Evolution of the William Pepper Laboratory

The William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, which celebrated its centennial on December 4, 1995, appears to be the oldest clinical laboratory in the US. Its founder and his successors have been committed to ensuring that research and teaching are considered as important as the service role of the clinical laboratory. We highlight here some of the major accomplishments and events affecting the evolution of the laboratory.Established in 1894, the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine opened in 1895 as a fully equipped facility for performing routine laboratory work as well as research. The third Director of the William Pepper Laboratory, Herbert Fox, after investigating the Loomis Laboratory in New York City determined that it “was not in any sense a part of the medical clinic of Bellevue Hospital” (1). The Pepper Laboratory, then, can claim to be the first clinical laboratory in the US to be associated directly with a medical clinic. In 1994–95, the University of Pennsylvania celebrated the centennial of the Pepper Laboratory by holding a symposium, “The Clinical Laboratory in the Future of Medicine”; establishing endowed William Pepper Laboratory fellowships; publishing a history of the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine; and erecting a permanent exhibit illustrating that history.The University of Pennsylvania Medical School evolved from the Department of Medicine, which had been created in 1765. John Morgan and William Shippen Jr. were the first professors—Morgan as Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic, Shippen as Professor of Anatomy and Surgery. Thomas Bond, chief physician at Pennsylvania Hospital, the oldest hospital in the country, soon joined the department. Benjamin Rush, the first American professor of chemistry, was also an early member of the department.In 1872, the University of Pennsylvania moved from its original site in the center …