MEDICINE IN AMERICA 405 



ber of the royal society — the first American so honored, and 

 was given a thousand i;uineas by the king. He will be ever 

 remembered for his good work as the first American ph>'sician 

 of note and an honor to his profession. Golden of New York 

 was among the first to do much medical writing, publishing 

 his first paper in 1720, an "Account of the Climate and Diseas- 

 es of New York." Of the Charleston group, Lining was the fh'st 

 American physiologist, and published in 1753 the first Amer- 

 ican account of yellow fever. He preached the theory of im- 

 munity after attack and his descriptions of the disease are 

 graphic for us to this day. 



Another meml)er of this group, Lionel Chelmers, wrote an 

 ''Account of the Weather and Diseases of South Carolina" 

 published in 1776. Prior to this he published an article on 

 "Opisthotonos and Tetanus," and an "Essay on Fevers". In 

 this latter essay he anticipated the ideas of Cullen, as he be- 

 lieved the immediate cause of fever to be a "Spasmodic Con- 

 traction of the Arteries and other Muscular Membranes." 

 The last and most famous of the Charleston group was Alex- 

 ander Garden. He was a highly gifted, widely read and cul- 

 tured man. He was familiar with the Latin and Greek classics 

 and what was more rare, with French and Italian. His studies 

 embraced medical science, botany, mathematics, philosophy, 

 l)elles lettres and history. Linnaeus, who was his friend, gave 

 the name Gardenia in his honor to one of the most beautiful 

 of flowering shrubs. Garden discovered that very useful 

 vermifuge, spigeha, and wrote an elaborate medical paper on 

 that subject. John Mitchell, of Virginia, was one of the few 

 eminent American scientists of those days ; a member of the 

 royal society, and an especially fine botanist, pu])lishing a 

 work on that science and descrilnng several new genera of 

 plants. He also wrote an "Account of Yellow Fever, which })re- 

 vailed in Virginia in the years 1737-41-42." Soon after in Phil- 

 adelphia there was established the first great American hos- 

 pital and as a natural sequence to that, in that city was 

 the first of our great medical schools. The Pennsylvania 

 hospital was the result of the efforts of Dr. Thomas Bond, who 

 interested Benjamin Franklin in the project. Franklin saw at 

 once the value of the proposal and to his influence and shrewd 



