vast extension recently given to the single science of Pathology. The necessity of their separation had indeed been recognized in the appointment of an assistant to the Professor who occupied the united Chairs. This appointment, however, was merely provisional. To give their due relative weight to the two branches, and to secure permanently adequate instruction in each, it was necessary to establish a new professorship. The Trustees accordingly decided that the Institutes of Medicine should form the ground of a new Chair.”[1] No new creation took place in this arrangement, for it will be recollected that the Chair of Institutes and Clinical Medicine existed when a union of the Faculties of the two schools took place in 1791. With the election of Dr. Rush to the Chair of Practice in 1805, the subjects of both chairs were apportioned to one, and thus continued for thirty years, when a separation became expedient. The necessity of separation of the two branches, and of the revival of the original professorships, had been urged upon the Trustees in 1823, and again in 1826, by the Medical Faculty. At the beginning of the session of 1827, Dr. Jackson, with the sanction of the Board, had received the appointment of Assistant, and on Dec. 2, 1828, had been elected by the Trustees the Assistant Professor to that position.
On the 6th of October, 1835, Dr. George B. Wood was elected to the vacant Professorship of Materia Medica and Pharmacy, and, at the same time, Dr. Samuel Jackson was elected Professor of the Institutes of Medicine.
In November, 1835, the health of Dr. Dewees, which had been much impaired by age and laborious occupation, completely failed, and after the course of lectures had commenced, he was forced to resign, and was succeeded by Dr. Hugh L. Hodge, on whom the duty devolved of completing the course, and who was on the 14th of the same month elected to the Chair of Obstetrics.
The connection of Dr. Dewees with Obstetrics constitutes an epoch in the history of American Medicine. He was the first authoritative writer on this branch whom the country has produced, and wielded, at the time when his personal influence
- ↑ Sketch of the History of the Medical Department of the University, issued in 1841, in connection with the Catalogue.
