Morgan, John

born June 10, 1735, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.

died Oct. 15, 1789, Philadelphia

U.S. medical educator.

He studied medicine in Europe before returning to the American colonies to found their first medical school in 1765 at the University of Pennsylvania. As North America's first professor of medicine, he required a liberal education of his students and separated medicine, surgery, and pharmacology into distinct disciplines, policies widely opposed by colonial physicians. He was made head of the army's medical system in 1775; however, the Continental Congress did not let him organize the system and dismissed him in 1777, holding him responsible for the war's high death rate. Though absolved in 1779, he never recovered, and he died an impoverished recluse.

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▪ 2001

      British journalist (b. May 28, 1959, Sunderland, Eng.—d. July 9, 2000, London, Eng.), became a popular arbiter of modern British etiquette, dress, and manners despite having come from a working-class Scottish background and having had no formal training. The impeccably dapper Morgan was associate fashion editor for The Guardian newspaper for a short time in the mid-1980s, style editor for Gentleman's Quarterly (GQ) magazine from 1988, and, most recently, the author of a weekly advice column in The Times (London) newspaper. He also edited the best-selling Debrett's New Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners (1996) and The Times Book of Modern Manners (2000). Morgan was found dead on the pavement outside his apartment building, an apparent suicide.

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▪ American physician and educator

born June 10, 1735, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [U.S.]

died October 15, 1789, Philadelphia

      pioneer of American medical (medicine, history of) education, surgeon general of the Continental armies during the American Revolution, and founder of the first medical school in the United States.

      Morgan studied at the University of Edinburgh (M.D., 1763), at Paris, and in Italy. Returning to the colonies in 1765, he founded their first medical school at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania, University of)) and there was appointed North America's first professor of medicine. His policies of requiring a liberal education for medical students and the separation of medicine, surgery, and pharmacology into distinct disciplines, outlined in his Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America (1765), met with widespread opposition from colonial physicians and failed to gain acceptance.

      Upon the start of the American Revolution, Morgan became an ardent patriot and was appointed “Director-General to the Military Hospitals and Physician-in-Chief to the American Army” by the Continental Congress in 1775. Morgan tried to bring the nearly autonomous regimental surgeons under general army control, but Congress would not reorganize the system. A faction headed by William Shippen, Jr. (Shippen, William, Jr.), sought to oust him from office, and in 1777 Morgan was held responsible for the high mortality rate in the army and was dismissed from his post by Congress.

      Two years later Morgan was absolved of all wrongdoing both by President George Washington (Washington, George) and by the Congress, but he never recovered from his disgrace and died an impoverished recluse 10 years later. Morgan also wrote A Recommendation of Inoculation (1776).

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