Where There's a Will

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Will of Ezekiel Hersey, 1770

John Morgan (1735-1789), the founder of the first medical school in North America, considered anatomy to be the “source we derive of first knowledge of the seat of diseases; of the proper or improper arrangement of parts; of the danger of safety of an operation…. In studying the art of healing we commonly begin with Anatomy, and very justly; for, unacquainted with this, it is impossible to learn the functions of the body in a healthy state, to know of what kind its diseases are, or how to remedy them.” The idea of anatomical study at Harvard predates even the establishment of the Medical School, as the 1770 bequest of Hingham physician, Ezekiel Hersey, was intended to fund professorships in anatomy and physiology. More than a decade would pass before the Harvard Corporation asked John Warren (1753-1815) to devise and implement a formal plan for the study of medicine. Warren incorporated some of Morgan’s ideas into his plan for medical study at Harvard, and a professorship in anatomy and surgery was one of the original three chairs at the Medical School when it opened in 1783. In 1792, the Hersey legacy was used to endow the first two chairs at the Harvard Medical School--the professorship of anatomy and surgery, filled by John Warren himself, and the professorship of the theory and practice of physic, filled by Benjamin Waterhouse. In 1993, the professorship of anatomy became the Hersey Professorship of Cell Biology; Bjorn Reino Olsen currently holds that chair.

Where There's a Will