2 
John  Morgan. 
( Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I    January,  1904. 
To  more  thoroughly  appreciate  the  untoward  conditions  under 
which  Dr.  Morgan  attempted  to  introduce  this  latter,  and,  at  the 
time,  unpopular  innovation,  we  must  take  a  short  retrospect  of  the 
conditions  as  they  existed  in  the  early  half  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, when  Morgan  first  entered  as  a  medical  apprentice.  The 
active,  outdoor  life  of  the  early  colonists  made  them  an  exasperat- 
ingly  healthy  class  of  people,  but  even  when  ill  the  advice  of  a  phy- 
sician was  only  sought  after  the  whole  gamut  of  household  remedies 
had  been  tried  and  failed.  Physicians  were  not  numerous,  and 
druggists  were  few  indeed. 
Watson,  in  his  "  Annals  of  Philadelphia,"  mentions  but  six  drug 
stores  existing  in  Philadelphia  about  1750,  the  few  that  were  not 
owned  by  physicians  were  devoted  exclusively  to  supplying  medi- 
cines and  medicinal  preparations  to  physicians,  and  to  the  sale  of 
such  household  remedies  as  the  housewife  could  not  gather  herself 
in  the  fields  or  cultivate  in  her  own  garden. 
Physicians  invariably  dispensed  their  own  medicines,  and  these 
were  usually  prepared  by  the  apprentice  or  apprentices  of  that  day. 
These  apprentices,  by  running  errands,  gathering  herbs,  preparing 
and  dispensing  medicines  and  attending  to  other  and  at  times  even 
menial  duties  about  the  house  of  their  master,  were  expected,  in 
the  course  of  the  six  or  seven  years  of  their  apprenticeship,  to 
absorb  sufficient  knowledge  of  physic  to  open  a  shop  and  practice 
for  themselves. 
Dr.  Francis  R.  Packard,  in  his  "  History  of  Medicine  in  the 
United  States,"  refers  to  the  life  of  these  early  medical  apprentices, 
and  quotes  from  the  life  of  Dr.  John  Bard,  one  of  the  more  famous 
of  the  colonial  medical  men,  who  in  speaking  of  his  preceptor  says : 
"  He  treated  his  pupils  with  great  rigor  and  subjected  them  to  the 
most  menial  employments." 
It  was  into  conditions  such  as  these  that  John  Morgan  was  born  in 
1735.  His  father,  Evan  Morgan,  was  a  native  of  Wales  and  came 
to  Philadelphia  at  an  early  date,  where  he  engaged  in  mercantile 
pursuits,  and  is  said  to  have  been  quite  successful. 
From  letters  written  by  Benjamin  Franklin  it  appears  that  Evan 
Morgan  was  a  friend  and  close  neighbor  of  that  celebrated  printer, 
philosopher  and  statesman. 
John  Morgan,  when  still  quite  a  lad,  was  placed  at  Nottingham 
School,  Chester  County.     This  school,  at  that  time,  was  under  the 
