Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/309

he was in intimate acquaintance with Dr. Franklin, and on his going to Edinburgh he bore a letter from him to Lord Kames, dated London, November, 1761, in which he says : May I take the freedom of recommending the bearer, Mr Morgan, to your Lordship's protection. He purposes residing some time in Edinburgh, to improve himself in the study of physic, and I think will one day make a good figure in the profession, and be of some credit to the school he studies in, if great industry and application, joined with natural genius and sagacity, afford any foundation for the presage. He is the son of a friend and near neighbor of mine in Philadelphia, so that I have known him from a child, and am confident the same excellent dispositions, good morals, and prudent behavior, that have procured him the esteem and affection of all that knew him in his own country, will render him not unworthy the regard, advice, and countenance your Lordship may be so good as to afford him. Dr. Morgan from Edinburgh went to Paris, and there passed a winter, still enlarging his medical studies, and after- wards traveled in Holland and Italy. Upon his return to Lon- don he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was admitted 'a licentiate of the College of Physicians in London, and a member of the College of Physicians in Edinburgh, and had been admitted to membership in the Society of Belles Lettres in Rome. Thus furnished by study and travel, and with the earlier field hospital service, he returned to Philadelphia in 1765. He had written from London, in November, 1764, to Dr. Cullen : " My scheme of instituting lectures you will hereafter know more of. It is not prudent to broach designs prematurely, and mine are not yet fully ripe for execution." These he had talked over with the younger William Shippen, his schoolmate at Not- tingham, when they were a year or more together in Edinburgh. 12 Shippen had returned home in May, 1762, and in the autumn of that year began his private course of lectures, his introductory 12 Dr. Shippen in his letter to the Trustees of 17 September, 1765. says: "I should have long since sought the Patronage of the Trustees of the College, but waited to be joined by Dr. Morgan, to whom I first communicated my plan in Eng- land."