Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/484

seconded, and the result was Thomas Penn's commendatory letter. Dr. Morgan accordingly submitted a proposal "setting forth his plan of opening Medical Schools under the Patronage and Government of the College and intimating his Desire to be appointed Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physick." Whereupon the Trustees duly weighing the above Letters and Proposal, and entertaining a high sense of Dr Morgan's abilities and the Honors paid to him by different Learned Bodies and Societies in Europe, they unanimously appointed him Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physick in this College. Thus an honored alumnus of the first class of the College became the founder of a new Faculty in the Institution, which gave "Reputation and Strength" to it, and which made the first step in that University life, which in later years was to be enlarged by the Faculty of Law and was publicly claimed for the institution by the Provost at the commencement of 1771. It was now in fact the budding University, which was only legally recognized as such when the political subversion of 1779 created a new institution in which the title University was fittingly substituted for that of College. Dr. Morgan soon had a coadjutor in his friend Shippen r who in the following September sent a communication to the Trustees reciting his earlier labors and asking to be joined in this new effort. A son of Princeton as he was, he had not before thought of asking to form a new Faculty for the Phila- delphia College ; but Dr. Morgan as its alumnus and 'with the powerful endorsement of the Penns had succeeded. Dr. Shippen wrote : It is three years since I proposed the Expediency and Practicability of teaching Medicine in all its branches in this City in a public oration read at the State House introductory to my first course of anatomy. I should long since have 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 England, and who promised to unite with me in every scheme we might think necessary for the Execution of so important a Point. I am pleased however to hear that you, Gentlemen, on being applied to by Dr Morgan, have taken the Plan under your Protection and have appointed that gentleman Professor of Medicine. A Professorship of Anatomy and