Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/219

This page needs to be proofread.

MORGAN


191


MOREHOUSE


have afforded Morgan some satisfaction, yielded him no more substantial benefit. What added to his chagrin was the fact that on April 11, 1777, his rival Shippen was appointed to succeed him in the post of director-general and physician-in-chief of the army, and Morgan withdrew to a great extent from active contact with pubhc affairs. He had been elected physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1773, and he continued to serve on its staff until 1783, when he resigned under somewhat peculiar circumstances, though the minutes of the hospital stating his action add that it was " to the grief of the patients, and much against the will of the managers, who all bore testimony to his abilities, and great usefulness to the institution."

Morgan possessed an ample fortune. He is said to have been the first man in Philadelphia who carried a silk umbrella. He had a collection of valuable works of art, but that, together with his fine library, was destroyed by the enemy, partly at Bordentown, New Jersey, and partly at Danbury, Connecticut, to which places they had been removed to secure them from the very fate they met.

In 176.5 he married Mary, daughter of Thomas Hopkinson, who died in 1785. They had no children. Dr. Morgan died on October 15, 1789, and both he and his wife are buried in St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia.

In addition to his writings already referred to he published the following:

"The Reciprocal Advantages of a Per- petual Union between Great Britain and her American Colonies" (1766), before the Revolution, and "A Recommenda- tion of Inoculation According to Baron Dimsdale's Method" (1776).

He also contributed to the "Transac- tions of the American Philosophical Society" the following:

"An Account of a Pye Negro Girl and Mulatto Boy;" "On the Art of Making Anatomical Preparations by Corrosion;" and an article " On a Snake in a Horse's Eye, and of other Unnatural Productions of Animals." F. R. P.


Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia.

Phila. Jour, of the Med. andPhysical Sciences,

1820.

Med. Library and Historical Journal, March,

1906.

N. Am. Med. and Surg. .Jour., Phila., 1S27, iv.

Phila. J. Med. and Phys. Sc, 1820, i (B.

Ru.sh).


Morehouse, George Read (1829-1905).

Some time before 1776 one Andrew Morehouse came from the north of Eng- land to New York and served as colonel during the Revolution. His great grand- son became rector of St. Andrews, Mount Holly, and from him and Martha Read came George Read Morehouse, born at Mount Holly, New Jersey, March 25, 1829. He entered as a junior at Prince- ton College and graduated in July, 1848, with high honors, matriculating at the University of Pennsylvania. Leaving there at the close of one term for the Jefferson Medical College, he graduated there March, 1850, and in the following year became M. A. at Princeton, taking his M. D., from Pennsylvania in 1875 and an hon. Ph. D. from Princeton in 1895.

From his first settlement in Philadel- phia says his friend. Dr. Weir Mitchell, "he had large success as a practitioner and a valued consultant, but all his most important literary work was done in conjunction with other physicians and comprised chiefly laboratory and hospital research. In 1860, I discovered certain facts of novel interest in reptilian physiol- ogy and offered him the chance of working out with me the problems presented. This research on the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory organs of chelonia is now in some sense a classical essay. Leidy praised it warmly and Agassiz asked me who was this remarkable young naturalist and why he had never heard of him."

Early in the Civil War,Morehouse served in the Filbert Street Hospital as assistant surgeon, and when the Hospital for Nervous Diseases was instituted Weir Mitchell asked for Morehouse as colleague and these two, with ^y. W. Keen, spent years of industrious research, being