JACOB BIGELOW. 335 



In 1814, he published the " Florula Bostoniensis," a description of 

 the native plants of Boston and its vicinity. This work, which was 

 the principal consulting manual of local botanists, went through three 

 editions, with various successive enlargements. Dr. Bigelow's reputa- 

 tion became widely extended, and genera of plants were named after 

 him by English, French, and German botanists. In the following 

 year, 1815, he was appointed Professor of Materia Medica and Botany 

 in the Medical School of Harvard University; and in 1816 he 

 received the additional appointment of Rumford Professor in the 

 University. 



In 1818, Dr. Bigelow began the publication of the "American 

 Medical Botany," a work which extended to three volumes octavo, 

 with plates, colored by a new process of his own invention. In 1820 

 was published the first edition of the Pharmacopoeia of the United 

 States, prepared by the delegates of a convention appointed from the 

 various medical colleges and societies of the United States. A com- 

 mittee of five, Dr. Spalding of New York, Dr. Hewson of Philadel- 

 phia, Dr. Bigelow of Boston, Dr. Ives of New Haven, and Dr. De 

 Butts of Baltimore, were charged with the publication. The pai't 

 assigned to Dr. Bigelow was the list and nomenclature of the Materia 

 Medica. In performing this task, he departed from the common 

 usage of the British colleges, and in all possible cases employed a 

 single name for each drug in place of the double or triple names they 

 had always used, a plan which is still adhered to in our National 

 Pharmacopoeia. He followed up this labor by publishing his practical 

 treatise long familiar to the profession under the name of " Bigelow's 

 Sequel," a succinct, judicious, and perspicuous commentary on the 

 characters, qualities, and uses of the remedies adopted by the national 

 medical representatives. 



In 1825, Dr. Bigelow gave the first impulse to a great movement 

 which has made itself felt in its beneficent influences throughout the 

 whole length and breadth of the country. His attention had been 

 accidentally called to the gross abuses associated with the system of 

 intramural burials. In consequence of this, he invited about a dozen 

 gentlemen to meet at his house in Summer Street, to consider the 

 expediency of instituting an extra-urban, ornamental cemetery in the 

 neighborhood of Boston. This meeting, after long delays and discus- 

 sions, found the fulfilment of its suggestions in the creation of the ceme- 

 tery of "Mount Auburn," consecrated in 1831, the first institution of 

 the kind in the United States, and the pattern after which have been 

 modelled a great number of similar institutions, which have been grow- 



