active practice had made him familiar with disease in its varied forms, and had led him to reject as useless that which was merely speculative in medicine, while it enabled him to speak with authority of all that was valuable in our science. Thoroughly familiar with medical literature, he had also studied disease in the great book of nature, at the bedside in private practice, and in the wards of hospitals. Thus, to him, nearly every disease treated of presented itself in the form of individual cases which had come under his notice, or been under his immediate care. From this great treasury of knowledge he continually drew in illustration of the subject matter of his lecture. Catching at the typical features of the disease, its pathological history and phenomena, its diagnosis, general and differential, were given with such clearness and force, that the student saw before him, as at the bedside, all that was distinctive and important in the case; while the principles of treatment and its results followed with almost mathematical accuracy and precision.”
“Dr. Pepper made no effort at oratorical display. The main object of his teaching was apparent—to give a thoroughly practical course, one which, as far as possible, would prepare his pupils for the intelligent treatment of disease. His enunciation was distinct, and his delivery rather a rapid than a slow one. No one could visit his lecture-room without noticing the marked attention of the class, nor be associated with the students without perceiving with what affectionate respect they regarded their preceptor.”
“It is a remarkable fact, and in keeping with what has already been noticed, that during the four years of his professorship, a period the most exciting and important in our national history, notwithstanding the cares of a very large practice, and the infirmities of declining health, he was never absent from a lecture, and never failed to meet his class punctually at the time appointed for its delivery.”[1]
The career of Dr. Pepper was short in connection with the
- ↑ We have taken largely, in this notice, from the statements contained in the Biographical Memoir of the late Dr. William Pepper, M. D., by Thomas Kirkbride, M. D., prepared by request of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 1866.
