William
Edmonds Horner, anatomist, was born on 3 June 1793 in Warrenton,
Va., to William and Mary (Edmonds) Horner. On 26 Oct. 1820 he
married Elizabeth Welsh of Philadelphia; they had 10 children.
He died in Philadelphia on 13 March 1853.
As a child,
Horner was educated in the schools of Warrenton and Dumfries. He
later studied medicine under John Spence and received his M.D.
from the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in
1814. While in medical school, the War of 1812 began and Horner
took time away from his studies to serve a commission as
Surgeon’s Mate in the U.S. Army. After the war ended, he
resigned his commission and briefly set up private practice in
Warrenton, but moved permanently to Philadelphia in 1816.
Horner spent
his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he held
successive positions: Dissector (1816-1818), Demonstrator of
Anatomy (1818-1820), Adjunct Professor of Anatomy (1820-1831),
and Professor of Anatomy (1831-1853).
An excellent
anatomist, Horner is known for describing the tensor tarsi
muscle (1824) and for amassing thousands of specimens for the
anatomy museum at the University, which later became part of the
Wistar Institute of Anatomy in
Philadelphia. He also was a founder of St. Joseph’s Hospital
(1841).
Horner’s chief
writings include The American Dissector (1819), A Treatise on
Pathological Anatomy for the Use of Dissectors (1823), Treatise
on Special and General Anatomy (1826), and Treatise on
Pathological Anatomy (1829), the first American pathology
textbook.
