MEDICINE IN AMERICA 4" 



periodical, the New York Medical Repository. This journal, 

 and the New York hospital took up most of his time and ener- 

 gies. He was among the first to appreciate that a hospital 

 should be a school of learning as well as a refuge for the sick. 

 At the end of the eighteenth century Waterhouse of Harvard 

 introduced vaccination and Jackson soon after began the prac- 

 tice m Boston. This was two years Ijefore Jenners' first an- 

 nouncement of his famous discovery of vaccination. In New 

 York at this time David Hosack was chief editor of the Amer- 

 ican Medical and Philosophical Register. 



But in spite of the eminent men spoken of, the general 

 practice and knowledge of the early part of the nineteenth 

 century was to be deplored. In 1813 David Hosack wrote: 

 "The great disparity in the merits of those who belong to the 

 medical profession is a topic of daily converse and pubUc noto- 

 riety." Quackery was abroad in the land and such men as 

 Hosack, deploring the general ignorance of the time, confident- 

 ly indicated the only remedy— a more thorough education. 

 He, himself, graduating from Princeton in 1789, received his 

 medical degree from Philadelphia in 1791. After a few years' 

 practice in New York, he spent some years at Edinburgh and 

 London, and returned well equipped for practice to New York 

 in 1794. From this time until his death in 1830, he was prob- 

 ably the best known, most accomplished, and most useful 

 physician in that city. In his teaching he grouped in a clear 

 way the best thought of his time and saw that science must be 

 based upon accurately observed and recorded facts The 

 physician of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, his interests 

 were numerous. He founded a humane society, and urged 

 the establishment of municipal hospitals for contagious dis- 

 eases, national quarantine regulations and a proper system of 

 city drainage. 



Contemporary with Hosack was Nathan Smith of New 

 England. He established a medical school in connection with 

 Dartmouth college, himself filling all the chairs. After build- 

 ing up here a strong and vigorous school, he was called to Yale, 

 whose medical school was founded in 1813. Among his not- 

 able writings is a treatise on typhus fever, or typhoid, as we 

 should now call it, which is a classic, and gives us at this day a 



