ABSTRACT
In November 1818, in the city of Philadelphia a rising and in many ways already distinguished surgeon was giving his introductory lecture on anatomy at the Uni versity of Pennsylvania. With extraordinary talent and dedicated preparation in the United States and abroad, and with the strongest support from the best of the new country’s surgical leaders, he had accepted a position as professor o f anatomy. Little did he know that at the age of 35, a fulminant and untreatable disease at the time, typhus, would take his life and negate his great potential for future accomplish ments: this is the story of John Syng Dorsey (1783-1818).13
