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History of the University of Pennsylvania.
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for me to acquit myself in that station in an honorable or useful manner, and yet be engaged in one continued round of practice in surgery and pharmacy as well as physic ? * * * My usefulness as a professor makes it absolutely necessary for me to follow that method of practice which alone appears to be calculated to answer that end. Medical science alone did not occupy his activities. He was an interested member of the American Philosophical Society. When the Trustees sought for funds from the learned and the educated in the West Indies, Dr. Morgan was their ambassador, and a very successful voyage he made thither, which will have more particular notice when our narrative reaches that period. In October, 1775, Congress appointed him Director in Gen- eral and Physician in Chief to the General Hospital of the American army, and he at once proceeded to Cambridge, and from thence back to New York. His reforming spirit in admin- istration was far in advance of the times, and he could not overcome the crowding difficulties of his Medical Bureau, due to inexperience and a clinging to former ways ; clamors arose, to which Congress responded by removing him in 1 777 ; but on a subsequent examination by Congress, all the complaints were found entirely without foundation, and an honorable acquittal of all the charges made against him rendered. He died in Philadelphia 1 5 October, 1789, and was buried in St. Peter's Church. It was the year of his return from Europe and of appointment as Professor, that he married Mary Hopkin- son, the sister of his classmate Francis Hopkinson, whose elder sister Elizabeth had married six years previously, another classmate, Jacob Duche. HUGH WILLIAMSON, of Scotch-Irish parentage, was born in Nottingham Township, Chester County, Penn., 5 December, 1735. His early education was pursued under Dr. Alison's care at New London, and when that able preceptor became a pro- fessor in the Philadelphia Academy his parents sent him thither. His proficiency earned him a Tutorship as early as July, 1755, in which he continued the remainder of his College life. His father