370 Nations lately become Literary, 



York; Dr. Chandler, of New- Jersey; Dr. Wil-» 

 liam Smith, of Pennsylvania; and Mr. Boucher* 

 of Maryland. From the middle of the century* 

 to the commencement of the revolutionary war* 

 this subject engaged much attention, and employed 

 many pens in the American Colonies/ 



The establishment of the Medical School in Phi- 

 ladelphia' forms an important era in the progress of 

 American science. Before this time, there were 

 no means of completing a regular medical educa- 

 tion in the American Colonies, and all who wished 

 to obtain such an education, were under the ne- 

 cessity of going to Europe for the purpose. Hence, 

 when the plan of a medical school was formed in 

 Philadelphia, it became an object of peculiar im- 

 portance and interest in the view of all who 

 wished well to the improvement of the country. 

 The plan was formed by Dr. William Shippen, 

 and Dr. John Morgan, both natives of Pennsyl- 

 vania, and began to be executed in the year 1764. 

 In that year Dr. Shippen gave the first course of 

 lectures upon Anatomy that was ever delivered 

 in America. In 1765, Dr. Morgan began to 

 give a course of public instruction on the Institutes 

 of Medicine. In 1768, Dr. Adam Kuhn, also a 

 native of Pennsylvania, and a favourite pupil of 

 the celebrated Linnjeus, commenced a system of 

 lectures on Botany and Materia Medica; and in 

 1769, Dr. Benjamin Rush, who had just returned 

 from the University of Edinburgh, began to lec- 

 ture on Chemistry. These lectures, which were 

 delivered by the aforesaid gentlemen, as Professors 

 of the College of Philadelphia, were all of them 

 the first attempts of the kind which had been 



d The Rev. Drs. Rodgers, Mason, Laidlie, and Inglis, all of 

 New-York, also wrote and published on the subject of the American Epis- 

 copate, but less formally and extensively than the persons mentioned- 

 above. 



« See vol. i. p. 320. 



