American Medical Biographies/Pepper, George

2356541American Medical Biographies — Pepper, George1920

Pepper, George (1841–1872)

George Pepper, obstetrician and gynecologist, eldest son of William Pepper (1810–1864) (q. v.), and elder brother, by two years, of William Pepper (1843–1898) (q. v.), was born in Philadelphia, April 1, 1841. His mother was Sarah, daughter of William Platt. He entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1858, graduated in July, 1862, and began the study of medicine with his father; but in two months he enlisted as a private in the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry (Rush's Lancers). His ability soon secured promotion to a lieutenancy; he saw hard fighting and was in the Battle of Fredericksburg. In the spring of 1863 a fall with his horse on the ice dislocated his left clavicle, and being disabled from active service, he was honorably discharged in May, 1863.

He returned to Philadelphia and at once took up his interrupted medical studies, and in October, 1863, entered the University of Pennsylvania as a medical student, graduating in March, 1865, with a thesis on "Typhus Fever." The same month he married Hitty Markoe, daughter of George Mifflin Wharton, noted lawyer of Philadelphia, and a trustee of the University.

George Pepper was physician to the Magdalen Home, and while an assistant physician to the Nurses' Home, gave clinical instruction there on diseases of women; he lectured on the same subject at the Jayne Street Medical Institute. He was assistant to J. Forsyth Meigs (q. v.) at the Pennsylvania Hospital, and in 1868 contributed to the Hospital Reports a paper on "Retroversion of the Womb, Complicated by a Large Fibroid." He was a manager of the Philadelphia "Lying-in and Nurse Charity" in 1866.

He was largely responsible for the founding of the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society (1868), was its first secretary and was elected annually until he resigned because of his long illness. Two papers contributed to the Transactions were: "Adipose Deposits in the Omentum and Abdominal Walls of Women as a Source of Error in Diagnosis" and "The Mechanical Treatment of Displacements of the Unpregnant Uterus."

"Had it not been for his untimely death. . . . He would have become as famous in obstetrics and gynecology as his brother, William Pepper, was in other lines, for he possessed the same remarkable executive and mental abilities and the same tireless industry that is called genius." (American Journal of Obstetrics, 1918, lxxviii, 602).

He had suffered from attacks of pleurisy and nephritis, and in the spring of 1871 had typhoid fever; in the autumn an inflammation of the left lung developed, and after being ill ten months, he died at Chestnut Hill, September 14, 1872, and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

George Wharton Pepper, distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia, was his son.

The chief source of information for this sketch is the intimate and loving tribute paid to the qualities of Dr. Pepper, both as physician and man, by his friend, William Goodell (q. v.), when, as president, he addressed the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society, January 2, 1873 (Tr. Phila. Obst. Soc., 1872–73, ii, 6–12).
A short sketch may be found also in Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons, R. F. Stone, Indianapolis, 1894, and an interesting paragraph in A Standard History of Medicine in Philadelphia, F. P. Henry, Chicago, 1897.