for the honor of the Seminary, as well as their own, they will nobly exert themselves on a subject so truly animating, which may be treated in a manner alike interesting to good men, both here and in the Mother country.”
From nine performances which were presented, the Committee of Trustees selected that of Dr. Morgan, and at the Commencement held May 20th, 1766, immediately after the valedictory oration, “the Hon. John Penn, Esq., Governor of the Province, as President of the Trustees of the College, delivered the medal to the Provost, ordering him to confer it in public agreeably to their previous determination. The Provost accordingly acquainted the audience that the same had been decreed to John Morgan, M. D., F. R. S., &c., Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in the College of Philadelphia, and then requested Dr. Morgan to deliver his dissertation in public, which being finished, the eulogium accompanied the conferring of the medal.”[1]
In 1767, a further movement was made towards a more thorough organization of the medical department, and placing it upon a proper footing in connection with collegiate privileges.
The medical gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, with the two Professors and the Provost, William Smith, D.D., united in framing a code of rules for the new department. These were submitted to the Board of Trustees at the meeting of May 12th, 1767, when they were approved and adopted. The announcement given to the public press indicates the action taken as being supposed to promote the interests of the school and of the profession.[2]
“At a meeting of the Trustees, held the 12th of May last, it being moved to the Board that conferring the usual degrees
- ↑ The essay was published, with others, under the title, “Four Dissertations on the reciprocal advantages of a perpetual union between Great Britain and her American Colonies, written for Mr. Sargent’s Prize Medal, to which by desire is prefixed an Eulogium, spoken on the delivery of the medal at the public Commencement of the College of Philadelphia, May 20th, 1766. Philadelphia: Printed by William and Thomas Bradford, at the London Coffee House, 1766.”
- ↑ Pennsylvania Gazette.
