1797. He continued to practise medicine, however, until within a few years of his death, which occurred in 1819. In his person, movements, and manners, as well as in his mental constitution, Dr. Kuhn was rigid, stately, and punctilious, and has been represented as a “true type of the Old School of Society.”
Upon the resignation of Dr. Kuhn, the duties of his place were performed by Dr. Rush until the year 1805, when the two Chairs—of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and of Institutes and Clinical Medicine—being united, he was elected unanimously to the Professorship.
At the same time a change was deemed to be expedient in the Chair which had been held so long by Dr. Shippen. Surgery, during this period, had remained in association with Anatomy and Obstetrics, when Dr. Physick presented himself, the vindicator of its just claims, and the representative man of its dignity and importance. He was unanimously elected Professor of that branch in the University of Pennsylvania on June 4th, 1805. It may be stated that the Chair of Surgery was created for him and by him.[1]
In 1805 the first action was taken with respect to the position of the University relative to other schools that had arisen in the United States. It appears from the Minutes of the Faculty, December 12th, that the subject was considered as a special one. It is the first time that any action was taken upon the question of the footing upon which students from other schools should be admitted, as follows:—
- ↑ On Dr. Physick’s election, it was Resolved by the Board of Trustees “That it shall be essential to obtaining a Degree in Medicine for the students to attend the Lectures of the Professor of Surgery.” Minutes of the Board.
In the University of Edinburgh Surgery was not early taught as a distinct subject; “and even so late as 1777, when the College of Surgeons petitioned the patrons to institute a separate Professorship of Surgery in the University, they were opposed by Monro, then Professor of Anatomy, as interfering with his subject; and he succeeded in getting his commission altered, so as to include Surgery, which was thus made a mere adjunct of the anatomical course, and continued to be so taught (if it could be said to be taught) until the institution of the chair of Surgery in 1831.”—(The Edinburgh School of Surgery; an Introductory Lecture by James Spence, F. R. C. S. E., Professor in the University of Edinburgh. Ed. Med. Journ., vol. x. Part I. p. 482.)
