334 JACOB BIGELOW. 



duties of his country parish aud the cultivation of a farm of thirty or 

 forty acres. His mother, a woman of superior sense and cultivation, 

 was the daughter of Gershom Flagg, of Boston. 



His boyhood was spent in attending a country school during five or 

 six months of the year, and the labors and amusements of a country 

 life, work on the farm, the study of natural objects, and the exer- 

 cise of his constructive ingenuity in various mechanical contrivances. 

 In the mean time, he conceived a strong desire of obtaining a collegiate 

 education ; and, though his father would have repressed his somewhat 

 precocious ambition of mastering the learned languages, he obtained a 

 Latin grammar, and in the woods and other solitary places found 

 means to become acquainted w T ith declensions and conjugations. 



At thirteen years of age, he was sent from home to " fit for college " 

 under the tuition of the Rev. Samuel Kendall, of Weston, a man 

 " much renowned," as he says, " in his parish, as a breaker of unruly 

 horses and refractory boys." He seems to have made the most of his 

 time in College, so far as his relations with the various societies, re- 

 ligious, literary, and social, were concerned, besides which he took part 

 in conducting a poetic periodical circulated in manuscript, his asso- 

 ciates being his classmates Alexander II. Everett and Joseph G. Cogs- 

 well. He graduated in 1806. His "part "at Commencement was a 

 poem ; and on taking his second degree, three years afterward, he was 

 offered the English oration for the Master's degree, but declined the 

 honor. 



Having chosen the practice of medicine as his profession, he began 

 its study on leaving college, teaching school at the same time in Wor- 

 cester. After a year, he returned to Boston, where he continued his 

 studies with Dr. John Gorham, supporting himself in the mean time 

 by discharging the duties of Assistant Teacher in the Latin School. 

 Here he continued to cultivate that knowledge of the classics which 

 has always been one of his remarkable accomplishments. In 1809, 

 he was licensed as a practitioner, and in 1810, after attending a course 

 of lectures at Philadelphia, he took his medical degree at the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania. 



His introduction to the public as an author was in the form of three 

 successive Boylston Prize Essays, one of which, that on Burns, is dis- 

 tinguished by original experiments of a simple and convincing char- 

 acter. After this, he delivered the annual poem before the Phi Beta 

 Kappa Society, and gave a course of botanical lectures in association 

 with Professor Peck, which course was afterwards twice repeated by 

 Dr. Bhjelow alone. 



