University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine - Scope Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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IT lll TIHIY gg S THE first medical school in the English Colonies on the American continent, the University of Pennsylvania has cause to be proud, but pride would be a weak foundation if it rested only on a claim of priority. Thus did Dr. David Reisman, late Professor of the History of Medicine and Emeritus Professor of Clinical Medicine, open his account of the history of the School in the Bicentennial Edition of the SCOPE. Proud as we are of its long distinguished record, its contributions of the past to the world's medical knowledge, its past great figures of science, prouder still are we of the school as we know it today, of our own eminent faculty, and the work they are doing in the advancement of present medical endeavor. Never has the Medical School had better opportunity to prove its greatness than today and that advantage of this opportunity has been amply taken only the passage of time can show. To say that our School is a descendent of the 16th century Paduan school would be tracing its history back into the earliest days of clinical or bedside medical instrucf tion and would be a statement of fact in that the distinguishing feature of medical education at the University of Pennsylvania has always been regard for the patient, the bedside approach to the problem at hand. From Padua to the Low Countries, this new and somewhat revolutionary idea was carried by several intelligent Dutch- men to their native land where it was developed and nutured during the eighteenth century. Particularly at Leyden did it gain prestige and soon men from all over Europe came to the school there. Among them was a group of Scotchmen who on returning to Scotland established a medical school at Edinburgh in 1726, modelling it on their alma mater in Leyden. This new school soon became a mecca for English' speaking students from the British Isles and the Colonies. In 1760 john Morgan, a young Philadelphian and a member of the first class graduated from the College of Philadelphia, the school of which the University of Pennsylvania is the descendant, arrived in Edinburgh. While there he and William Shippen, jr., a student of john Hunter in London and subsequently a graduate of Edinburgh, discussed founding a medical school in the Colonies. On his return in 1765 Morgan lost no time in bringing his proposal for a medical college in Philadelphia before the Trustees of the College. His address on the subject, Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America, was delivered in 1765 at the public commencement of the College, and because of its great force and eloquence, the proposal was immediately accepted. Morgan was appointed the first Professor of Medicine in the first medical school in this country. William Shippen, jr. was soon afterwards made Professor of Anatomy and Surgery. In 1768, Adam Kuhn was named Professor of Materia Medica and Botany, and in the same year, Benjamin Rush, an outstanding personality in the Colonies, was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the age of twenty three. Doctor Thomas Bond, founder and physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital, was elected Professor of Clinical Medicine, the first of the title in America. On June 21, 1768, the first commencement was held, at which the degree of bachelor of medicine, M.B., was conferred on ten graduates. Never before had an earned medical degree been awarded in this country. In 1789, the degree of Bachelor of Medicine was replaced by the M.D. degree. Finally, after a fifteen months' period during the Revolutionary War when the original charter was rescinded and a rival institution was founded, a union of the two schools was managed and in 1791 they became the University of Pennsylvania. For seventy-five years the school was without a peer in this country and in its halls walked and talked men who shaped the course of medicine in the United States for more than a century. Eight

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The first home of the Medical School was on Fifth Street above Walnut Street, only a few squares away from the Pennsylvania Hospital, founded in 1752. The second home of the School was at Ninth and Market Streets and the third at Ninth and Chestnut Streets. While at the latter location, the clinical facilities of the Philadelphia Almshouse, now Philadelphia General Hospital, were made available- for teaching purposes. The fourth location was in Logan Hall, now part of the College, at 36th and Woodland Avenue. Since 1904 the School has occupied the Medical Laboratories on Hamilton Walk. The move from the center of the city came in the early 187O's, when H. C. Wood, William F. Norris, and William Pepper decided the School should have its own hospital. After much effort by Dr. William Pepper, this move was accomplished and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was established. Many additions to the original buildings have been made since then, most recent of which have been the D. Hayes Agnew Pavilion and the Crothers Dulles Hospital, built during the past few years and dedicated to the service of the University but last year. Today the Hospital and the Medical School are housed in modern buildings with the latest laboratory and clinical facilities available for the education of the students and the care of its patients, who, as in the early Paduan and Flemish schools, are felt to provide the best opportunity for the learning of the science and art of medicine. To list the first's that distinguish our medical school would be an endless and perhaps meaningless occupation, but today as in the past century and a half, the School moves in the first rank of medical education. As our alumni enter the military services of our Nation, Men and Medicine of Pennsylvania are reaching the corners of the world as they have since 1765. ' 'af THE FIRST MEDICAL SCHOOL-1765-1806 Anatomical or Surgeons' Hall Fifth and Library Streets, above Walnut Nine