William Pepper

William Pepper Jr. (August 21, 1843 – July 28, 1898), was an American physician and medical educator, and the eleventh provost of the University of Pennsylvania, from 1881 to 1894. He was an advocate for the establishment of a university affiliated hospital and led the finance and building committees for the construction of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in 1874. As provost, he oversaw a major expansion of the University including the construction of 13 campus buildings, the addition of the Wharton School of Business, and eleven new departments. In 1891, he founded the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Early life and education Pepper was born in Philadelphia to Dr. William Pepper Sr. and Sarah Platt. and from the medical school in 1864.

He received a LL.D. degree from Lafayette College in 1881 and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1893.

Career Pepper worked as an apothecary and a resident physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. He was appointed pathologist at Pennsylvania hospital in 1866, visiting physician at the Blockley Almshouse, and curator of the Philadelphia hospital after the resignation of David Hayes Agnew.

In 1868 Pepper became lecturer on morbid anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He lectured on clinical medicine from 1870 to 1874 and on physical diagnosis from 1871 to 1873.

In 1893, Pepper was part of the executive committee for the first Pan-American Medical Congress. For his services as medical director of the United States Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, he was made Knight Commander of Saint Olaf by King Oscar II of Sweden. and the Wistar Institute in 1894. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow in the College of Physicians.

Pepper was known academically for his contributions to the theory and practice of medicine and the System of Medicine that he edited in 1885-86 became one of America's standard medical textbooks. He died of heart disease while traveling in Pleasanton, California, on July 28, 1898.

A bronze statue of Pepper by Karl Bitter stands on the south side of College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania. A replica of this stands on the landing of the main staircase of the Free Library of Philadelphia. In addition, a marble bust - also by Bitter - rests on a wooden base in the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

A plaque to his memory is in the second floor atrium at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine at Penn Medicine.

Publications

A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Children, Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1870 The University in Modern Life, an Address Delivered Before the College Association of the Middle States and of Maryland at its Annual Meeting at the University of Pennsylvania, November, 1889., 1890

His contributions to the medical and scientific journals of the day included the following: Trephining in Cerebral Disease (1871) Local Treatment in Pulmonary Cavities (1874) Catarrhal Irrigation (1881) Epilepsy (1883) Higher Medical Education: the True Interest of the Public and the Profession.

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