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William Pepper was an American physician. He was the dean at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Background
William Pepper was born on May 1, 1874 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the third in a distinguished line of physicians intimately associated with the University of Pennsylvania. His grandfather, William Pepper, was professor of medicine there in 1860 - 1864. His father, William Pepper, was professor of medicine 1876 - 1898 and provost of the university in 1880 - 1894. William Pepper III was the first of four sons of William Pepper II and Frances Sergeant (Perry) Pepper, a descendant of Oliver Hazard Perry.
Education
Young William Pepper took his bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1894 and the doctorate in medicine in 1897.
Career
As a young physician in Philadelphia, William Pepper became interested in the pathology of the white blood cells and in 1901 published two articles on the subject written with Alfred Stengel, in the University of Pennsylvania Gazette. Appointed assistant professor of clinical pathology in 1907, he continued for some years the study of diseases of the blood and the heart, and in 1910 published jointly with F. O. Klaer the small Manual of Clinical Laboratory Methods (second edition with John A. Kolmer in 1920), which was long used in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
In 1912 William Pepper was appointed dean of the school. For some years the medical schools of the United States had been going through a critical period of reform and reorganization, brought to a head by a report of Abraham Flexner to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education, Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910). The University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine, the oldest in the country and one of the most conservative, had undergone a thorough reorganization with the advent of several brilliant young men to fill time-honored professorships. The changes had left a good deal of discontent among the older faculty members. Pepper's firmness, coupled with his kindness and sincerity, made him a suitable choice for leadership in such a situation.
William Pepper taught clinical pathology until 1919 but thereafter devoted his full time to the work of the dean's office. He greatly encouraged the development of strong departments of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and biochemistry. During his term of office, women were admitted as students (1914). The curriculum was extensively revised and the size of medical classes reduced, in conformity with advancing educational standards. A new wing was added to the great Medical Laboratories Building, and the school's library was given new and ample quarters. The Medico-Chirurgical College and the Philadelphia Polyclinic were merged with the university and close affiliation was effected with the Children's Hospital, the Orthopedic Hospital, and the psychiatric division of the Pennsylvania Hospital (Institute of Mental Hygiene).
William Pepper's responsibilities for major policy-making were somewhat lightened after 1928 by a reorganization of the university that placed vice-presidents at the head of the several divisions of the faculty, one of which comprised the schools of medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine; but there were duties and problems enough within the medical school to employ fully Pepper's special gift for harmonious leadership under such eminent vice-presidents for medical affairs as Alfred Stengel and A. N. Richards.
During World War I, Pepper was commanding officer, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, in the United States Army Medical Corps at Base Hospital 74, organized and largely manned by the University of Pennsylvania for service in France. In 1920 - 1921 he was president of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania from 1942 until his death. Always interested in the history of medicine, Pepper published several articles on historical topics, including an introduction to a 1931 reprint of Benjamin Franklin's Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in America and a small but thoroughly documented book, The Medical Side of Franklin (1911).
William Pepper died in Philadelphia, of an arteriosclerotic disease on December 3, 1947, and was buried in East Laurel Hill Cemetery in that city.
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Membership
William Pepper was a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Personality
William Pepper was a tall man of distinguished appearance, slow and slightly awkward in his movements. In the thirty-three years of his deanship he won and retained the friendship of the faculty and was loved by the students.
Interests
William Pepper's principal hobbies were nature study and fishing. He banded thousands of wild birds to record their migratory movements and was usually absent from his office on the first day of the trout-fishing season.
Connections
On December 21, 1904, William Pepper married Mary Godfrey, who died in 1918. On April 3, 1922, he married Phoebe S. (Voorhees) Drayton. There were three children by the first marriage: Mrs. Mary Pepper Parker, Dr. D. Sergeant Pepper, and William Pepper, Jr.