " T h e Arcadian Belles Lettres Society at Rome" was one of the honors Morgan placed on the title page of his Discourse on medical education the next year.24 86

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Most fondly remembered of all the people Morgan met in Rome this summer was the charming young Swiss-born artist, Angelica Kauffmann. At nineteen, she was already strikingly successful as a painter of the English nobility and gentry who visited Rome. Both Morgan and Powel sat for her. 25 T h e portrait of Morgan shows a man of small, delicately fashioned features, his cheeks smooth and apple-red, his fingers long and tapering. He is well but not richly dressed in a blue coat with a winecolored lining and a vest of saffron hue which, with careful negligence, he has left unbuttoned. Standing with one hand resting lightly on a hip, the other effortlessly open and outstretched, he appears the very gentleman of leisure Rome knew in the spring of 1764. Not only did Morgan engage the attractive Angelica to paint his portrait; when she complained of not feeling well, he took her symptoms and gave her medical advice. He refused a fee, on which she insisted on making me a present of a piece of painting of her doing, & desired I would pitch on some piece of any of the great Masters that she could conveniently copy, & she would execute it for me. I thereupon begged her own Portrait, as of an Artist I greatly valued, 8c on asking her Father's permission, which he readily granted, she promised to send it to me, which she did about a Year after when she came to London with a letter accompanying it. . . .2β Nor did Angelica forget him. "Many a time," the Abbe Grant wrote him after he had returned to Philadelphia, "has she mentiond you to me with the greatest of pleasure," recollecting "with J o y the various hours she passd in your good and intertaining company." 27 On Friday evening, J u l y 6, Morgan and Powel left Rome for France, England, and home. T h e y had engaged a vettura for the journey, contracting with the driver to carry them to a specific destination in a specified time for a specified sum. Their route led through Terni, where the great cataract inspired "the most pleasing & sublime thoughts," through Spoleto and Foligno, where they inspected an Adoration of the Virgin by Raphael. 87

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At Loretto they were taken to the wine cellar of the Casa Sancta and were shown a great butt which was said, by the Virgin's intervention, to give out three kinds of wine. Morgan surmised after inspection that the butt contained three separate vessels and that the cock had three vents, so that a skilful operator could produce each kind of wine while creating the illusion that the butt and spout \vere like those in every farmer's house. All three wines were sour, which made Morgan "think the Madonna not so much anxious of commending the goodness of the Wine as the Nature of the Miracle." Traveling only at night to avoid the heat, the Philadelphians passed rapidly through Ancona, an ancient seaport with a triumphal arch of T r a j a n on its mole; through Senigallia and Fano, catching glimpses of the the Adriatic lapping gently at the sandy beaches only a few yards away. T h e y hurried on to Pesaro and Rimini, crossed a level, rich, well-cultivated country to Cesena and Faenza; and, on the night of J u l y 14, drove into Bologna, the first stage of their journey completed. 28 Here in the ancient capital of the Romagna, at the foot of the Apennines, on the verge of the plain of Emilia, they spent a week in strenuous sight-seeing. In the palace of San Pietro they saw "a most glorious St. Peter & St. P a u l " by Guido R e n i and heard an interesting story connecting their countryman Benjamin West with it. Permission to copy the painting having been denied, West reproduced it "by coming in frequently & then retiring to a neighbouring street & taking it down by parts, returning often to correct & compare it." Bologna was distinguished as the home of two unusual women, one an anatomist, the other a professor of natural philosophy. Morgan paid a visit to both. Signora Anna Morandi Manzolini taught women the art of midwifery, using a large collection of anatomical preparations of her own making. T o her Morgan explained once again the corrosion method. At the University he found "the celebrated Doctress," Laura Maria Catherina Bassi, lecturing on light and color. When she learned 88

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he was a compatriot of Dr. Franklin, she spoke with him "very learnedly on Electricity & other philosophical subjects" and introduced him to her husband, Giuseppe Veratti, also a professor, who gave him a letter of introduction to Morgagni, the celebrated anatomist of Padua. 2 9 Shortly before ten o'clock on the morning of July 24 Morgan and Powel came within sight of the walls of ancient Padua. As their carriage drew closer, bumping uncomfortably over the uneven pavement, they remarked the decaying air of the buildings and noted that the city was more populous than they had expected. T h e first thing Morgan wanted to do was call on Giovanni Battista Morgagni, who at eighty-two was still teaching. Three years earlier he had published his great work, De Sedibus et Causis Morborum. By correlating clinical histories with post-mortem findings, it checked mere speculation in medicine and established pathology as a branch of modern medicine. T h e book traveled rapidly through Europe: the Edinburgh professors had appreciated its significance at once.30 Leaving Powel to his own sight-seeing, taking a copy of his Edinburgh thesis and a piece of kidney injected at Paris, Morgan set out for Morgagni's house. He was received "with the greatest Politeness imaginable." T h e old man was as alert and hearty as one half his age; he wore no glasses. When Morgan showed him the prepared specimen of kidney, Morgagni declared he had never seen its like, grasped at once the importance of the corrosion method, and praised the work as superior to Ruysch's, which he had seen. He showed Morgan through the museum of anatomy and pathology, calling particular attention to a series of foetal and human skeletons, some unusual calculi, and a preparation of the bones of the human ear. T h e walls of the museum were hung with portraits of Morgagni's predecessors, the famous anatomists of Padua—Vesalius, Fallopius, Spigelius, and others. Morgagni took obvious pleasure in pointing out the variations in their dress, from the monk89

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like cowl of the Middle Ages to the wide white bands of the previous generation, and he told stories of all of them. Among the learned, bearded faces two portraits stood out, the crayon drawings of two lovely young girls. Morgan asked who they were. In reply the old man told a moving story. Of his fifteen children, eight were girls, and each in turn decided to become a nun. T w o by two they entered four different convents, the last two choosing the strict Order of St. Clare, where they would always be veiled. Before they left their father for the last time, Morgagni's friend, the Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera, without his knowledge, had made these portraits of Margherita and Luigia Domenica Rosa. And there they hung, in the ill-lighted cabinet, surrounded by the faces of the learned doctors, overlooking the bottles and bones of their father's work, his bestloved daughters, because they were his last. By the time the two men returned to Morgagni's study, the older man was treating the younger "like a brother or Son." Morgan presented his host with a copy of his thesis on pus. Morgagni gave him a copy of the two-volume De Sedibus, the only fine copy he had left. At the bottom of the iitle-page of each magnificent folio the author wrote a flattering inscription: "Viro Experientissimo et Humanissimo D. Di. Joanni Morgan auctor" and "Viro de R e Anatomico bene merito Do. Dri. Joanni Morgan auctor." As the pen moved to spell Morgan's name, the American commented on the similarity of his name and Morgagni's, and the Italian smilingly observed they must be cousins. 31 Venice, as the travelers approached it from the land, seemed like a city rising from the sea. 32 T h e y visited the Doge's Palace, admired St. Mark's, exclaimed at the "many fine Prospects" from the Campanile. Morgan made lists of the paintings they saw in the churches and convents and sometimes added a reflection on climate or manners. T h e Danish consul had them to dinner—they had traveled from Rome to Naples and back with his son—and the consul's son-in-law entertained them "with

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great hospitality" and conducted them through the famous glassworks on the Isle of Murano and through the Arsenal, where memories of Venice's maritime glory slumbered. Morgan thought it could not compare with the Tower of London. Twice they dined at the home of the English Resident, in company with other English travelers. During one of the dinners a violent thunderstorm arose. Watching the lightning flash and streak, Morgan wondered why the Venetians did not protect their churches and palaces with Dr. Franklin's electrical rods as was done in Philadelphia. From Venice as from Naples Morgan sent off a large box filled with miscellaneous purchases and souvenirs—books, including Boccacio's Decameron and the 1760 London edition of Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, some fifty engravings, a dozen paintings, many natural curiosities, including "a Hair Ball form'd in the Stomach of a Cow," which he had bought at Bologna, and a string of religious beads for which he had paid twelve paolos at Loretto. 33 Returning from Venice to Padua, Morgan and Powel paid a brief visit to Morgagni, who charged Morgan with some minor errands; then proceeded in their vettura through Vicenza and Verona to Mantua, where they saw nothing to detain them, though it was Vergil's birthplace. They crossed the Po and, passing through a well-cultivated countryside, entered Parma on an August morning. Professor Flaminio Torrigiani of the medical school there showed Morgan in great detail a way to prepare skeletons for anatomical purposes. The American visited the hospital, which he thought notable because it had been so obviously designed to be spacious and airy. From Parma the travelers hurried on toward Milan, not tarrying at Piacenza even a few hours to see a festival of the Madonna: they were both "almost satiated with seeing of functions." On August 15 their vettura deposited them at The Three Kings, the best inn in Milan. Here they climbed one of the Cathedral towers to view the 91

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panorama of the Lombardy plain, stretching almost from Venice to Genoa and northward to the peaks of the Alps. T h e y descended into a crypt where the richly dressed body of the Cardinal Carlo Borromeo was preserved. Morgan thought it "one of the most splendid sights of the sort which can be well imagined." T h e size and system of Milan's general hospital astonished and impressed him. It had 1081 sick and a thousand out-patients of all nationalities. T h e hospital received foundlings—120 the preceding year—and there was an isolation ward for venereal patients. Fifteen physicians and ten surgeons were in daily attendance, assisted by seventy-five young surgeondressers. T h e assistants lived in the hospital, attended lectures given for them by the senior staff. Morgan judged it "beyond comparison, the finest & largest Hospital" he had seen anywhere. T w e n t y miles beyond Milan, Morgan and Powel stopped for dinner at the post-house in the village of Buffalora, where travelers' baggage was inspected by customs. While they were still dining, an official intimated that their goods could be passed without inspection. T o spare themselves trouble and protect the dutiable articles they carried, Morgan and Powel readily agreed to pay a small bribe and returned to their meal. Not understanding that they were expected to stop at the customs office all the same, the travelers instructed their driver to pass through. T h e officials angrily pursued them, forced them to return, and gave their baggage a "rigorous Examination" which "exceeded all Measure." Nothing escaped scrutiny. Every trunk and box had to be emptied, every parcel unwrapped. Morgan assisted his inspector in the unpacking and was able thereby to conceal some rings, a jar of cosmetic cream, and "a Portrait in Miniature set in Gold which I valued above anything else I had there"—probably Molly Hopkinson's. All the inspector found to tax were a watch, some sulphur matches, and two unfinished portraits. Powel's fate was harder. T h e inspector challenged everything—handkerchiefs, silk stockings, razors, a painting, 92

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some perfume, even the powder for his pistols which he had brought from Paris five months before. Meanwhile two women had appeared at the customs house to watch; soon they were joined by the chief inspector, father of the younger woman. As the inspectors triumphantly held up each article they found in the travelers' baggage, Morgan appealed to the younger woman, protesting against such treatment of English gentlemen. The woman seemed to agree, spoke rapidly to her father, and the chief inspector restored everything to Morgan and charged him nothing. As for Powel, the old man finally agreed not to confiscate his goods, but charged him an exorbitant duty of six and a half louis d'or (130 francs). T h e Americans made no further protest, but resumed their journey, secretly resolving to take revenge on these uncivil magistrates. Rising at four the next morning, they returned to Milan, sought out their banker, who took them to the Farmers-General of the Revenue to repeat their complaints. Meanwhile the Farmers-General had received the report of the chief inspector at Buffalora, Signor Coppa. It declared that four louis d'or had been collected from Powel. At this evidence of Coppa's dishonesty, the Farmers-General restored all Powel's money, gave him and Morgan a permit to pass Buffalora without further molestation and assured them that old Coppa would be summoned to Milan to account for his behavior. The Philadelphians returned to Buffalora in high spirits. Powel enjoyed their triumph to the limit, playing his part with gusto. One of the clerks, seeing the Americans returning, disappeared into a small room. Powel followed him, found several officials together, saluted them ironically and thanked them for their attentions when he and Morgan were last there. For this, he told them, he thought himself in gratitude bound to return to Milan to speak a Word in their favor to the Fermiersgeneraux; who had comply'd with his Petition, & they would probably that day receive a Message or Invitation to come to Milan, in order to receive a Reward adequate to their Deserts. 93

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The Rascals comprehended well eno' the force of his Elocution, 8c said they were obliged to him for the Honour he had done them, 8c should hold themselves in readiness to obey the summons whenever they received it. Their looks, however, were the most submissive, & their voice faultring. With Cap in hand & held up like poised firelocks, disturbed Countenance 8c a trembling of their limbs, they received his Message. . . . T h e harangue ended, their "honor" avenged, the travelers called for their carriage. Signor Coppa watched them silently, his daughter at his side. Powel bowed derisively as the carriage sped past. Noticing the look of alarm on the young woman's face, Morgan saluted her respectfully. She replied with a curtsy. T h a t night at Novara he wrote her a note, assuring her he wished her no harm, but warning her that her father must never again behave so badly toward English gentlemen or other foreigners of decent appearance. He signed the letter " J . Morgan, Cavaliere Inglese." 3 4 Relishing the memory of the encounter, forgetting that the triumph had been over clerks and hirelings, at the next inns where he stopped Morgan ate his "yard of Bread at dinner with a good gout." T h e driver even brought his father-in-law to their inn at T u r i n "to show him the two English Men, who had curb'd the Insolence of Fellows whom every Body feared and hated." Now the travelers were within sight of the Alps. Clouds hung lightly on the nearest peaks; those farther away were covered by "eternal depths of Snow." It was to Morgan "a most sublime and pleasing o b j e c t . . . which cannot be seen but with wonder & astonishment." As a physician he was astonished, and shocked as well, by the prevalence of goiters among the poor people in this mountainous country. Some had tumors on their throats or necks as big as their heads. It was "a sad sight." On the Corso the first evening they were in T u r i n they saw the King of Savoy and the royal family taking a drive, followed by some fifty carriages filled with nobles and gentlemen and their ladies. Learning that such progresses were daily occur-

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rences, they went to the Corso early the next night, took a position where they might see royalty "to greater advantage." Not yet satiated with sights of this kind, the visitors took a third opportunity and went one morning to the royal chapel to watch the court make its way to and from mass. Almost as soon as they reached T u r i n , Morgan and Powel waited on the British Minister there, to pay their respects and to obtain introductions to the other English and permission to inspect the military fortifications at Brunetta north of the city. But Mr. Dutens paid no attention to them until Morgan protested angrily he would not tolerate being "treated with shyness or any appearance of slight." With profuse apologies, Dutens came at once to call, promised to present them to the King and to introduce them to the best people. T h e other English in the city, at Dutens' signal, showered them with invitations. For a moment, they were almost persons of consequence in Savoy. T h e Minister carried them off to the salon of the Countess of St. Gill, who alternately shocked and delighted them with revelations of the private intrigues of some of the English gentlemen of T u r i n . A few days later Mr. Dutens presented them to the King as His Majesty walked through his audience chamber to the chapel. T h e King was friendly—Morgan liked him at once—and gave permission for him and Powel to visit Brunetta. Lord Mount Stuart, the Earl of Bute's son, pressed them to attend a private concert where they might meet "all the fine ladies of T u r i n . " T h e y might, in short, have stayed on many weeks, for they were now a part of the English society at T u r i n , as they had been in Rome, but they still talked of being in London at the end of September, and so, on September 7, after two weeks in the capital of Piedmont, they set out for Switzerland. T h e y crossed the Alps by the Mount Cenis pass, long, hard, and perilous, and hurried forward to Geneva. Here they observed the processes of watch-making, the city's principal industry, and examined the pumps by which water was brought into

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the city from the Lake. Of Geneva's women Morgan ventured an appraisal that only a few were "tolerable" and none could be called beautiful. On Sunday, September 16, two days after their arrival, they drove out of Geneva to the Chateau Ferney. A n English gentleman at Rome had given Morgan a letter of introduction to Voltaire. He met his visitors on the steps of his house, quickly scanned the letter Morgan brought and made them welcome. He introduced them to his guests in an eloquent declamation: I beg leave to present to you two English Gentlemen. Oh, Glorious Nation, renowned Conquerors of Canada. Though they have fought against you, 8c well have they fought battles by land & Sea, we must now look upon them as our brave friends, since we are now at peace. Morgan replied modestly that he hoped peace would be lasting and that all men might regard one another as friends. As they drank coffee, with a pet dog playing about his chair, Voltaire asked about Italy, the famine, and the recent excavations at Herculaneum. Although he sometimes had to grope for a word and his speech was colored with Gallicisms, he spoke English carefully—better, Morgan thought, than most Frenchmen he had met; while his manner was lively and his expression both "very sagacious" and "comical." T u r n i n g abruptly to Powel, Voltaire asked, "What think you of that little dog; has he any soul or not? And what do the people in England now think of the soul?" Startled by the question, embarrassed because he knew that Voltaire and some of his guests certainly held unorthodox views on the subject, Powel ignored the first question, replied to the second only that now as heretofore the English held various notions on the soul. But Voltaire was not to be put off with such an evasive answer. Bolingbroke, he asserted, had written on the subject, too diffusely, to be sure, but importantly. Had Powel not read this valuable author? Poor Powel had to admit he had not. " R e a d him, by all 96

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means," exclaimed Voltaire, and advised Powel to get a friend to give him an abridgement when he got home. While this was going on, fearful that he might be "hook'd into any seeming dispute about the soul," Morgan addressed himself closely to his neighbor. The English, he heard Voltaire declaiming from the other side of the room, the English had some excellent authors. He swore they were the first nation of Europe and prayed God that, if there should ever be a resurrection, he might be born again in England, the land of liberty. Four things he adored above everything else—Voltaire held up his hand and counted them off on his fingers for emphasis—liberty, property, Newton, and Locke. The room opened on the garden. Did Morgan and Powel love Greenwich? Did they love Richmond Park, Voltaire wanted to know as he swept the Americans outside. There is the Thames, he said, pointing to Lake Geneva; there is Richmond, pointing to the hills of Savoy beyond the lake; and these vineyards around this garden, and these lawns are Greenwich. "You see, I am quite in the English Taste . . . no French Gewgaws; all is after Nature." T h e visitors congratulated him on the beauty of his situation. "I have," Voltaire replied, "six miles in Circuit here, &: am lord of a greater extent than the neighbouring republic of Geneva. I pay no Taxes to the French King or any other. I enjoy Liberty and Property here & am my own Master." He related how he had built the chateau. Where it stood there had once been churches and chapels. He had pulled them all down. "I hate Churches 8c Priests & Masses." T h e Americans had been to Italy. Did their blood not boil "to see shoescTapers & porters saying Mass at a place where once a Cicero or Cato & a Scipio have thundered in eloquent harangues to the Roman People?" Voltaire shook with indignation as he spoke. As they turned to re-enter the house, Voltaire seemed enraptured. "Oh, Goddess Liberty," he cried, "thou heaven-born maid"; then, turning to his other guests, pointing to the Philadelphians, he declaimed in French: 97

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Behold two Amiable Young Men, Lovers of T r u t h & Inquirers into Nature. T h e y are not satisfy'd with mear Appearances; they love Investigation 8: T r u t h , and despize Superstition. I commend You, Gentlemen—go on, love T r u t h & search diligently after it. Hate Hypocrisy, hate Masses, Sc above all hate the Priests! 35 A t Paris M o r g a n l e a r n e d that he h a d b e e n elected a corres p o n d e n t of the R o y a l A c a d e m y of Surgery. H i s d e d i c a t o r y letter had b e e n accepted w i t h a f e w changes; as for his request to b e elected a f o r e i g n m e m b e r , the A c a d e m y " b e l i e v e d the title of c o r r e s p o n d e n t was sufficient for w h a t he has p r e s e n t e d " to it, a n d he had b e e n elected a c c o r d i n g l y . T h i s was less than M o r g a n h a d h o p e d for, b u t it was an h o n o r n o other A m e r i c a n

had

r e c e i v e d a n d b e t t e r than n o t h i n g ; a n d M . Sue had an iidea. A t Sue's suggestion M o r g a n a t t e n d e d the m e e t i n g of

the

A c a d e m y on O c t o b e r 4 to express f o r m a l thanks for the h o n o r p a i d h i m . W i t h M . Sue's h e l p he w r o t e the address in French, a n d read it, n o t trusting his s p o k e n F r e n c h . T h r o u g h o u t the speech M o r g a n r e f e r r e d to his e l e c t i o n as an associe, a f e l l o w or m e m b e r of the A c a d e m y ; he n e v e r used the w o r d

correspond-

ant. It Avas clear to the A c a d e m y that he a n d Sue were t r y i n g to force M o r g a n ' s w a y i n t o the ranks of the f o r e i g n members, associes

etrangers.

T h e secretary r e c o r d e d that M o r g a n had pre-

sented his letter of a c k n o w l e d g m e n t in which he calls himself 'member' and takes the title of academi cian. M. Louis has spoken to M. Sue, with whom this letter was concerted, and in view of the representations which have been made to him, it is agreed to alter his expressions and substitute for them that of 'correspondent,' which is properly his. 36 O n O c t o b e r 22, w i t h t w o servants on horseback b e h i n d them, M o r g a n a n d P o w e l set off in a postchaise f r o m Paris for the C h a n n e l . E n r o u t e they visited a c o n v e n t of English nuns at St. Omer.

One

of

t h e m was f r o m C h a r l e s

County,

Maryland.

" W h a t a l i f e of P e n u r y & M i s e r y to o u t w a r d A p p e a r a n c e , " observed the m a n w h o h a d h a d a private a u d i e n c e w i t h the Pope, " & yet w h a t pretensions to f e l i c i t y . " H e l e f t a c r o w n " i n Pity of

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our poor fair Country Women." T h e r e was some delay in getting their trunks shipped off at Dunkirk, but they boarded the Dover packet at Calais on the afternoon of October 29 and landed thirteen hours later, after a disagreeable passage, "glad once more to have our feet on English ground." Next day they reached London, "thankfull to Heaven once more to get into a Circle of Friends and acquaintances." T w o weeks after his return to London, on November 16, 1764, Morgan wrote Provost Smith a candid summary of his tour of France and Italy: . . . whether considered in regard to the amusement or the Improvement 8c advantage, if I may be allowed to speak what I think, it has fully answered the trouble, time & Expence. That is saying a great deal, especially for me who have so much at Stake & who have made so great a sacrifice to what I thought Duty & Honour called upon me for. I am glad tis over. I would not have missed the scenes I have gone through within this twelve month for a good thousand, nor would I have them to go through again for as much more. It is high time that I now indulge my warmest Inclination of settling in Life; I hope I can now do it with Advantage.... T o have seen the Antiquities of Rome, the Monuments of ancient Power 8c Magnificence; & viewed the remains of those who were once Lords of the World; to have been presented to Crowned Heads 8c had an Introduction to the first Nobility of Italy as well as some of the most learned Men in Europe is an Object on which a young Man may well congratulate himself. . . .3T

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WHEN

JOHN

MORGAN

LEFT

P A R I S FOR SOUTHERN

FRANCE

AND

Italy in February 1764, he intended to return to England in time to sail for Philadelphia in the fall. But it was the evening of October 31 before he reached London. He had no taste for a dangerous, uncomfortable winter voyage to America. Furthermore, he wanted to consult some more people in London about his grand project for medical education, and, besides, friends intimated that his personal reputation might be increased if he could spend the winter in London. Accordingly, he changed his plans and postponed his departure for home until spring. T h e winter passed pleasantly enough. He shopped for furniture for the house in Philadelphia to which he would soon take Molly Hopkinson as a bride. He had Benjamin West copy the miniature he carried of her. He even procured his family's pedigree and coat of arms from the College of Heralds and had a signet ring and bookplate cut. T h e motto on both was "Fama praestante, praestantior Virtus." 1 He visited old friends like the DeBerdts and Bevans, wrote his teachers and acquaintances in Edinburgh, Paris, and Italy. Once Dr. Franklin visited him at his lodgings in Surrey Street. And, as the йапсё of Miss Hopkinson, Morgan was invited to Hartlebury, the stately seat of the Bishop of Worcester, a cousin of old Mrs. Hopkinson. T h e spacious halls and apartments, hung with paintings and engravings and decorated with costly stucco work, seemed almost princely. After supper, led by His Lordship, all the family, their guests 100

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and servants attended evening prayer in the chapel of the great house. Scores of wax candles, lighting and shadowing the Gothic features of the chapel, etched a memorable scene for the visitor from Philadelphia. T h e Bishop approved of Morgan and several years later made him a present of a new edition of the works of William Harvey. More gratifying than invitations to Hartlebury were the efforts of Dr. William Watson and other friends to procure Morgan's election to several learned societies. Physician to the Foundling Hospital, an experimenter with electricity, and a friend of Franklin, Watson recommended Morgan warmly to the Royal Society, the outstanding learned body in Europe. Newton had been its president, and its Philosophical Transactions, now extending to more than fifty volumes, had published much of the significant scientific work of three generations. The recommendation of Morgan was presented at the Society's meeting on December 6: He is acquainted with several Branches of Philosophical and polite Literature, & particularly is a zealous Inquirer into Anatomical & Physiological Subjects. He is well known, as well personally as by his Writings, to Many of the Celebrated Authors both in Italy & France, who by their Discoveries & Publications have contributed to an Improvement of these Sciences. He has been made a Correspondent Member of the Royal Academy of Surgery at Paris for his Qualifications in Anatomy, Nor is his Acquaintance with the above mentioned subjects unknown to several persons of the most distinguished Character in those Branches of Medical Knowledge in this City. T h e list of sponsors was impressive testimony both to Morgan's reputation and to Watson's exertions in his behalf. They included not only Silvanus Bevan, Peter Collinson, Dr. Fothergill, and the St. Thomas's Hospital physicians Mark Akenside and Alexander Russell, as might have been expected, but also Gowin Knight, whose improved compass was adopted by the British Navy as standard, Daniel C. Solander, the Swedish botanist who had come to England in 1760 to familiarize Eng101

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lish botanists with the Linnaean system; Sir John Pringle, whose Observations on the Diseases of the Army had laid the foundation of modern military hygiene; James Ferguson, the self-taught astronomer whose book, Astronomy, explained on Sir Isaac Newton's Principles, going through thirteen editions, made astronomy understandable to laymen; Dr. Edward Barry, until lately professor of medicine in Dublin; James Short, mathematician and optical instrument-maker; and John Ellis, who first proved that corals are animals. T h e formal election took place on March 7, 1765, after Morgan had left London. In acknowledging it Morgan "desired admission whenever his affairs required his presence in England." Meanwhile Franklin paid Morgan's five-guinea entrance fee, and Samuel Powel reimbursed Franklin. 2 Having set in motion the machinery of election to the Royal Society, Watson then urged Morgan to apply for the license of the Royal College of Physicians of London. An ancient corporation chartered by Henry VIII, with power to license practitioners of medicine in the city and within seven miles of London, the College—like so many English institutions in the eighteenth century—had now become hardly more than the jealous guardian of its privileges. The fellowship of the College, once offered to all practitioners, was now narrowly restricted: only graduates of Oxford and Cambridge could hope to qualify. F01 all that, its prestige was considerable, and its license, which counted for something in London, would be an impressive recommendation in Philadelphia, where no physician yet enjoyed that distinction. A formal examination, most of it in Latin, was required, although it was generally understood that applicants, like Morgan, intending to practice outside London, should be less strictly tested. At three separate sessions in January and February Morgan was examined on physiology, pathology, and therapeutics. On February 9 he was proposed for the license and, "being ballotted for, was elected, and having given his faith to 102

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the College was admitted and the College seal was set to his Diploma." 3 While his applications to the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians were pending, Morgan sought still another professional honor. Under the rules of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, he was entitled to election without examination, by virtue of his Edinburgh diploma; and he counted on teachers and friends in the northern capital to see that his petition went through smoothly. He appealed for support to Sir Alexander Dick on January 25. I mean to apply to the College of Physicians at Edinburgh to be admitted as a Member of the College. It is under your patronage I hope to obtain this Honour 8c through your means I take the Liberty of applying for it. If I may be thought worthy of that Honour, I beg you will condescend to propose me, 8c back the proposition with your Interest. . . but if you conceive there will be any Opposition to my Design or any sufficient Reason to forbid my Hopes . . . I shall desist from the pursuit. I beg too to receive your seniments on this Head as soon as possible, 8c that my application may not transpire in London, as my friends amongst the faculty in London have proposed me as a Candidate in the Royal Society here 8c if it should be known in London that I have apply'd [unsuccessfully] at Edinburgh to be admitted into the College of Physicians there I know not what Effect it might have here on the ballotting night which will be the Middle of March.4 Assuring Morgan of his support, Sir Alexander directed him to apply instead to Dr. Robert Whytt, his successor as president of the College. On February 15, a week after his election by the Royal College of London, Morgan sent off his formal petition "Unto the much Honoured, T h e President and other Members of the royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh." In it he related briefly the facts of his professional career, with which various members of the College were already acquainted, and bound himself by the resolution of 1754, as a licentiate, not to keep an apothecary's shop within the city of Edinburgh. In the covering letter to Whytt, Morgan further obligated himself by

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the resolutions of the College of 1764, should he be admitted a Fellow, "never to keep an Apothecary's Shop nor practice Pharmacy by myself, Copartner or Servant any where within the Kingdoms of great Brittain or Ireland." At the first monthly meeting after the receipt of this petition, Morgan was duly admitted a licentiate. " I n a Year, the usual time," added Dr. J o h n Hope, informing him of the vote, the College would have the pleasure of making him a Fellow. It was true that a year often elapsed between a candidate's admission as a licentiate and his election as a Fellow, but equally true that sometimes men were elected Fellows at the next quarterly meeting after they received the license. If he were required to wait a year when others were admitted in three months, Morgan protested, the action of the College would be regarded as an insulting reflection upon him. T h e r e were, he thought, compelling reasons why he should be made a Fellow at once. The first & very considerable one is, that I am told, the College of Edinburgh is about giving a new Edition of their Dispensatory in the Autumn. T o this will be prefixed the Names of all the Fellows & Licentiates of the College. I shall be most generally known by whatever Title I am designated by in the Dispensatory for ever afterwards. This was my principal Motive of applying to be made a Licentiate of the College of Physicians both at London and Edinburgh, as a Step towards being made a fellow of the latter before publication of the Dispensatory, which cost me above one hundred pounds Sterling. This I would otherwise have certainly spared at a Juncture when I had just expended fifteen hundred pounds Sterling in my Education abroad, 8c was on the point of departure for America, where I should have occasion for all the Cash I was Master of at my first coming, in order to settle genteely in my Profession. In similar vein of urgency and injured vanity Morgan wrote his former professors, who were Fellows and officers of the College —Whytt, Hope, Cullen, and Drummond. As it turned out, Morgan was needlessly disturbed: Sir Alexander and other friends had not neglected him. At the May

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meeting of the College, after Hope's letter had left Edinburgh, Colin Drummond moved that Morgan be made a Fellow; and at the quarterly meeting on August 6, which Sir Alexander made it a point to attend—before Morgan's pleas had arrived— the motion was "agreed to, And he was admitted a Fellow of the College accordingly with power to him to Enjoy all the honours, Libertys, and privileges which any other fellow of the College does or may Enjoy." J o h n Morgan was the first American Fellow of the College. William Shippen, J r . was the second, applying for its license in 1767 and receiving the fellowship the following year. 5 In addition to garnering professional honors, Morgan also acquired a small practice during the winter of 1764-65. His fame had gone before him, so that he had scarcely returned to London when patients called for his services. In January he had six—all "persons of fortune & Consideration." Presumably they were satisfied with his treatment, for Morgan discovered, as he wrote Dick, that were I inclined to settle in London, there would be hopes of my getting into Business even in this great Metropolis, allready so well provided. Indeed many of my friends have advised me to think seriously of it, but the attachments I have to my Native place, My Relations, My Friends & the Connections I have formed there, flatter me with more agreeable Prospects in Philadelphia.® One of these connections was Mary Hopkinson. It was principally because of her, Morgan later confessed to Dick, that he had "returned to America sooner than otherwise I should have done." 7 While Morgan was waiting at Gravesend for passage to Philadelphia at the end of February, Samuel Powel came to help him bear the tedium. T h e friends reviewed their experiences during the past four or five years. T h e y had seen something of life: they had observed poverty, ignorance, filth and disease like nothing in America; they had traveled and dined with the great and near-great, speaking to a king, princes, and a pope; their man·

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ners had been polished and their ideas formed. Civic and academic honors had been paid them, and Powel might even have been knighted, had there been more time to arrange it. 8 T h e y had come a long way from Philadelphia, they told each other. T h e y were as familiar with Piccadilly and the Strand as with Market Street and had walked as confidently in the Piazza di Spagna as in the State-House yard. W h a t , Powel wondered, would his plain-spoken Quaker relations think of all this? Powel's religious history was like Morgan's—a Quaker background without the Friends' Meeting. So Powel had never been baptized. W i t h the eloquence of a convert Morgan assured his friend that baptism was an essential duty and cited himself as an example of its happy consequences. W a r m i n g with anxiety for the salvation of Samuel's soul and his position in Philadelphia society, he pleaded with h i m to procrastinate no longer. Happily the Reverend Richard Peters, w h o m they both knew, was in London. H e w o u l d know how to arrange the matter without embarrassment to a gentleman. Calling for ink and paper, Morgan wrote Peters at once, recommending their mutual friend "on a very particular & interesting occasion, viz. that he may be made a partaker of the privilidges of our religion, by a compliance with one of the sacred ordinances of the N e w Testament . . . I mean the ordinance of Baptism. . . ," 9 Molly Hopkinson must have smiled when she heard. It was an eight-weeks' voyage. As he read and re-read the proposal for establishing a medical school in America which he had drafted the year before in Paris, Morgan reflected on the development of the project to this point and tried to plan his own conduct in face of the opposition he was sure it would meet. H o w many times, with how many people he had discussed his scheme he could not recall. Medical education in America was something the American students all talked about in Edinburgh. T h e Virginians, w h o were dreaming about a medical school when Morgan met them in 1760, had taken no step to establish one; and he guessed they never would, for no town in

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Virginia was populous enough to support one. Philadelphia was different, with 25,000 inhabitants and a well-established hospital where students observed the physicians' practice. Already for the past three years William Shippen had been lecturing on anatomy and obstetrics and instructing midwives properly in their business. And now he, John Morgan, M.D., correspondent of the Royal Academy of Surgery of Paris, licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, almost certainly F.R.S., licentiate—or Fellow—of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, was coming home to establish the first regular course of medical instruction on a permanent basis in America. One of the first, perhaps the first, in England to whom Shippen and Morgan had revealed their hopes of giving medical lectures was Dr. John Fothergill. They had spoken with him individually, they had talked with him together, probably in October 1761, expanding and refining their ideas with the wise old Quaker. From the beginning he gave them modest encouragement, although Morgan in particular, dazzled by his visions for his country and himself, may have interpreted this encouragement to include more than Fothergill intended. When Shippen had returned home in the spring of 1762—he had just married Arthur Lee's sister—he brought a set of anatomical drawings as a gift from Fothergill to the Pennsylvania Hospital. Beautifully executed by Riemsdyk, the eighteen drawings, illustrating dissections of the human body and the progress of pregnancy, were well suited for instruction in anatomy and obstetrics. " I n the want of real Subjects," Fothergill had explained to James Pemberton, one of the Hospital Managers, these will have their Use & I have recommended it to Dr. Shippen to give a Course of Anatomical Lectures to such as may attend. He is very well qualified for the subject & will soon be followed by an able Assistant Dr. Morgan, both of whom I apprehend will not only be useful to the Province in their Employments but if suitably countenanced by the Legislature will be able to erect a School for Physic

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J O H N MORGAN: C O N T I N E N T A L DOCTOR

amongst you that may draw many Students from various parts of America & the West Indies & at least furnish them with a better Idea of the Rudiments of their Profession than they have at present the Means of acquiring on your Side of the Water. 10 T h i s was a moderate, cautious recommendation. Philadelphia could certainly support one or two private lecturers. If they were successful, perhaps legislative support could be obtained for a full school of medicine. Such an institution, if chartered by the Assembly, might be completely independent of the College of Philadelphia and have power to confer its own degrees. Or a medical school might be formed as a department of the College, as the medical school at Edinburgh was a part of the University. If Fothergill believed the "School for Physic" should be a part of the College, he did not say so. Nor did Shippen make this proposal; nor perhaps would he, for, although his father was a trustee of the College, Shippen himself was a graduate of the College of New Jersey and was not so intimately connected as was Morgan with the founders of the Philadelphia institution. Significantly, Fothergill had characterized Morgan in his letter to Pemberton as Shippen's "able Assistant." T h e connotation was clearly one of subordination. In the spring of 1762 it seemed to Fothergill, as to everyone acquainted with their plans, that Shippen was the leader. He ought to have been: he had been the first of the group to graduate and the first to return to Philadelphia. He would open the school by lecturing on anatomy, the basic medical subject; those who followed, like Morgan, would extend the foundations he had laid. Morgan himself could not have controverted Fothergill's statement of their relations, for, up to this time, he had only followed in Shippen's well-marked steps. Shippen had studied with the Hunters, living with John Hunter in the Great Piazza; so had Morgan. Shippen had walked the wards at St. Thomas's; Morgan was also a hospital pupil there. Shippen had received a degree at Edinburgh and the freedom of the city as well; Morgan came home a doctor of the University and a guild brother of 108

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the Burgh of Edinburgh. Not until after he was graduated in the summer of 1763 did John Morgan begin to surpass Shippen's professional and social achievements. Between 1762, when Fothergill wrote Pemberton, and 1765, when he came home, Morgan's self-confidence grew and his ideas expanded. He no longer viewed himself as Shippen's assistant, but as a man of proven abilities and wide reputation, fit to take the lead in a project for the improvement of medical science in America. In accordance with the plan he and Morgan had concerted with Dr. Fothergill, Shippen had opened his course on anatomy in 1762. T h e introductory lecture in the State House on November 16 was an auspicious occasion, attended not only by the physicians and medical students, but by many laymen as well. T h e course would treat, the lecturer announced, the situation, figure, and structure of every part of the human body, the diseases and methods of cure, and all the necessary operations of surgery. It would offer instruction in bandages, explain the gravid uterus, and give "a few plain general Directions" for the study and practice of midwifery. As might have been expected, Shippen "proposed" in this public lecture "a plan for the institution of a medical school in Philadelphia, to which he then declared that course of anatomy was introductory." So, at least, Shippen declared in 1766, when he and Morgan were contending for the honor of precedence as the first professor of medicine in Philadelphia: but the text of the lecture is not known to have survived and no details of his plan are known. 1 1 T h e first enrollment in Shippen's course in 1762 was small, only ten. Then, in the middle of the winter, the classes were opened to any interested person on payment of a fee for each lecture, and in March Shippen announced a course of lectures for midwives. 12 In addition, twice a month in a room of the Pennsylvania Hospital, before audiences of medical students and laymen, including visitors to Philadelphia, he exhibited and explained Riemsdyk's anatomical drawings. 13 109

J O H N MORGAN: C O N T I N E N T A L DOCTOR

Reports of Shippen's venture had not been long in reaching medical students at Edinburgh. Morgan's young friend Samuel Bard wrote his father on December 29, 1762: You no Doubt have heard that Doctor Shippy has opened an Anatomical Class at Phyladelphia. His character here as an Anatomist is very good & I dare say he shines accordingly at Phyladelphia. You perhaps are not acquainted with the whole of that scheem. It is not to stop with anatomy, but to found, under the Patronage of Doctor Fothergill, a physical Colledge in that Place. Mr. Morgan who is to graduate next Spring, & will be over in the fall, intends to lecture upon the Theory & Practice of Physick, and I dare say is equal to the undertaking. I wish with all my heart they were at New York, that I might have a share amongst them, and assist in founding the first Physical Colledge in America. 14 Even as Bard was writing, the plans for the Philadelphia medical school were becoming, in J o h n Morgan's mind, more specific, more practicable. Morgan shared Fothergill's preference for systematic courses on a collegiate foundation; but where Fothergill and, apparently, Shippen seemed to favor establishing a new institution in Philadelphia—a medical school with power to grant degrees—Morgan now wanted Shippen's medical lectures and his own to form a department of the College of Philadelphia. T h e advantages of uniting the medical "schools" with the College were so obvious that Morgan could not imagine they would not be equally clear to others. T h e scientific training and interests of the medical faculty, Morgan believed, would add a dimension to the College, while the medical curriculum would be strengthened by its association with the arts. Morgan's developing ideas were supported, perhaps decisively, by Provost William Smith when he came to Scotland late in 1762 to solicit funds for the College. Ever ambitious for his institution, personally friendly to his former student, Smith may have given Morgan assurances as well as encouragement. A t least it Avas soon after Smith and Morgan met in Edinburgh that mention was first made that the lectures Shippen and Morgan would deliver in Philadelphia should be designated the

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medical d e p a r t m e n t of the College, and the lecturers, presumably, professors in that institution. B y the spring of 1763 J o h n M o r g a n was ready to lay his plan before T h o m a s Penn. T h e Proprietor endorsed it, promised to support it as much as he could and a p p l a u d e d Morgan's " p u b l i c k spirited warmth to have it carryed into execution under the patronage of the Trustees of the C o l l e g e , " which he thought " v e r y p r o p e r . " 1 3 With Penn's endorsement, Morgan had worked out his ideas more fully. During the winter of 1763-64 in Paris he had drafted an address "on the institution of medical schools in America." H e showed it to Powel and made revisions which Powel suggested. When he returned to London in the fall of 1764, he discussed his plan once more with Fothergill, Dr. Hunter, and Dr. Watson, who each judged it not only "practicable, but a laudable and useful enterprise." On the other hand, with Cullen Morgan was inexplicably secretive. " I am now preparing for America," he wrote his old teacher in November 1764, to see whether, after fourteen years' devotion to medicine, I can get my living without turning apothecary or practicing surgery. . . . My scheme of instituting lectures you will hereafter know more of. It is not prudent to broach designs prematurely, and mine are not fully ripe for execution.16 T h u s by the time Morgan returned to London from the Grand T o u r in the fall of 1764 his intentions and plans were known to Thomas Penn and to several London physicians. T h e y were known also to a number of Philadelphians. H e had revealed them to James Hamilton and the Reverend Richard Peters, both trustees of the College, who were in London in 1764. He had also asked the advice of his old preceptor John Redman, likewise a trustee of the College, who had replied: As to that part of it [your plan] which relates to instruction by lectures &c, It is highly praiseworthy, & should by all means be attempted—and you'l therby deserve much honor for so important a service to this part of the world, and will no doubt obtain it, and

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will have just reason to think, your self upon every good principle justly entitled therto for your pains & expense, and enjoy a Conscious pleasure of having endeavoured to serve mankind in their best temporal interest. 17 N o r was Morgan's plan a secret from the American students in Britain. From Edinburgh in September 1764, when Morgan was still on the Continent, T h o m a s Ruston wrote his father in Philadelphia that A r t h u r Lee, W i l l i a m Shippen's brother-inlaw, had just received his degree, and I find intends for Philadelphia likewise. T h e Scheme that these two & Dr. Morgan are upon, is to get a Medical College connected with the Academy [College of Philadelphia], in which Dr. Shippen is to be Professor of Anatomy & Midwifrey, Morgan of the Theory of Medicine, 8c Lee of Materia Medica & Botany. I long to know what turn Matters will take when Morgan gets over. 18 In view of all this correspondence and the reports and rumors circulating in Philadelphia and among Philadelphians abroad, W i l l i a m Shippen could not have remained ignorant of Morgan's intentions. H e did not have to wait until Morgan publicly announced his program to find them out. T h e question is not whether Shippen knew, but whether Morgan consulted or even informed him as the project for medical education developed in 1764 in ways which Fothergill, Shippen, and Morgan had not contemplated in 1762; and whether Shippen approved, if he was consulted. It seems more than likely that in his desire to put himself at the head of the new program in Philadelphia, Morgan never told Shippen, and perhaps even foolishly attempted to conceal his purposes. Until Morgan returned home, what Shippen knew of the enlarged scheme he learned at second-hand. Such secrecy and lack of confidence would have offended a less proud and sensitive man than Shippen; while to make n o effort to change Shippen's preference for a medical school independent of the College of Philadelphia was to be almost fatal to Morgan's plan. Closely related to Morgan's plan for medical lectures in Philadelphia, and of critical importance to h i m personally, was the

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resolution he had taken not to perform surgery or sell drugs, but to practice medicine only. T h i s intention too he had discussed with Dr. Fothergill, who approved it and explained his reasons in a letter to James Pemberton: I send this by Dr. Morgan, who with Dr. Shippen will I hope do credit to the province. Dr. Shippen has already given proofs of his abilitys and Dr. Morgan has been equally diligent and successfull in prosecuting his studys, and comes over with as much reputation as any American that in my time, has studyed here. I have advised him to set out in Practice upon a plan that I think will be more beneficial to the Province, than the present. He will inform thee more particularly of my sentiments. In short, I think it would be of great service, that a few persons should devote themselves to the instruction of young people in Physick, and if they do this to purpose they must be exempted from the low drudgery of Surgery, and act as Physicians only. A few such the Province can support, and they will be more than proportionally usefull in consultations.1® Practicing as a physician only appealed to Morgan for several reasons. As Fothergill pointed out, it promised to give him the time he needed to prepare his lectures and teach his students. Moreover, by declining to be either surgeon or pharmacist—a mechanic or a tradesman—he would increase his professional dignity, reminding his patients each time he gave them a prescription to be filled that in Philadelphia he at least practiced medicine according to the standards of the Royal Colleges of L o n d o n and Edinburgh. T h o u g h Fothergill had recommended this course of practice, J o h n Redman, whom Morgan consulted, had counselled against it. So long a time would pass before many physicians followed Morgan's example, R e d m a n told him, that his professional talents would be "almost buried & as it were rusting for want of e m p l o y m e n t , " while his skill in surgery, for which he had " a natural genius," would be lost. Furthermore, continued Redm a n , Morgan's income woud be so small as ill to repay you for your extrayordinary expense of time & money in qualifying yourself, and as ill supply you with what is indispensably necessary for your Support 8c Comfort, 118

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especially if you h a v e any m o r e m o u t h s t h a n your own to s u p p l y , whose stomachs or backs will not be so easily satisfyecl with the f o o d of the i m a g i n a t i o n as your own might. B u t if you b e g i n in the C o m m o n way, you will I a m p e r s w a d e d i m m e d i a t e l y enter u p o n a scene of action, which will be b o t h h o n o r a b l e & usefull, S u p p l y all y o u r wants 8c those d e p e n d a n t on you, a n d you'l be every h o u r e n g a g e d in d o i n g g o o d to rich fc poor, relieving the distresses of p o o r s u f f e r i n g fellow m o r t a l l s , a n d p e r h a p s receiving daily the blessings of those w h o are ready to perish, which is better than all the h o n o u r or profitts of the w o r l d . . . . 2 0

This warning and appeal had left Morgan unmoved, as Redman suspected they would. T h e younger man's resolution had not been shaken. T o relieve himself of the necessity of selling drugs and to serve other physicians who might follow him in practicing after the "regular" manner of Great Britain, Morgan had persuaded a reliable pharmacist recommended by Silvanus Bevan to accompany him to Philadelphia. Now he was coming home, home to Philadephia after five years, home to his brothers and sisters, his friends and relations, above all to Molly Hopkinson. Philadelphia was expecting him. For three years reports of his academic and social successes and honors had been coming in. Persons like Provost Smith, who saw him in Britain, and Colonel Shippen, with whom he corresponded, knew his reputation abroad, how he had traveled in the company of a duke and been made a member of learned societies. T h e papers had printed the essential portion of M. Sue's report on his paper to the Royal Academy of Surgery. When the time for his departure had come, his London friends had exerted themselves to find the superlatives they thought he deserved. Fothergill had assured his American correspondents that no American in his experience had acquired greater reputation. Franklin had predicted that he would "prove of great Use to his Country as well as an Honour to the Medical School of Edinburgh." Thomas Penn, who sent over by Morgan some books for the surveyors Mason and Dixon, assured Dr. Thomas Graeme that Morgan sailed "with the most ample testimonials 114

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of his ability in his profession, which he also merits as to his general conduct, and has my warmest wishes for his success." 2 1 T o their mutual friend George Roberts, Samuel Powel wrote urgently of Morgan: Pray use him as his merits deserve & don't force him from you. For the honor of our country make his residence in it agreeable. It is no small sacrifice he makes in returning, as fine prospects open upon him here if he would stay; but his Amor Patriae maintains the upper hand. 2 2

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Chapter J The Charter of Medical Education

W I T H I N A F E W DAYS OF HIS RETURN TO P H I L A D E L P H I A ,

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showed his " P l a n of opening Medical Schools under the Patronage and Government of the College" to several of the Trustees and asked to be elected professor of medicine. T o support his application he presented recommendations from former Governor Hamilton and the Reverend Mr. Peters, both of them Trustees, whom he had seen in London, and from the Proprietor T h o m a s Penn. T o the members of the Board Penn wrote: He thinks his Scheme, if patronized by the Trustees, will at present give Reputation and Strength to the Institution, and tho' it may for some T i m e occasion a small Expense, yet after a little while it will gradually support itself, 8c even make considerable Additions to the Academy Funds. Dr. Morgan has employ'd his T i m e in an assiduous Search after Knowledge, in all the Branches necessary for the Practice of his Profession, and has gained such Esteem and Love from Persons of the first Rank in it, that as they very much approve his Plan, they will, from T i m e to Time, as he assures us, give him their Countenance and Assistance in the Execution of it. We are made acquainted with what is proposed to be taught, and how Lectures may be adopted by you, & since the like Systems have brought much Advantage to every Place where they have been received, and such Learned and eminent Men speak favorably of the Doctor's Plan, I could not but in the most kind Manner recommend him to you, and desire that he may be well received, and what he has to offer be taken, with all becoming Respect and Expedition,

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i n t o your most serious C o n s i d e r a t i o n , and if it shall b e t h o u g h t necessary to g o into it & t h e r e u p o n to o p e n Professorships, that he may be taken i n t o your Service. 1

T h e Trustees, "entertaining a high Sense of Dr. Morgan's Abilities, & the Honors paid to him by different Learned Bodies & Societies in Europe," on May 3 unanimously elected him professor of the theory and practice of medicine. 2 T h u s the first medical professorship in British North America was created and the first medical school inaugurated there. T h e Pennsylvania Gazette printed a formal announcement on May 9. A t a Meeting of the Trustees held this Day [May 3], John Morgan, of this City, M.D. Correspondent Member of the Royal Academy of Surgery at Paris, Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians at London, and Member of the Arcadian (Belles Lettres) Society at Rome, was unanimously elected Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the College of Philadelphia. At the ensuing Commencement he will deliver an Address (which will be soon afterwards published) in order to shew the Expediency of instituting Medical Schools in this Seminary, and containing the Plan proposed for the same; in which there will be Room for receiving Professors duly qualified to read Lectures in the other Branches of Medicine, who may be desirous of uniting to carry this laudable Design into Execution. Dr. Morgan's Plan has been warmly recommended to the Trustees, by Persons of Eminence in England, and his known Abilities, and great Industry, give the utmost Reason to hope it will be successful, and tend much to the public Utility. " T h e r e will be R o o m for receiving Professors. . . ." T h e Gazette's announcement, prepared by Morgan or with his aid, hinted at what he and the Proprietor and the Trustees in dieir f o r m a l vote had thus far been silent about—that other appointments would be made to the medical faculty. W i l l i a m Shippen's n a m e had nowhere been mentioned or his course of lectures referred to, although he had delivered them three consecutive years. Shippen's father had been absent from the Trustees' m e e t i n g on May 3, when Morgan's plan was approved, but he and his son were nonetheless fully informed of Morgan's pro117

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posals. Their surprise became irritation and their irritation grew into resentment as they realized that Morgan had ignored the younger Shippen's work, held himself out as the original author of the plan to open a medical department in the College, and had now been publicly recognized in that character. T h e day when Morgan delivered his Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America was in many ways the climax of his career. Never again would he be so famous or his audience so friendly. His whole life had been a preparation for this moment, while from the address a train of consequences flowed which affected him, the medical school, and the profession in Philadelphia for more than a quarter of a century. His vivid picture of the deficiencies of American physicians and their practice, his vision of what the profession could and should become, his practical recommendations excited ambitions and hostility that vexed his career to its close. In the hour of his greatest triumph Morgan unwittingly created causes for the frustration and failure of much that he aspired to accomplish. T h e Discourse presented a broad, bold, and revolutionary plan for the reform of both education and practice. It was clear to Morgan, as to the most casual observer, that each of these was a reflection of the other. T h e standard of practice would not rise until education was reformed, and if professional education was improved, the quality of practice would inevitably improve as well. Physicians who had a degree from Leyden or Edinburgh, lived on the income of their practice, and sometimes wrote a paper on the weather, natural history, or a local epidemic, were a small minority in colonial America. Of an estimated 3500 practicing physicians in the colonies in 1775, not more than 400 had attended any medical school here or abroad. Only forty-one Americans had graduated at Edinburgh before 1775—Morgan was only the tenth. For better or worse, the overwhelming majority had learned their medicine as apprentices to an older

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physician, who might have studied medicine himself only as an apprentice. A boy of fourteen of fifteen was accepted as an apprentice by a physician for a fee. For three, four, perhaps six years he studied the physician's trade by reading his master's medical texts, observing him practice and hearing him prescribe, accompanying him as an orderly on visits to the sick, assisting him as a technician in blood-letting and minor surgery, remaining in temporary charge of the patient as a nurse. If the physician owned a skeleton his apprentice was fortunate, for most men never saw an anatomical chart or preparation during the whole of their apprenticeship. T h i s scheme of education at its best afforded an intelligent, ambitious lad practical training and experience; its insuperable defect was that it provided no theoretical foundation for that experience. And, since one master's recommendation seemed as good as another's, self-confident quacks, willing to do anything to cure a patient, often had as much practice as better-educated, more cautious physicians. Dr. William Douglass of Boston had observed that the physical Practice in our Colonies, is so perniciously bad, that excepting in Surgery, and some very acute Cases, it is better to let Nature . . . take her Course, . . . than to trust to the Honesty and Sagacity of the Practionioner; our American Practitioners are so Rash and Officious, the saying in the Apocrypha . . . may with much Propriety be applied to them: 'He that Sinneth before his maker, let him fall into the Hands of the Physician.' Frequently there is more Danger from the Physician, than from the Distemper. . . . In the most trifling Cases, they use a routine of Practice: When I first arrived in New England, I asked . . . a noted facetious Practitioner, what was their general Method of Practice; he told me their Practice was very uniform—bleeding, vomiting, blistering, purging, Anodyne, 8cc. If the Illness continued, there was repetendi and finally murderandi. Nature was never to be consulted or allowed to have any concern in the Affair. 3 Recognizing the serious limitations of apprenticeship, two or three American physicians had offered formal courses in anat119

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omy a decade before Shippen inaugurated his lectures in 1762 and Morgan was elected a professor in 1765. But it was only good fortune if a medical student could attend these lectures —Thomas Wood's in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1752, for example, or Dr. William Hunter's in Newport, R.I., between 1754 and 1756. T h e y were all private ventures, without institutional foundation or connection; they were seldom repeated; and they had no discernible effect on the course or quality of medical education in America. Such, in short, was the education most of America's physicians, including Philadelphia's, had received. It was the kind they gave their apprentices. It was also the kind of training most of the practicing physicians in the provincial towns and country villages of Great Britain had received. Even in London and Edinburgh few sought or attained the fellowship of the Royal Colleges. T h e institutions and practices of "polished and refined nations" could not be supported and should not have been expected in provincial America any more than in provincial Britain. What Morgan wanted was to raise medical education and practice in America not simply to the level of the average of England and Scotland, but to that of the best in their capitals. It was a noble aim for his country, but the effort was premature, and it failed. J o h n Morgan read a portion of his Discourse on each of the two days of the Commencement of the College of Philadelphia on May 30 and 3 1 . He and his project had been "the general Subject of Conversation" in the city for a month, 4 and his hearers inspected him closely and listened intently. Nearly everyone sensed that American science and education were entering into a new era. Perhaps no one was more aware of his historic role than the speaker himself. 5 Morgan sketched a picture of the apprenticeship system with swift, harsh strokes. Philadelphia, he began, was fortunate to have "a number of skillful physicians and expert surgeons, qualified by genius, education, and experience, to take charge of 120

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the health of their fellow creatures" and to direct the training of apprentices. This it must be allowed is a great advantage; but if we add to it, a casual conversation sometimes with the most able masters whom they can have access to consult, an intercourse with one another, and a reciprocal communication of sentiment and observation, together with reading what authors they can procure on the various subjects of which this science treats; these make the sum total of the best medical education in America. T h e best master could not teach his apprentices all that they should know. And so it fell out that young men began practice "with unfavorable prospects" and were troubled throughout their careers by "continual perplexities." T h e y had performed no experiments and made no observations in science. T h e i r view of medicine was too narrow. T h e y believed they were ready to practice when, in fact, they knew nothing. However intelligent and industrious they might be, they were simply unfit to attend the sick. Morgan asked his hearers to consider the "melancholy prospect" such a practitioner faced. If not past all feelings of humanity, what compunctions of conscience, what remorse would not fill his breast from practicing at random and in the dark, not knowing whether his prescription might prove a wholesome remedy, or a destructive poison. T o discover the nature of an uncommon disease, or to account for an unusual symptom, puzzles his invention. Ignorant of every true principle, from which, by a just reasoning, he might be able to deduce practical inferences, he knows not what prognostic to make, or what plan of treatment to observe. Unsteady and irresolute, he attempts a variety of means, such as either avail not, or such as heighten the danger of the disease, already too violent. He may thus interrupt the salutary attempts of nature, or, not knowing how to second them, tamper with the life of his patient, and idly waiting to see what nature herself is capable of doing, neglect to succour her, till it is too late, and the fatal hand of death is just closing the gloomy scene. T h u s Morgan drew the shocking picture of his colleagues at their work. In his view none b u t a handful of physicians in 121

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America were competent. " W r e t c h e d is the case of those whom chance, or misinformed judgment, shall throw into his [the physician's] hands, to fall victims of his temerity," the speaker continued, painting a dramatic scene of horrors. Great is the havock which his ignorance spreads on every side, robbing the affectionate husband of his darling spouse, or rendering the tender wife a helpless widow; increasing the number of orphans; mercilessly depriving them of their parent's support; bereaving the afflicted parents of their only comfort and hope, by the untimely death of their beloved infants, and laying whole families desolate. Remorseless foe to mankind! actuated by more than savage cruelty! hold, hold thy exterminating hand. I t was a moving exhortation, likely to trouble many laymen, sure to irritate and anger practically every physician in America, who would hardly recognize himself as an unfeeling murderer. Philadelphia possessed several advantages for a medical school, Morgan pointed out. Its best practitioners were already drawing medical students to the city; once a school was opened, more would come. T h e r e was a hospital in Philadelphia: Morgan thought it " a most favorable circumstance" that five of the six attending physicians were also trustees of the College. We may from hence, I think, safely infer, that every thing in their power may be hoped for, to second the medical institutions of the College, by uniting with them the advantages of the hospital, and thus rendering the education of youth in the healing arts as compleat as possible in this city; to which nothing can contribute more than a course of clinical practice and clinical lectures, by physicians of knowledge and experience. Another advantage was the literary reputation of the College, which would induce young men to get their training there in the classical languages, mathematics and natural philosophy before entering the medical school. Finally, Philadelphia was located at the center of the colonies, making it easily accessible from every colony. Only one thing was lacking; there was n o 122

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medical library, but Morgan expressed his confidence that one would soon be provided by students' fees and the generosity of Philadelphia's physicians. After some general remarks on the importance of medical studies, Morgan defined briefly the purpose and scope of the several departments of medical knowledge—anatomy, materia medica and botany, chemistry, and the theory and practice of physic. Each of these, he explained, was but a part of the whole body of medical science, and each was closely related to the others. They may be considered as the links of a chain that have a mutual connection with one another. Anatomy, Materia Medica, Botany, Chymistry, and the Institutions, are only the ladder by which we are to mount up to practice. A general knowledge, at least, in each one of them, is useful to both Physician and Surgeon; particularly to the former, who in proportion as he is more intimately acquainted with them all, will become more skillful in the healing science. For, although he confines himself to his proper province of prescribing for disease, yet ought he to understand the principles of the entire art and more especially he ought to be very conversant in practice. Seeing the life and health of mankind is the object of medicine, ignorance of the practice is a grand defect in a Physician, and an unpardonable crime, as attended with irreparable injuries. These several branches of medicine, Morgan continued, should be studied in orderly progression; otherwise all our ideas are but crude conceptions, a rope of sand, without any firm connection. Should the student, as chance or whim might direct, sometimes apply himself to one branch, sometimes to another, or read indiscriminately even the best authors on the different parts of Medicine; for want of method, all his knowledge would be superficial, though he might take as much pains as would suffice to make him eminently skillful, had he from the beginning pursued a well concerted plan. What progress could we make in Mathematics, if we did not proceed step by step, and in a certain order? T h e scientific curriculum should rest upon a previous general education. Young men should begin their studies with "minds enriched with all the aids they can receive from the languages, 123

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and the liberal arts." Greek and Latin were essential, the former because so much of the ancient learning was in its literature, the latter because it contained "all the wealth of more modern l i t e r a t u r e " and was the principal language of the learned world. Knowledge of mathematics and natural philosophy was indispensable, and French would be "very valuable." In short, Morgan went on, there is no art yet known which may not contribute somewhat to the improvement of Medicine; nor is there any one which requires more assistance than that of Physic from every other science. Let young men therefore, who would engage in the pursuit of Medicine or Surgery, make use of all their industry, to possess themselves in good time of these acquisitions. T h e y are necessary to facilitate a progress in the healing arts; they embellish the understanding, and give many peculiar advantages, unattainable without them. By naming a professor of theory and practice, the Trustees of the College had taken the first step towards establishing a medical department and reforming medical education. Other steps would follow until at last, by a concourse of learned physicians, a school would arise in the same way in which that at Edinburgh had been formed less than fifty years before. Here Morgan mentioned with pride and affection the names of the great Scottish physicians, many of them his teachers and f r i e n d s Dick, D r u m m o n d , Cullen. Morgan made n o attempt to spell out the program of medical education in greater detail—it was "sometimes prejudicial to attempt a scheme entirely out of reach"—but he reminded the sponsors of the medical department, lay and professional alike, that they should n o t work on " a too contracted p l a n . " It is with the highest satisfaction I am informed from Dr. Shippen, junior, that in an address to the public as introductory to his first anatomical course, he proposed some hints of a plan for giving medical lectures amongst us. But I do not learn that he recommended at all a collegiate undertaking of this kind. What led me to it was the obvious utility that would attend it, and the desire I had of presenting, as a tribute of gratitude to my alma mater, a full and enlarged plan for the institution of Medicine, in all its branches, in 124

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this seminary where I had part of my education, being amongst the first sons who shared in its public honours. I was further induced to it from a consideration, that private schemes of propagating knowledge are instable in their nature, and that the cultivation of useful learning can only be effectually promoted under those who are patrons of science, and under the authority and direction of men incorporated for the improvement of literature. T h u s Morgan publicly took full credit for the medical school. In words both arrogant and patronizing he continued: Should the trustees of the college think proper to found a professorship in Anatomy, Dr. Shippen having been concerned already in teaching that branch of medical science is a circumstance favourable to our wishes. Few here can be ignorant of the great opportunities he has had abroad of qualifying himself in Anatomy, and that he has already given three courses thereof in this city, and designs to enter upon a fourth course next Winter. As for himself, Morgan announced, he would deliver in the fall " a course of lectures on the M a t e r i a Medica, in which the pharmaceutic treatments of medicine, as well as their virtues," would be described and " t h e doctrines of the chymical properties of bodies" would be considered as far as was necessary to give students "a general idea of Chymistry." T h e year afterward he would lecture on the institutes or theory of medicine, "which will be illustrated with practical observations." Perhaps, he suggested, in a few more years other professors would be appointed to teach the other branches, and, following the example of E d i n b u r g h , the College could then adopt a plan of study leading to the degree of doctor of medicine. T h u s in a short time, every person would be ashamed to think of practicing physic, who had not industriously cultivated the best opportunities of instruction. He would otherwise be marked out by every intelligent man, as one who had never been properly initiated in his profession, and, consequently, as unequal to the task which he had presumptuously engaged in. T u r n i n g now to the reform American medical practice, Morgan declared that n o physician should attempt to practice all

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the different branches of medicine, including surgery and the compounding of drugs. T h e first was a manual art like weaving, the second was akin to selling groceries, and neither was a profession at all. Every mechanic art, and almost every employment in life, serve as instructive lessons to the practitioners of Medicine. T h e construction of a watch, the building of a house, nay the making of a pin, are striking examples of the truth of this assertion. In each of them a number of different artists are employed, who confining themselves every one to his own branch of business, the whole work is more quickly finished, and more highly improved. T h e length to which human skill may arrive, when thus properly directed is amazing. Why then should we continue to follow such a variety of different occupations as are generally crouded together in the practice of the healing art? . . . If Physic, Surgery, and Pharmacy were in different hands, practitioners would then enjoy much more satisfaction in practice. They would commonly be less burdened with an over hurry of business, and have an opportunity of studying the cases of the sick at more leisure. Would not this tend to the more speedy relief of diseases and the perfection of medical science, as every Physician would have more time by studying, observation, and experience united, to cultivate that knowledge which is the only foundation of practice? Each of the three branches required u n r e m i t t i n g study and practice for mastery. T h e physician who divided his time and energy among them would never be expert in any. For the truth of this dictum, Morgan declared, " I appeal to the common sense of mankind." T h e advantages of specialization should be obvious to anyone. Students would be instructed by professors who employed their leisure in study and correspondence with learned Europeans, not in performing surgical operations and selling drugs. T h e College would benefit because such professors would promote the grand design of all colleges—the advancement of learning. And because instructors of such quality would draw students from great distances, Philadelphia would receive " a tribute of riches as well as of affection from all quarters." Finally

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the province and America generally would benefit from the reform of practice through specialization. We live on a wide extended continent of which but the smallest portion, even of the inhabited part, has yet been explored. T h e woods, the mountains, the rivers and bowels of the earth afford ample scope for the researches of the ingenious. In this respect an American student has some considerable advantages over those of Europe, viz. T h e most ample field lies before us for the improvement of natural history.. . . How many plants are there, natives of this soil, possessed of peculiar virtues? how many fossils to enrich the cabinets of the curious? how many natural substances, objects of new trade and commerce to supply materials for various arts, as well as to enlarge the bounds of Medicine? what means are so likely to bring them to our knowledge as medical researches and careful experiments, prosecuted by those instructed how to make them, and how to profit themselves of the discovery? A spirit of inquiry into these things would be put on foot as a natural tendency of such as institution, and prove the most likely means of bringing to light the knowledge of many useful things, of which we yet remain ignorant, the more readily, as natural history is one of the most essential studies to prepare a person for prosecuting medicine with success, and one of the most distinguished ornaments of a physician and man of letters. T w o final exhortations remained—to the students, to "become indefatigable in the cultivation of medical literature," and to the Trustees, to promote medicine and medical education in the College and the city. Should they do this, Morgan predicted, young m e n would go forth from this institution to establish similar institutions and learned societies of every kind, "calculated to spread the light of knowledge through the whole American continent, wherever inhabited." Oh! let it never be said in this city, or in this province, so happy in its climate, and its soil, where commerce has long flourished and plenty smiled, that science, the amiable daughter of liberty and sister of opulence, droops her languid head, or follows behind with a slow unequal pace. I pronounce with confidence this shall not be the case; but, under your protection, every useful kind of learning shall here fix a favourite seat, and shine forth in meridian splendor. 127

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T o accomplish which may every heart and every hand be firmly united.

It had been a memorable exercise. Nineteen-year-old Benjamin Rush, Dr. Redman's apprentice, who was in the audience, acclaimed both the speaker and his Discourse.6 Those who received printed copies were no less approving. It was "without dispute a masterly performance," wrote Isaac Jamineau from Naples. In Boston Dr. Williams Smibert, Morgan's fellowstudent at Edinburgh, read it with "real pleasure & satisfaction," concurring heartily "in every part." 7 Dr. John Berkenhout, a graduate of Leyden, reviewed it favorably in the London Monthly Review, predicting that if Morgan succeeded in his undertaking he would "deserve the warmest acknowledgments from his fellow citizens, and . . . be remembered by their posterity ;vith reverence and gratitude." 8

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., 2 volumes (Philadelphia, 1879), I, 410. 33 Carson, Medical Department, 60-61. 34 Fothergill to William Logan, 5 mo. 1769, Gilbert Coll., IX, 141; P e n n to Trustees of the College, May 9, 1769, P e n n Letter Books, I X , 352, HSP; Pa. Chronicle, Aug. 14, 1769. 35 Frederick C. Waite, " T h e Degree of Bachelor of Medicine in t h e American Colonies a n d the United States," Yale Jour. Biology and Med., X (1937-38), 309-33. 36 Rush to JM, April 27, 1768, Carson Scrapbooks, II, 89. 37 Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., " T h o m a s Parke, M.B., Physician a n d Friend," William and Mary Quar., ser. 3, VI (1949) , 569-95. 38 Mass. Gazette, Aug. 20, 1767; Bard to JM, Nov. 16, 1767; R u s h to J M , J a n . 20, 1768, Carson Scrapbooks, II, 13, 23; Edward Garrick to J M , Oct. 5, 1767, Gilbert Coll., II, 179. 38 Montgomery, University of Pennsylvania, 485-86; Carson, Medical Department, 69-71.

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ι T h o m a s a n d Phineas Bond, "Co-partnership Ledgers"; a n d "Day Book," V, VI, C P P . 2 Gilmer to J M , May 11, 1766, HSP; D u m a s Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston, 1948), 99-100. 3 J o n a t h a n Elmer's Miscellania Medica contains reports of six "Cases in which Dr. Morgan was consulted" in 1766-67; the ms. was in possession of the late Dr. Robert P. Elmer, Wayne, Pa. Similar cases are recorded in J o h n Archer's "Notes, 1766-1767," 191-98, 206-13, in School of Medicine Lib., UP. •> H a n n a h Skelton to J M , Aug. 32 [sic!], 1767, Hopkinson Papers, XIII, HSP. & T h o m a s and Phineas Bond, "Co-partnership Ledgers." e J M , Discourse on the Institution of Medical Schools in America (Philadelphia, 1765; facsimile reprint, Baltimore, 1937), vi-vii. ι Samuel Finley to JM, Dec. 19, 1765, Personal Papers, Misc. F, LC. 8 B e n j a m i n Wynkoop to Charles Ridgley, Dec. 7, 1770, Ridgley Letters, H a l l of Records, Dover, Del. β T h o m a s H. Montgomery, A History of the University of Pennsylvania from its Foundation to AX). 1770 (Philadelphia, 1900), 490. Joseph Carson, History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1869), 216-17; Pa. Gazette, July 11, 1771; Extracts f r o m Trustees Minutes, J u n e 18, 1771, University Papers, I, 70, U P Archives; U. of Pa. Trustees Minutes, II, J u n e 25, 1771.

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NOTES 11 Franklin to JM, Feb. 5, 1772, UP; Thomas Parke, Journal, Aug. 22, 23, 1771, Pemberton Papers, LVII, HSP. 12 Lewis Johnson to Rush, June 3, 1773, Rush Mss., XXIV, 138, LCP; (Rind's) Va. Gazette, Oct. 17, 1771; William Cullen to JM, Sept. 18, 1768 (copy), Rush Mss., XXIV, 54. 13 Bond to Franklin, June 7, 1769, Franklin Papers, II, 179, APS; Penn to Samuel Powel, March 7, 1769, Penn Letter Books, IX, 343, HSP. i* Thomas Coombe to Rush, July 20, 1769, Rush Mss., XXXIII, 44, LCP; Jacob Rush to Benjamin Rush, Jan. 24, 1771, ibid., XXXIV, 44. is Pa. Chronicle, Jan. 8, 1770. ie U. of Pa. Trustees Minutes, II, March 29, 1770; Pa. Gazette, April 5, Dec. 3, 1770. i ' Francis Alison to Francis Alison, Jr., Nov. 16, 1774 (copy), Carson Scrapbooks, II, 63; Thomas Bond, "List of Clinical Pupils," April 11, 1770, Ms. Coll., Pa. Hospital; Pa. Hospital, Minutes, 4 mo. 29, 1769, 5 mo. 5, 1770, 4 mo. 26, 1773. 18 U. of Pa. Trustees Minutes, II, Nov. 2, Dec. 20, 1774, Jan. 17, 24, 1775; Francis Alison to Francis Alison, Jr., Dec. 22, 1774 (copy), Carson Scrapbooks, II, 63; Thomas Parke, Journal, Oct. 30, 1771, Pemberton Papers, LVII, HSP. ie Smith to John Penn, April 3, 1772, William Smith Corres., Penn Papers, II, 60, HSP; George E. Hastings, Life and Works of Francis Hopkinson (Chicago, 1926), 20. 20 Edward P. Cheyney, History of the University of Pennsylvania, 1740-1940 (Philadelphia, 1940), 68-69, 95. 21 U. of Pa. Trustees Minutes, II, March 2, 9, 17, 1772. 22 A copy of this address is in Peters Papers, VII, 120, HSP. It was reprinted in Pa. Chronicle, June 29, 1772. JM's commission from the Trustees, " T o all Charitable Persons, Patrons of Literature and Friends of Useful Knowledge," March 20, 1772, is in CPP. See also Warrants to Affix the Great Seal, 58, Penn Mss., HSP. 23 W. Jay Mills, ed., Glimpses of Colonial Society and the Life at Princeton College, 1766-1773 (Philadelphia, 1903), 96-97; Pa. Chronicle, Aug. 16, 1773. 24 JM to Richard Peters, Aug. 3, 1772, UP. 25 Richard Peters to JM, Sept. 15, 1772, Peters Papers, VIII, 3, HSP; U. of Pa. Trustees Minutes, II, Sept. 15, 1772, Jan. 1, 1773. 26 Ibid., Oct. 15, 1772, Jan. 1, March 8, 1773. 27 Ibid., June 8, 1773; Lionel Chalmers to John Bartram, April 1, 1773, in William Darlington, Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall (Philadelphia, 1849), 464; South Carolina Gazette, June I, 1773; Richard B. Baker to Rush, July 14, 1773, Rush Mss., XXIV, 8, LCP. 28 U. of Pa. Trustees Minutes, II, Dec. 13, 1773, June 21, 1776; Thomas Hibben, Jr. to JM, April 19, 1774, CPP. 28 Pa. Hospital, Minutes, 6 mo. 28, 1773. 30 Thomas G. Morton and Frank Woodbury, History of the Pennsylvania Hospital (Philadelphia, 1897), 537. CHAPTER

10

ι JM to Dick, March 28, 1768, Prestonfield. 2 "The Mount Regale Fishing Company of Philadelphia," PMHB, XXVII (1903) , 88-90; Horace W. Smith, Life and Correspondence of Rev. William

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Notes Smith, D.D., 2 volumes (Philadelphia, 1879) , I, 466n; Thomas H. Montgomery, "List of Vestrymen of Christ Church, Philadelphia," PMHB, XIX (1895) , 523. 3 Thomas H. Montgomery, A History of the University of Pennsylvania from its Foundation to AD. 1770 (Philadelphia, 1900), 365-72; Pa. Gazette, March 6, 1766. * Four Dissertations, on the Reciprocal Advantages of a Perpetual Union between Great-Britain and her American Colonies (Philadelphia, 1766); Pa. Gazette, May 29, 1766. 5 Four Dissertations, iii-x; "Subscription List for Morgan's Essay," Carson Scrapbooks, I, 133. e J M to T h o m a s Bradford, n.d., ibid., 132; Isaac Jamineau to JM, Nov. 3, 1767, CPP; Penn to William Smith, March 7, 1767, Penn Letter Books, IX, 102, HSP; Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, XXXVI (1767), 24-29. 7 Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 17)5-1789 (Chapel Hill, 1956), 105ff. 8 American Society, Minute Book, Dec. 19, 1766, et passim. » Cadwalader Evans to William Franklin, Jan. 25, 1768, Franklin Papers, LVIII, 52, APS. ίο American Society, Minute Book, Feb. 5, 1768; Joseph Carson, History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1869), 35. 11 American Society, Minute Book, Nov. 4, 1768; Pa. Chronicle, Nov. 25, Dec. 1, 1768. 12 Gentleman's Mag., X U (1771), 416-17; Critical Review, XXXIV (1772), 241-48. !3 Henry Phillips, Jr., "Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society . . . 1744 to 1838," APS Proc., XXII (1885), 47-51, 60, 64; R . Hingston Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and his Friends (London, 1919), 214. к " T h e whole Process of the Silk-Worm, from the Egg to the Cocon; Communicated to Dr. J o h n Morgan . . . in two Letters from Messrs. Hare and Skinner, Silk Merchants in London, July 24, 1774, and February 24, 1775," APS Trans., II (1786) , 347-66. is Phillips, "Early Proceedings," loc. tit., 108, 113, 117; Pa. Gazette, May 15, 1776, May 13, 1789, April 28, 1790; "Letter on the Culture of Silk," Am. Museum, III (1788), 86-89. ie Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham (Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., LXXI, 1914), 205-11, 268, 272-73, 292-93; Peter Grant to JM, Aug. 31, 1765, HSP. 17 Fiske Kimball, "Jefferson and the Arts," APS Proc., LXXXVII (1943), 239. is J o h n Adams, Diary and Autobiography, L. H. Butterfield, ed. (Cambridge, 1961), II, 152. For the full story of this collection, with citations to sources, see Whitfield J . Bell, Jr., "A Box of Old Bones: A Note on the Identification of the Mastodon, 1766-1806,·· APS Proc., XCIII (1949), 169-77. is J o h n Armstrong to James Burd, April 8, 1766, Shippen Papers, VI, 145, HSP; Edward Shippen, Jr. to David Jameson, April 18, 1764 (copy), Irvine Papers, XVI, 65, HSP; JM, "Hints that may be regarded in drawing u p a Memorial by the Pennsylvania Officers," July 10, 1766; and "Queries to b e laid before the Meeting of Pennsylvania officers at Lancaster," July 10, 1766, Shippen Papers, VI, 151, HSP; Joseph Shippen, Jr. to Burd, July 15, Aug. 4, 1766, ibid., 153, 157. See also T h o m a s Penn to John Penn, July 6, Dec. 14, 1765; T h o m a s Penn to Richard Peters, Aug. 6, 1766, Penn Letter Books, VIII, 260-61, 331; IX, 44, HSP.

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NOTES 20 Thomas Barton to James Burd, Dec. 6, 1766, Shippen Papers, VI, 163, HSP; [David Jameson] to , Feb. 23, 1767, ibid., 169; Jameson to Burd, Feb. 27, 1767, ibid., 171; Joseph Shippen, J r . to Burd, March 2, 1767, ibid., 173. 21 J M and Joseph Shippen, Jr. to James Burd, Dec. 15, 1768, Shippen Papers, VI, 219, HSP; same to same, Feb. 23, 1769 (typescript), Burd Coll., Division of Public Records, Harrisburg; Pa. Archives, ser. 3, II, 254; Shippen to David Jameson, June 20, 1768, Shippen Letter Book, APS. See also "Minutes of the Proceedings of the Officers of the Pennsylvania Regiment, between 1764 and 1774, in relation to their obtaining a grant of land upon the West Branch of the Susquehanna," HSP, Colls., I (1853), 94-118. 22 Pa. Archives, ser. 1, IV, 335; Joseph Shippen, Jr., to Thomas Barton, April 29, 1769, Shippen Letter Book, APS. 23 J M to Shippen, March 4, 1774, copied by Shippen and sent to Burd, March 14, 1774, Shippen Papers, VII, 83, HSP; Lily Lee Nixon, James Burd, Frontier Defender, 1726-1793 (Philadelphia, 1941), 145-49; Thomas Barton to Burd, Jan. 14, 1774, Shippen Papers, VII, 77, HSP; Hugh Mercer to Shippen, June 9, 1773, Irvine Papers, XVI, 66, HSP. 24 (Purdie & Dixon) Va. Gazette, June 16, 1774. 2 5 J M to Hewson, Nov. 20, 1767, Carson Scrapbooks, II, 11; same to same, Oct. 18, 1769 (photostat), CPP; Hewson, Works (Sydenham Society, London, 1846), 109-10, 165. CHAPTER

11

ι Pa. Packet, July 17, 1779. 2 John Adams, Diary and Autobiography, L. H. Butterfield, ed. (Cambridge, 1961), II, 152. 3 J. Cont. Cong., II, 209-10. *Ibid., 294-95; Edward Warren, The Life of John Warren, М.П. (Boston, 1874), 53-59. 5 John Adams to Abigail Adams, Oct. 28, 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, L. H. Butterfield, ed. (Cambridge, 1963), I, 315; Washington, Writings, IV, 76; Adams to James Warren, Oct. 25, 1775, Warren-Adams Letters I, (Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., L X X I I ) , 142-43, 164-65. β Washington, Writings, IV, 104-05. 7 Mary Morgan to Mrs. Hopkinson, Nov. 29, 1775, Hopkinson Papers, X I I I , HSP; James Warren to John Adams, Dec. 3, 1775, Warren-Adams Letters, I, 187. 6 Adams Family Correspondence, I, 335-36. 9 J M to Washington, Dec. 12, 1775, Cont. Cong. Papers, No. 169, I, f. 143. ю "Returns of Sick and Wounded in the General Hospital," Revolutionary War Mss., Misc. Hospital Dept. War Dept. Archives, National Archives, Washington; James Thacher, Military Journal (Hartford, 1862), 33; Washington, Writings, IV, 162. 11 Pa. Packet, June 24, 1779. 12 Thomas Lynch to JM, Jan. 1, 1776, Grau Coll., Members of the Old Congress, HSP. 13 Am. Archives, 4th ser., IV, 448, 536-37, 1374, V, 13; Pa. Packet, June 24, 1779; Warren, John Warren, 66; George Meade to J M , Feb. 27, 1776, Dreer Coll., Famous Merchants, HSP. 14 J. Cont. Cong., IV, 180; Am. Archives, 4th ser., IV, 1026; Warren, John Warren, 57-59; Vindication, 128; J M , Accounts, May 28, 1776, Revolutionary

282

Notes War Mss., Misc. Hospital Dept. War Dept. Archives, National Archives, Washington; Charles D. Meigs, "Retrospective Review [of Professor Morgan]," No. Am. Med. and Surg. Jour., IV (1827), 385n. is Joseph Young to Jonathan Potts, n.d., Jonathan Potts Papers, I, 16, HSP; Washington, Writings, III, 440. ίο Genevieve Miller, "Dr. John Morgan's Report to General Washington, March 3, 1776," Bull. Hist. Med., X I X (1946), 450-54. T h e report is printed in Am. Archives, 4th ser., V, 115. 17 Washington, Writings, III, 350. James E. Gibson, Dr. Bodo Otto and the Medical Background of the American Revolution (Springfield, 111., and Baltimore, 1937) goes into the conduct of the medical department by Morgan and Shippen and into the subsequent controversy between the two men; it contains generous quotations from documentary sources. Louis M. Duncan, Medical Men of the American Revolution, 1775-178} (Army Medical Bulletin, No. 25, 1931) is also valuable, as are the chapters on " T h e American Revolutionary War Hospital Department" by Howard L. Applegate published in several issues of Military Medicine, C X X V I (1961), 296ff. is Charles Jenkinson to Lord George Germain, Nov. 21, 1780, C.O. 5/172, p. 253, Public Record Office, London. is Washington, Writings, III, 480-81, IV, 51, 107-08, 110; Report of the Court of Inquiry, Sept. 9, 1775, Washington Papers, LC; Vindication, 45. го Ibid., 32-39. Dr. James McHenry in a letter to Rush, Nov. 2, 1776, stated the purpose of the general and regimental hospitals with great clarity: the purpose of the former was "not to accommodate the whole sick of an army, or to multiply offices by drawing, at all times as many as possible within its pails. But for the reception of that over proportion of sick that cannot be provided for in camp or at regimental hospitals, and on extraordinary occasions when the sick and wounded become so numerous that regimental doctors cannot attend or provide convenient places for the reception of their proportion. This is the first and we may say the only intention of a general hospital." Parke-Bernet Galleries, Sale Catalogue 484 (1943), no. 187. 21 Thacher, Military Journal, 37; Washington, Writings, IV, 345-46; Vindication, 3, 83. 22 Am. Archives, 4th ser., V, 113; J M to John Thomas, March 2, 1776, Richmond, Va., Academy of Medicine. 23 Am. Archives, 4th ser., V, 859, 951-52, 1257; Thacher, Military Journal, 43. 2i Am. Archives, 4th ser., V, 419; Washington, Writings, IV, 420. 25 Ibid., 464-65; Am. Archives, 4th ser., V, 859. 2« Ibid., IV, 168, V, 1246; Thacher, Military Journal, 44-45; J M , A Recommendation of Inoculation, according to Baron Dimsdale's Method (Boston, 1776); the preface is dated Cambridge, April 19, 1776. 27 Am. Archives, 4th ser., V, 1024-25. 28 Ibid., VI, 1365, 1383-84; J M , Account with the General Hospital at New York & Long Island, Aug. 19, 1776, Revolutionary War Mss., Misc., Hospital Dept. War Dept. Archives, National Archives, Washington; Vindication, 59. 29 Am. Archives, 4th ser., VI, 1038-39, 1201. so Ibid., 1083; J. Cont. Cong., V, 617-18. 31 Potts to JM, Aug. 10, 1776, Jonathan Potts Papers, I, 77, HSP. 32 Stringer to Gates, July 24, 1776, Washington Papers, LC. аз Washington, Writings, V, 46; J M to Stringer, June 24, 1776, N.Y. Academy of Medicine.

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NOTES з* Vindication, 50-51; Am. Archives, 4th ser., VI, 1069, 1714; J. Cont. Cong., V, 460, 556. 35 JM, "Regulations agreed u p o n betwixt the Director General of t h e American Hospital & the Regimental Surgeons 8c Mates at New York the [. . .] day of J u l y 1776," USR, LC; Memorial of t h e regimental Surgeons . . . to t h e Congress, [July 1776] (copy), Washington Papers, LC. зв Vindication, 69-70. a? J M to Stringer, July 28, 1776, UP; J M to Potts, July 28, 1776, J o n a t h a n Potts Papers, I, 67, HSP. за J M to J o h n Hancock, Aug. 12, 1776, Cont. Cong. Papers, No. 63, f. 105; George W. Norris, The Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1886), 84-85. за Cont. Cong., V, 673; Stringer to Potts, Aug. 17, 1776, J o n a t h a n Potts Papers, I, 79, HSP; James McHenry to Potts, Aug. 21, 1776, ibid., 80.