DAVID HOSACK. IOI 



of Hackensack, was a more distinguished teacher of that lan- 

 guage than Dr. McWhorter, David was transferred to his acad- 

 emy in 1785. The next year he entered Columbia College, 

 remaining in that institution until the middle of his junior year. 

 He had also private tutors in the classics and the French 

 language. In the beginning of the junior year, finding his 

 time not fully occupied, he took up the study of medicine as a 

 private pupil under Dr. Richard Bayley. " He had scarcely 

 begun his studies," writes his son,* " before the celebrated 

 ' Doctors' Mob ' occurred, which threatened serious results to l 

 those concerned ; it arose in consequence of the imprudence 

 of some of the students carelessly pursuing dissection in the 

 building upon the site since occupied as the New York Hos- 

 pital. This mob caused many of the professors to absent 

 themselves from the city and others to seek shelter in the city 

 jail. Mr. Hosack, with the rest of the students interested, 

 learning that the mob had seized upon and demolished the 

 anatomical preparations found in the lecture room above re- 

 ferred to, repaired immediately to Columbia College,f with the 

 view of saving such specimens as were to be found in that 

 institution. Before reaching the college, however, and when 

 on his way in Park Place, he was knocked down by a stone 

 striking him on the head ; he would in all probability have 

 been killed hfid it not been for the protection he received from 

 the neighbour of his father, Mr. Mount, who was passing at 

 the time and took care of him." 



In the fall of 1788 young Hosack entered the senior class 

 of the College of New Jersey at Princeton in order that he 

 might the sooner complete his collegiate course and devote his 

 whole attention to the study of medicine, to which he had 

 become ardently attached. " Having finished my course at 

 Princeton," he says in some memoranda that he left for the 

 benefit of his children, " I returned to New York and resumed 

 my favourite medical studies, to which I now gave my undivided 

 attention, availing myself of every advantage which the city at 

 that time presented. I attended the lectures on anatomy and 



* Dr. Alexander E. Hosack, in a biography contributed to the Lives of 

 Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century, edited 

 by Samuel D. Gross, M. D. From this biography most of the facts for the 

 present article have been drawn. 



\ Then in College Place. 



