HUMAN DISSECTION IN THE MIDDLE ATLANTIC STATES 219 



The relationship between John Morgan and Shippen came 

 to a sad ending. A discord developed between them when the 

 former, the original appointee as Director-General of the Military 

 Hospitals, was relieved of the post and replaced by Shippen. 

 There had been a number of complaints against the manner in 

 which Morgan loosely handled the care of the sick and wounded. 

 Among the critics, was Shippen, who wrote to a member of the 

 Continental Congress, that more soldiers were dying from neglect 

 of medical care than by the sword. This led to a considerable 

 amount of friction and eventually distrust between them and 

 Sthe breach created never narrowed; in fact, it developed into a 

 violent hatred. Morgan was exonerated by Congress in 1779. In 

 1781, re-elected to his former professorship, he refused to serve 

 [on the same faculty with Shippen. The position was kept open 

 for him until the year before his death in 1789 (Middleton, '32). 



Shippen died on July 11, 1808, at the age of seventy-two. The 

 last part of his life was saddened by the death of his son whom 

 [he was training to follow in his footsteps. 



Another anatomist, Abraham Chovet, a contemporary of Ship- 

 pen in Philadelphia, is mentioned because of the contrast in the 

 method of his teaching. The span of his lectures extended between 

 1774 and 1783. Previous to this, he had taught in London. 

 Eschewing human dissection, he relied entirely on wax figures 

 and charts which he made himself. He advertised the use of these 

 in the newspapers and emphasized that his curriculum was free 

 from the disagreeable sight of putrid human corpses. His course 

 was very popular and some considered him a better anatomist 

 than Shippen. John Adams wrote that his models were excellent, 

 being better than the Fothergill Collection in the possession of 

 the Pennsylvania Hospital, which were used by Shippen. Chovet's 

 reproductions were purchased in 1793 by the same hospital and 

 added to the above group. All were destroyed by fire in 1888. 

 Little is known of the life of Chovet: he was born in 1704, place 

 unknown, and probably was a demonstrator in anatomy at the 

 Barber-Surgeons Hall, London, in 1734. There he taught begin- 

 ners in anatomy before they started dissecting, a minor role. 

 From London, he went to the Barbadoes, then Jamaica, from 

 whence he migrated to Philadelphia (Miller, '11). 



