In his intercourse with society he was gay without levity, and dignified without harshness or austerity.” With respect to his powers of teaching, it is stated that those pupils who went abroad “declared that they had met with no man who was superior to Dr. Shippen as a demonstrator of anatomy, and very few, indeed, who were equal to him.” “In explaining the success of Dr. Shippen in teaching anatomy, we may take into view another faculty which he also exerted with great effect. He went through the subject of each preceding lecture by interrogation instead of recapitulation—thus fixing the attention of the students; and his manner was so happy that this grave process proceeded like a piece of amusement. His irony was of a delicate kind, and so blended with humor that he could repress forwardness and take notice of negligence so as to admonish his class without too much exposing the defaulter.”[1]
In speaking of Dr. William Hunter, it was remarked by Dr. James that “it was under the tuition of this truly ingenious anatomist and physician that the late amiable and sagacious Professor of Anatomy and Midwifery in this University laid the foundation of that celebrity which many years of extensive professional employment nurtured and matured. It was by forming himself after this model that, in the delivery of his interesting lectures, he at once delighted the gay and instructed the grave by the amenity of his manner and the utility of his practical precepts.
‘Methinks I hear him now, his plausive words
He scattered not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear.’”[2]
The merits and reputation of Dr. Shippen were recognized abroad as well as at home. From the “Pennsylvania Chronicle” of May 2, 1768, the subjoined notice has been taken: “Dr. William Shippen, Jr. of this City, was on the third of February last unanimously elected a Fellow of the Royal College
