1736-1808

American Physician, Surgeon and Medical Educator

Shippen was the co-founder of the first medical school in America and the first professor of anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics in America.

The son of a prominent Philadelphia physician, William Shippen Jr. ("Billey") attended Rev. Samuel Finley's boarding school in West Nottingham, Pennsylvania, then the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton University, where he was valedictorian of the class of 1754. He was apprenticed to his father from 1754 until 1758, when he went to Great Britain to continue his medical training. In London until 1760, he studied anatomy under John (1728-1793) and William Hunter (1718-1783), obstetrics under Colin Mackenzie, and clinical medicine and surgery at St. Thomas's Hospital. Thereafter in Edinburgh he studied under William Cullen (1710-1790) and Alexander Monro secundus (1733-1817). He received an Edinburgh M.D. in September 1761. Before he returned to Philadelphia in 1762, he married Alice...