xxix DR. BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE 375 



the hospital in the troublous years of the war, during 

 part of which it was in use for the British wounded. 1 



Fothergill had a relation, Benjamin Waterhouse, the 

 son of his first cousin Hannah Proud, who had married 

 Timothy Waterhouse of Newport, Rhode Island. The 

 young man, who was born in 1754, came to England in 

 1775, entering FothergiU's family, and studying medicine 

 with his frequent counsel and help in London and in 

 Edinburgh. The war with America raging at this time, 

 Waterhouse went to Leyden in 1778, took his degree at 

 that famous school, and remained a third year to study 

 special subjects. His uncle, as he called Dr. Fothergill, 

 wrote shortly before his death to thank Franklin for his 

 great kindness to his " little friend and relation " ; and 

 added, " should the State of Massachusetts ever establish 

 a school of medicine and such there should be he 

 would fill a chair in it very properly." 



In 1782 Waterhouse returned to America, where his 

 long training and force of character assured him a dis- 

 tinguished career. Two outstanding events marked its 

 cqurse. One was the foundation of the Harvard Medical 

 School in 1783, at which he delivered the inaugural 

 address, becoming himself, as Fothergill had forecast, its 

 first Professor of Medicine. The second was the introduc- 

 tion of vaccination into America in 1800, when Water- 

 house first submitted his own children to the operation, 

 and afterwards inoculated them with the smallpox virus 

 without result, thus proving its efficacy as a preventive. 

 " One fact," he said, " is worth a thousand arguments." 

 Jenner, he added, " is one of Nature's own pupils : some 

 men are destined to follow the rules of colleges, but with 

 others rules follow them." Waterhouse was a keen 

 controversialist, alert, combative, emphatic, magisterial ; 

 and although his ultimate success in bringing in the new 



1 Dr. G. B. Wood in his Centennial Address (1851), followed by Cornell 

 (Hist. Pennsylvania, p. 412), speaks of Thomas Hyam as the chief instrument 

 in this matter, but it is clear that the initiative, as well as the careful execution 

 of the gift during a course of years, belonged mainly to Fothergill. The 

 Trustees of the Land Company were in 1760, John Fothergill, Daniel Zachary, 

 Thomas How, Devereux Bowley, Luke Hind, Richard How, Jacob Hagen, 

 Silvanus Grove and William Heron. 



