Horner

ice. Failing to receive an appointment, he set
out, Dec. 3, 1815, for Philadelphia.

Here he devoted his time to lectures and to
practical anatomy. His skill in dissection and
the neatness of his preparations attracted the at-
tention of Caspar Wistar [g.z>.], at that time
professor of anatomy at the University of Penn-
sylvania, who offered Horner the position of
prosector at a salary of five hundred dollars.
Following Wistar's sudden death, Jan. 22, 1818,
his successor, John Syng Dorsey [#,£/.], not only
continued Horner in his former position, but
also turned over to him the entire dissecting
class and its emoluments. After Dorsey's death
the next fall, his uncle, Philip Syng Physick
[g.z/.], undertook to carry not only his own
course in surgery, but also the course in anat-
omy and Horner was continued in the same po-
sition he had occupied under Dorsey. In 1819,
Physick exchanged the chair of surgery for that
of anatomy and on Nov. 17, 1819, Horner was
appointed adjunct professor of anatomy. In 1831,
Physick resigned and Horner was elected pro-
fessor of anatomy, a position which he held dur-
ing the remainder of his life. For some thirty
years he also served as dean of the medical
department, resigning in 1852. Under his lead-
ership Pennsylvania "maintained the highest
standards of medical education then existent in
America" (W. S. Middleton, post, p. 39), and
it was said the finances of the medical school had
never been better administered.

Horner's writings were confined chiefly to
anatomical subjects. In 1823, he published Les-
sons in Practical Anatomy^for the Use of Dis-
sectors, and edited the third edition of Wistar's
System oj Anatomy, in 1824, he described for
the first time the tensor tarsi, a special muscle
connected with the lachrymal apparatus; in 1826,
he issued A Treatise on Special and General
Anatomy, in two volumes; in 1829 A Treatise
on Pathological Anatomy, the first work on this
subject to appear in America; in 1835, he pub-
lished in the American Journal of the Medical
Sciences a special study of Asiatic cholera based
on the 1832 epidemic in Philadelphia. For his
services in this epidemic the city council present-
ed him with a silver pitcher. He also contributed
numerous articles to various medical journals.
The anatomical museum at the university was
founded by Caspar Wistar, and was largely
made up of preparations which he had made.
From time to time Horner presented numerous
preparations to the museum and on his death
he bequeathed an extensive collection to the
medical school. In consequence of this bequest

Horr

the trustees designated the collection thus con-
stituted the "Wistar and Horner Museum."

On Oct. 26, 1820, Horner married Elizabeth
Welsh of Philadelphia. Ten children were born
to them; four daughters and two sons outlived
him. Originally a communicant of the Episcopal
Church, in later life, influenced by the devotion
of priests and sisters to their patients during the
cholera epidemic in 1832, he became in 1839 a
communicant of the Roman Catholic Church.
He also played an important part in founding St.
Joseph's Hospital. Beginning in 1819, he suf-
fered from repeated attacks of dyspnea that
were eventually found to be of cardiac origin* In
1848, in company with Joseph Leidy [g.z;.], he
visited Europe, and returned somewhat improved
in health. After resuming his duties, however,
he felt a gradual loss of strength. In 1852, he
was again obliged to take a short rest in the
South. On Jan. 27, 1853, he delivered his last
lecture, and on the evening of Mar. 13, 1853, he
died. The necropsy showed old cardio-vascular
lesions, but an enterocolitis with gangrene and
peritonitis was the immediate cause of death.

[Frederick Horner, The Hist, of the Blair, Banister,
and Braxton Families (1898); C. R. Bardeen, in H. A.
Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. (1920);
Joseph Carson, A Hist, of the Medic. Dept. of the Univ.
of Pa. (1869) ; William Horner, in S. D. Gross, Lives
of Eminent Am. Physicians and Surgeons (1861);
Samuel Jackson, A Discourse Commemorative of the
Late William E. Horner (1853) ; W. S. Middleton,
"William Edmonds Horner," Annals of Medic. Hist.,
Mar. 1923.] W.S.M.

HORR, GEORGE EDWIN (Jan. 19, 1856-
Jan. 22, 1927), Baptist clergyman, editor, edu-
cator was born in Boston, Mass., to George
Edwin and Elsie Matilda (Ellis) Horr. He
was descended from John Hoar, a Revolutionary
soldier who was at Concord Bridge; his great-
grandfather, Joseph, changed the patronymic to
Horr. Soon after the younger George's birth
his father was ordained to the Baptist ministry
and the boy's home was a shifting one. At the
high school in Newark, N. J., he prepared for
college, ranking first in his class and winning
a scholarship prize which enabled him to enter
Brown University. Here he made a high record
and pursued extra-curricular studies in the clas-
sics, philosophy, and history. Graduating in
1876, he spent one year at Union Theological
Seminary and completed his ministerial prepa-
ration at Newton Theological Institution in 1879.
His first pastorate was at Tarrytown, N. Y.,
where he was ordained Dec. 2, 1879. Early in
1884 he became pastor of the First Baptist
Church, Charlestown, Mass., and spent the re-
mainder of his life in Boston and vicinity. On
Mar. 16, 1886, he married Mrs. Evelyn Olmsted

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