William Shippen Jr. (63)

Election date: 1767 (Elected to the revived American Philosophical Society.)
APS Office(s): Curator of the APS (1771-1772), secretary of the APS (1772-1773)

William Shippen, Jr. (21 October 1736–11 July 1808) was a physician, educator, and public official, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1767. Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1754. He was then apprenticed to his father, APS member William Shippen, Sr., before training in English hospitals, where he focused on midwifery, and earning an M.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1761. Back in Philadelphia, Shippen began a partnership with his father and inaugurated a course of medical lectures. Despite the threat of mob violence that arose when word spread that he was grave-robbing to facilitate his anatomical work, he continued to rise in stature. But he took lasting offense when his former schoolmate John Morgan founded a medical school at the College of Philadelphia in 1765. In Shippen’s view, Morgan was taking sole credit for a joint idea. Morgan repeated the slight a year later when he founded the Medical Society without inviting the Shippens. The feud divided the medical community for decades, culminating in a bitter contest for the office of medical director-general of the Continental Army. When Morgan’s performance in that role drew criticism in 1777, Shippen maneuvered to replace him. But Morgan was eventually exonerated and Shippen charged with incompetence and profiteering. Shippen narrowly escaped conviction yet resigned the post in 1781. His reputation intact, he accepted appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, attended elite patients like President George Washington, worked at the Philadelphia Dispensary and Pennsylvania Hospital, and served as president of the College of Physicians. In addition to his father, his son Thomas Lee Shippen, uncle Edward Shippen III, cousins Edward Shippen IV and Joseph Shippen, Jr., and brothers-in-law Arthur Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee were APS members. (PI, ANB, DAB)

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