INTRODUCTION. 
37 
Dr- Samuel Miller, in 1807, published letters on the constitution and order of the 
Christian ministry, which engaged him in a controversy concerning that important 
doctrine with Thomas Y. How, the reverend Dr. Bowden of Columbia College, 
the reverend Dr. Kemp of Maryland, and Dr. Hobart, afterwards bishop. Dr. 
Miller’s portion of this controversy is held in high estimation by that portion of 
the church whose views accord with his own. The “ Triangle,” by the reverend 
Mr. Samuel Whelpley, is still remembered as a masterly performance. 
In pulpit eloquence, the reverend Dr. Mason’s discourse upon the death of 
Hamilton, and baccalaureate addresses’ by the reverend Eliphalet Nott, D.D., 
president of Union College, are productions of a high order.* 
A colonial writer, to whom we have before referred, describes the medical 
profession as worthy of very little respect, and declares “ that pretenders have 
recommended themselves to a full practice and profitable subsistence. This,” 
he adds, “ is the less to be wondered at, as the profession is under no kind of 
regulation. Loud as the call is, they have no law to protect the lives of the 
king’s subjects. Any man at his pleasure sets up for a physician, apothecary and 
chirurgeon. Candidates are neither examined nor licensed, nor are they even 
sworn to fair practice.” 
Nevertheless, we find occasional notices of medical prescribers who had enjoyed 
the advantages of sound education at foreign universities, and who dispensed the 
benefits of their knowledge in this, their adopted country. Megapolensis, Dupie, 
Dubois, Beekman, Magrath, John Bard, Middleton, Clossy, and Farquhar were 
justly conspicuous. Dr. Cadwallader Colden, who was surveyor-general, and 
subsequently lieutenant-governor of the province, was eminent not only as a 
philosopher and a naturalist, but as a physician and medical writer. We are 
indebted to him for the first scientific account which we have of the climate and 
diseases of the city of New-York. We have in this work satisfactory evidence, 
that owing to the “ clearness ” and purity of the atmosphere, and its vigor in the 
spring season, consumption of the lungs is not an endemical disease, and hence 
♦ Notes concerning the clergy were received from the reverend Dr. J. N. Campbell and the reverend T. C. Reed. 
