BENJAMIN SMITH BARTON. 83 



In order to obtain a thorough medical training it was at 

 that time necessary to go abroad. Accordingly, young Barton 

 repaired to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1786, where he studied 

 for two years, with the exception of a few months spent in 

 London. Having become a member of the Royal Medical 

 Society at Edinburgh, he won the Harveian prize of that asso- 

 ciation for a dissertation on the Hyoscyamus niger of Linnaeus 

 (black henbane). Barton's first book was issued while he was 

 in London, in the early part of 1787. It was a little pamphlet, 

 entitled Observations on some Parts of Natural History : to 

 which is prefixed an Account of some Considerable Vestiges of 

 an Ancient Date, which have been Discovered in Different 

 Parts of North America. Considering his youth he was only 

 twenty-one years of age and the fact that he was afflicted 

 with ill health when he wrote it, this production is very cred- 

 itable ; but it contained some ill-founded theories and other 

 crudities that he readily and candidly acknowledged only a 

 few months later. For a number of reasons among them 

 the failure of two professors to show him courtesies that he 

 had reason to expect he left Edinburgh and took his degree 

 at Gottingen, returning to America toward the close of the 

 year 1789. He began to practise his profession in Philadel- 

 phia, where his knowledge of science soon caused him to be 

 looked upon as one of the rising young men of the day. 



The trustees of the College of Philadelphia having insti- 

 tuted a professorship of natural history and botany, appointed 

 Dr. Barton, then only twenty-four years of age, to the chair. 

 This appointment was confirmed in the following year, when 

 the college united with the University of Pennsylvania, and 

 was held by him for the rest of his life. Dr. Barton thus be- 

 came the first instructor in natural history in Philadelphia, and 

 probably was the first in any American college. Five years 

 later the professorship of materia medica in the University be- 

 came vacant, and this chair also was assigned to Dr. Barton 

 and was held by him until he succeeded to that of Dr. Rush. 

 On January 28, 1798, he received an appointment as one of the 

 physicians of the Pennsylvania Hospital, which position he held 

 for the rest of his life. Dr. Barton was a man of high ambi- 

 tion, and being deeply impressed by the well-deserved fame of 

 Prof. Rush, spared no exertions to equal it. When the latter 

 died, he very naturally desired to obtain his professorship, and 



