William Edmonds Horner (1793–1853), physician and educator, was born in Warrenton. He received his early education at the Warrenton academy of Charles O’Neill, then studied with the physician John Spence in Philadelphia, attended the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1814 with a thesis on “Gun-shot Wounds.” While he was an undergraduate, Horner served during the War of 1812 as a hospital surgeon’s mate in the United States Army, 1813–15. He settled in Philadelphia in 1816, in which year Caspar Wistar chose Horner to work with him as dissector and assist with his anatomical museum. Horner was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1819 and appointed adjunct professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1820. He toured Europe the following year and returned to the United States by 1823. Horner was then appointed a surgeon at the Philadelphia Almshouse, a position he held until 1845. He was dean of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, 1822–52, and edited the third edition of Wistar’s A System of Anatomy for the use of Students of Medicine, issued in Philadelphia in 1823. Horner later published a textbook of his own, A Treatise on Pathological Anatomy (1829). After Philip S. Physick retired as professor of anatomy in 1831, Horner took his place and held that position until his death. He went on a second tour of Europe in 1848, visiting hospitals, physicians, and instrument makers, observing medical practice, and taking notes on anatomical collections. Horner’s real estate was valued at $60,000 in 1850. He died in Philadelphia (PU: Horner Papers; Samuel Jackson, A Discourse commemorative of the late William E. Horner, M.D., professor of anatomy [1853]; Joseph Carson, A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, from its Foundation in 1765 [1869], 182–5; University of Pennsylvania Medical Graduates, 34; Heitman, U.S. Army, 1:542; APS, Minutes, 15 Oct. 1819 [MS in PPAmP]; Boston Daily Advertiser, 12 Dec. 1820; DNA: RG 29, CS, Pa., Philadelphia, 1850; Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 14 Mar. 1853; gravestone inscription in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia).