412 Memorial of George Brozvii Goodc. 



was highly delighted with the extensive knowledge he appeared to have of every 

 subject, the brightness of his memory, the clearness and vivacity of all his mental 

 faculties. Notwithstanding his age (eighty-four), his manners are perfectly easy, 

 and everything about him seems to diffuse an unrestrained freedom and happiness. 

 He has an incessant vein of humor, accompanied with an uncommon vivacity, which 

 seems as natural and involuntary as his breathing. 



To Franklin, as president of the Philosophical Society, succeeded 

 David Rittenhouse [b, 1732, d. 1796], a man of world-wide reputation, 

 known in his day as the American philosopher.' 



He was an astronomer of repute, and his observatory, built at Norriton 

 in preparation of the transit of Venus in 1769, seems to have been the 

 first in America. His orrery, constructed upon an original plan, was 

 one of the wonders of the land. His most important contribution to 

 astronomy was the introduction of the use of spider lines in the focus of 

 transit instruments." 



He was an amateur botanist, and in 1770 made interesting physiolog- 

 ical experiments upon the electrical eel.^ 



He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and the first director 

 of the United States Mint. 



Next in prominence to Franklin and Rittenhouse were doubtless the 

 medical professors, Benjamin Rush, William Shippen, John Morgan, 

 Adam Kuhn, vSamuel Powell Grifiiths, and Caspar Wistar, all men of 

 scientific tastes, but too busy in public affairs and in medical instruction 

 to engage deeply in research, for Philadelphia, in those days as at pres- 

 ent, insisted that all her naturalists should be medical professors, and the 

 active investigators, outside of medical science, were not numerous. 

 Rush, however, was one of the earliest American writers upon ethnology, 

 and a pathologist of the highest rank. He is generally referred to as the 

 earliest professor of chemistry, having been appointed to the chair of 

 chemistry in the College of Philadelphia in 1769. It seems certain, how- 

 ever, that Doctor John Morgan lectured on chemistry as early as 1765.'' 



Doctor Shippen [b. 1735, d. 1808], the founder of the first medical 

 school [1765] and its professor of anatomy for forty-three years, was still 

 in his prime, and so was Doctor Morgan [b. 1735, d. 1789] , a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society, a co-founder of the medical school, and a frequent 

 contributor to the Philosophical Transactions. Morgan was an eminent 

 pathologist, and is said to have been the one to originate the theory of 

 the formation of pus by the secretory action of the vessels of the part.^ 

 He appears to have been the first who attempted to form a museum of 

 anatomy, having learned the methods of preparation from the Hunters 



' See obituary in the European Magazine, July, 1796 ; also Memoirs of Rittenhouse, 

 by William Barton, 1813, and Eulogium by Benjamin Rush, 1796. 

 ^'Von Zach, Monatliche Correspondenz, II, p. 215. 

 ^Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, I, Pt. 2, p. 96. 

 ■♦Barton's Memoirs of Rittenhouse, 1813, p. 614. 

 5 James Thacher, American Medical Biography, I, 1S2S, p. 40S. 



