Ann  Jour.  Pharm.1 
January,  1904.  / 
John  Morgan, 
13 
tion  under  the  new  titles,  first  as  the  Medical  Committee  of  the 
American  Society  for  Promoting  Useful  Knowledge,  and  later  as  the 
Committee  on  Medicine  and  Anatomy  of  the  Philosophical  Society. 
Dr.  Morgan,  as  early  as  1767,  suggested  the  feasibility  of  forming 
a  College  of  Physicians.  The  proposition  did  not  meet  with  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  proprietor,  Thomas  Penn,  who  in  a  letter  to  his  brother, 
Richard  Penn,  dated  February  27,  1767,  said  :  "  I  think  it  very  early 
for  such  an  establishment,  and  wish  the  faculty  would  not  press  for 
such  a  thing.  I  shall  confer  with  Dr.  Fothergill  upon  it."  The 
resulting  conference  does  not  appear  to  have  resulted  favorably,  as 
nothing  more  was  heard  of  the  project  for  the  time. 
Dr.  Morgan  was  married  on  September  4,  1765,  to  Mary,  daugh- 
ter of  Hon.  Thomas  and  Mary  (Johnson)  Hopkinson.  In  1773 
he  visited  Jamaica  to  obtain  donations  for  the  department  of  general 
literature  in  the  College  of  Philadelphia.  In  the  same  year  he  was 
elected  to  serve  on  the  staff  of  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital,  in 
which  capacity  he  served  until  1777;  he  was  re-elected  in  1778  and 
served  to  1783,  when  he  resigned. 
His  first  resignation  from  the  hospital  was  due  to  his  discharge 
from  the  medical  service  of  the  Continental  Army. 
In  1775  he  had  been  offered  and  accepted  the  office  of  Director- 
General  and  Physician-in-Chief  of  the  American  hospitals. 
In  this  position  he  provoked  the  antagonism  and  jealousy  of  many 
of  his  subordinates,  who,  by  false  charges  and  political  intrigues, 
forced  his  discharge  in  1777.  This  dismissal  was  a  severe  blow 
to  Dr.  Morgan,  and  although  he  was  subsequently  acquitted  of  all 
charges  by  a  committee  appointed  by  the  Continental  Congress,  he, 
for  the  time  being,  considered  himself  disgraced,  and  withdrew 
from  all  public  offices. 
January  2,  1787,  is  the  recorded  date  of  the  first  meeting  of  The 
College  of  Physicians  of  Philadelphia,  twenty  years  after  such  an 
institution  was  first  proposed  by  Dr.  Morgan.  Prominent  among 
the  first  Fellows  were  the  names  of  the  then  leading  practitioners, 
Dr.  Morgan,  Dr.  Chovet  and  Dr.  Jones,  while  a  number  of  the 
remaining  senior  fellows  had  also  been  members  of  the  Philadelphia 
Medical  Society. 
Morgan  did  not  long  survive  the  inauguration  of  the  College  of 
Physicians.  He  died  October  15,  1789,  and  was  buried  beside  his 
wife  in  the  middle  aisle  of  St.  Peter's  Church,  Philadelphia. 
