Sect. V.] Materia Medica, 25 



the present sketch forbid an attempt to do justice 

 to their respective merits. 



In the year 1797 ^ periodical publication, under 

 the title of the Medical Repository, was commenced 

 by Drs. Mitchill, Miller, and Smith, which, from 

 the peculiar circumstances of the country, may be 

 considered as an important event, in noting the 

 successive steps of medical improvement in the 

 United States. In the premature death of the last- 

 named gentleman, who bade fair to attain the most 

 honourable eminence in his profession, this work 

 sustained a great loss*. It is still, however, pro- 



* Dr. Elihu H. Smith was born in the year 1/71, at Litchfield, 

 in the state of Connecticut, where his father, a respectable phy- 

 sician, still resides. He entered Yale college at the age of eleven j 

 and after leaving that institution, completed his education under 

 the care of the rev. Dr. Dwight, since president of Yale college, 

 who at that time presided over an academy of distinguished 

 reputation at Greenfield. After this he pursued a regular course 

 of medical studies under the direction of his father 5 commenced 

 liie practice of physic at Weathersfield in 1/9^;. '^i^d removed to 

 the city of New York in l/QS, where he remained until 1/98, 

 when he fell a victim to the yellow fever, which raged with so 

 much violence in the city in the autumn of that year. The sur- 

 viving editors of the Medical Repository .speak of their deceased 

 colleague in the following honourable terms : — 



*' As a physician, his loss is irreparable. He had explored, at 

 his early age, an extent of medical learning, for which the longest 

 lives are .seldom found sutiicient. His diligence and activity, his 

 ardour and perseverance, knew no common bounds. The love of 

 science and the impulse of philanthropy directed his whole pro- 

 fessional career, and left little room for the calculations of emolu- 

 ment. He had formed vast designs of medical improvement, 

 which embraced tlie whole family of mankind, were animnfed by 

 the soul of benevolence, and aspired after ivery object of a liberal 

 and dignified ambition. I-!is writings, already published, inccs- 

 iiaatly awaken regret, that the number of them is not greater. 



