100 SOME AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANISTS 



Having lost his wife and child, he married on 

 December 21, 1797, Mary, daughter of James 

 and Mary Darragh Eddy, and had nine children. 

 The stress of necessity, perhaps, and an immense 

 power for work, made Hosack one of the leading 

 surgeons in New York. He held the chair of 

 materia medica in Columbia College in 1797; 

 that of surgery and midwifery in the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons of New York in 1807, 

 and there, later, the chair of the theory and 

 practice of physic and clinical medicine. 



In 1808 Hosack was the first American to tie 

 the femoral artery for aneurysm. He intro- 

 duced the method of treating hydrocele by in- 

 jection as early as 1795 ; and he insisted, in opera- 

 tions, upon the importance of leaving wounds 

 open to the air in order to check hemorrhage- 

 advocated later by Astley Cooper and Dupuytren. 



Dr. S. D. Gross writes affectionately of him in 

 his Autobiography, and says: 



" I heard him discourse on fevers. He sat in 

 an armchair and read from his manuscript, but 

 frequently indulged in extemporaneous flights, 

 accompanied by flashes of his dark eyes and by 

 graceful gesticulation which enchained the at- 

 tention of his pupils. His manner was delight- 

 ful, his voice commanding After the 



lecture was over, he said to me : ' The New York 

 Philosophical Society will meet at my house to- 



