Morgan, John

Morgan, John, 1735–89, American physician, b. Philadelphia, grad. College of Philadelphia (now Univ. of Pennsylvania), 1751. He founded, in Philadelphia (1765), the first medical school in the United States. In 1775 he became director-general and physician in chief to the general hospital of the Continental Army. Blamed for a high mortality rate in the hospital, he was removed (1777) by Congress, which later exonerated him. His writings include A Discourse on the Introduction of Medical Schools in America (1765).

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Morgan, John

(born June 10, 1735, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Oct. 15, 1789, Philadelphia) U.S. medical educator. He studied medicine in Europe before returning to the American colonies to found their first medical school in 1765 at the University of Pennsylvania. As North America's first professor of medicine, he required a liberal education of his students and separated medicine, surgery, and pharmacology into distinct disciplines, policies widely opposed by colonial physicians. He was made head of the army's medical system in 1775; however, the Continental Congress did not let him organize the system and dismissed him in 1777, holding him responsible for the war's high death rate. Though absolved in 1779, he never recovered, and he died an impoverished recluse.

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Morgan, John (1735–89) physician; born in Philadelphia. After serving an apprenticeship under the great John Redman of Philadelphia, he continued his medical studies in Great Britain and Italy. On returning, he took the lead in founding the medical school at the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in 1765; he joined the faculty and wrote his influential Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America (1765). After the American Revolution had begun, Congress appointed him medical director of the hospitals and chief physician of the colonial army (1775); he insisted on such charges in the medical department and upon such high standards that his subordinates rebelled and Congress finally removed him (1777). He returned to teaching at the Pennsylvania Hospital and to his private practice, but not without publishing a defense of his conduct.