DAVID HOSACK. 



105 



don had admirably fitted him. At the end of his first course 

 he published a syllabus of his lectures, afterward inserted in 

 his Medical Essays. In 1795, a ^ so > tne yellow fever reached 

 New York, and the violence of the epidemic afforded ample 

 opportunity to young medical men to distinguish themselves. 

 Dr. Hosack at this time attracted the especial attention of 

 Dr. Samuel Bard, one of his former preceptors, who soon after 

 took him into partnership. This was a preparatory step to Dr. 

 Bard's retiring from the profession, which he did three or four 

 years later, leaving Dr. Hosack in the enjoyment of an exten- 

 sive and profitable practice. 



Having lost his infant son during his absence in England 

 and his wife not long after his return, Dr. Hosack married, 

 Decmber 21, 1797, Mary, daughter of James and Mary Dar- 

 ragh Eddy, of Philadelphia. By this marriage he had nine 

 children. 



Upon the death, in 1797, of Dr. William Pitt Smith, his chair 

 of Materia Medica in Columbia College was assigned to Dr. 

 Hosack, in addition to the one of Botany already held by the 

 latter. He continued to fill these two professorships until 

 1807, when the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the 

 State of New York was established, in which he was chosen 

 Professor of Surgery and Midwifery. He soon, however, re- 

 linquished this chair for that of the Theory and Practice of 

 Physic and Clinical Medicine. The Analectic Magazine for 

 1814 contained a notice of an introductory lecture given in the 

 last-named chair, which had been published. It says that, 

 after an opening statement on another matter, " Dr. Hosack 

 proceeds to point out what he deems the proper method of 

 cultivating the science of medicine. He recommends the in- 

 ductive system of philosophizing as the only sure means of 

 acquiring correct methods in science, and enforces the same 

 by the celebrated examples of Bacon, Boyle, and Newton in 

 physics, of Reid, Bentley, and Stewart in metaphysics, and of 

 Hippocrates, Sydenham, and Boerhaave in medicine." 



Meanwhile Dr. Hosack had become prominently known for 

 his success in the treatment of yellow fever, which had visited 

 New York in four successive summers, beginning with 1795, an( ^ 

 afterward in 1803, 1805, 1819, and 1822. On many occasions, 

 when disease suspected to be yellow fever broke out, he was 

 called upon by the Board of Health of New York for a report 

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