Richard Alexander F. Penrose,
M.D.
(1827-1908)
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Name:
Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose
Death date: Dec 26, 1908
Place of death: Philadelphia, PA
Type of practice: Allopath
Journal of the American Medical Association Citation: 52:64 |
Richard
Alexander Fullerton Penrose was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the
second son of Charles and Valeria Fullerton Biddle Penrose on March
24, 1827; his elder brother was
William McFunn Penrose. He was
educated at the local Dickinson Grammar School and entered Dickinson
College proper in 1842, graduating with the class of 1846. He went
on to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and
received his medical degree in March 1849.
Penrose was a
resident at the Philadelphia Hospital between 1850 and 1853 and also
opened a private practice in 1851. He was the visiting physician for
the Southern Home for Children in the city and later, in 1856, helped
found the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He was to continue as a
consultant for the Philadelphia Hospital from 1855 to 1864. Meanwhile,
Penrose began teaching in his specialty of the diseases of women and
children both at the Philadelphia Hospital and in private lessons. His
reputation as a fine teacher led to his appointment in 1863 to the
professorship of obstetrics and diseases of women and children at the
University of Pennsylvania; he served in this post till 1889. His
attentions were distracted for a time, however, when,
during the Civil
War, he took up the post of Acting Assistant Surgeon in the Union Army
as a doctor at the Satterlee Army Hospital in Philadelphia between 1862
and 1864. After the war, his reputation continued to grow and he was
instrumental in the founding of the Gynecian Hospital in Philadelphia
and the American Gynecological Society in 1876. In 1875, Dickinson
College awarded him an honorary doctorate of letters.
On September 28,
1858, Penrose married Sarah Hannah Boies of Wilmington, Delaware and the
couple had seven sons, including Boies Penrose, later a United Senator
from Pennsylvania, and Richard A.F. Penrose, Jr., later a famous
geologist. Sarah died in 1881 and, on December 26, 1908, Richard
Alexander Fullerton Penrose died of pneumonia in Philadelphia. He was
eighty-one years old.
