At the public Commencement of the College, which took place on the 30th and 31st of May following, Dr. Morgan delivered his famous Inaugural Address, entitled “A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America.” It had been prepared in Paris. This discourse constituted a part of the Commencement exercises on both days of their continuance.
In noticing this performance, the “Pennsylvania Gazette” thus comments upon it: “We would not wish to anticipate the judgment of the public, and shall only say that the perspicuity with which it was written and spoke drew the close attention of the audience, particularly of the gentlemen of the Faculty of Physic.”
In this address will be found an exposition of the nature and scope of medical science; a sketch of the departments of which it is composed, with the reasons for their special cultivation; an advocacy of classical, literary, and general scientific attainments on the part of the student of medicine, and, what is pertinent to the purpose, the demonstration that to be effectively taught “a coalition is required of able men, who would undertake to give complete and regular courses of lectures on the different branches of medicine.” In connection with his statements, the author insists especially upon the advantages presented by the city of Philadelphia, to which even then students resorted, attracted as well by the reputation of its practitioners, as by the facilities for clinical instruction afforded them in the hospital.
In this literary and scientific performance, a prognostication was uttered which has been fully realized, viz: “Perhaps this Medical Institution, the first of its kind in America, though small in its beginning, may receive a constant increase of strength and annually exert new vigor. It may collect a number of young persons of more than ordinary abilities, and so improve their knowledge as to spread its reputation to distant parts. By sending these abroad duly qualified, or by exciting an emulation amongst men of parts and literature, it may give birth to other useful institutions of a similar nature, or occasional rise, by its example, to numerous societies
