SKETCH OF DAVID HO SACK. 835 



tion, was placed at fourteen or fifteen years of age in the academy 

 of the Rev. Dr. Alexander McWhorter, of Newark, N. J., where 

 he pursued the study of Latin and other usual branches and 

 began to learn Greek. But as Dr. Peter Wilson, of Hackensack, 

 was a more distinguished teacher of the latter tongue than Dr. 

 McWhorter, David was transferred to his academy in 1785. The 

 next year he entered Columbia College, remaining in that institu- 

 tion until the middle of his junior year. He had also private 

 tutors in the classics and the French language. In the beginning 

 of the junior year, finding his time not fully occupied, he took 

 up the study of medicine as a private pupil under Dr. Richard 

 Bayley. " He had scarcely begun his studies," writes his son,* 

 " before the celebrated ' Doctors ' Mob ' occurred, which threatened 

 serious results to those concerned ; it arose in consequence of the 

 imprudence of some of the students carelessly pursuing dissection 

 in the building upon the site since occupied as the New York 

 Hospital. This mob caused many of the professors to absent 

 themselves from the city and others to seek shelter in the city 

 jail. Mr. Hosack, with the rest of the students interested, learn- 

 ing that the mob had seized upon and demolished the anatomical 

 preparations found in the lecture room above referred to, repaired 

 immediately to Columbia College, f with the view of saving such 

 specimens as were to be found in that institution. Before reach- 

 ing the college, however, and when on his way in Park Place, he 

 was knocked down by a stone striking him on the head; he 

 would in all probability have been killed had it not been for the 

 protection he received from the neighbor of his father, Mr. 

 Mount, who was passing at the time and took care of him/' 



In the fall of 1788 young Hosack entered the senior class of 

 the College of New Jersey at Princeton in order that he might 

 the sooner complete his collegiate course and devote his whole 

 attention to the study of medicine, to which he had become 

 ardently attached. " Having finished my course at Princeton," 

 he says in some memoranda that he left for the benefit of his 

 children, "I returned to New York and resumed my favorite 

 medical studies, to which I now gave my undivided attention, 

 availing myself of every advantage which the city at that time 

 presented. I attended the lectures on anatomy and physiology 

 delivered by Dr. Wright Post, those on chemistry and practice of 

 physic, by Dr. Nicholas Romayne, and the valuable course on 

 midwifery and the diseases of women and children, by Dr. Bard. 



* Dr. Alexander E. Hosack, in a biography contributed to the Lives of Eminent Ameri- 

 can Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Samuel D. Gross, M. D- 

 From this biography most of the facts for the present article have been drawn. 



j- Then in College Place. 



