January 10, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



59 



discriminations and descriptions being in 

 several instances the first, and to this day 

 in some eases unsurpassed and unimpaired 

 by new knowledge. Like Ray, he was not 

 a mere species-monger, but he had the syn- 

 thetic power to assign the proper place to 

 single observations and to combine them 

 into well-ordered groups. By way of con- 

 trast, the attempt of Linnaeus to classify 

 diseases into species and genera, although 

 of some historical interest, was utterly bar- 

 ren, the subject-matter permitting no such 

 method of approach as that which enabled 

 this great systematist to start a new epoch 

 in botany and zoology. 



With the close of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury we reach a dividing line, which limita- 

 tions of time compel me to make on this 

 occasion a terminal one, in the historical 

 survey of the interrelations of medicine 

 and the natural sciences. I can not, how- 

 ever, refrain from at least the bare men- 

 tion of the influence of physicians on the 

 development of science in America — a 

 theme which I hope on some other occasion 

 to take up more fully. Leonard Hoar, 

 doctor of medicine of Cambridge, England, 

 brought something of the new experimental 

 philosophy to America, and during his 

 short incumbency of the presidency of 

 Harvard College (1672-1674) planted the 

 first seeds of technical training on Amer- 

 ican soil, but too early for them to germi- 

 nate. Of much greater importance was 

 Cadwallader Colden, an Edinburgh doctor, 

 acquainted with the Newtonian mathemat- 

 ics and physics, and a botanist of note in 

 his day, who did much to instil an interest 

 in physical and natural science among phy- 

 sicians and others in Philadelphia and New 

 York in the first half of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. Besides John Bartram, who studied 

 and to some extent practised physic, the 

 founder on the banks of the SchuylkiU of 

 the first botanical garden in this country, 

 there is a long line of American medical 



botanists, as Clayton, Colden, Mitchell, 

 Garden, Kuhn, Wistar, Hosaek, Barton, 

 Baldwin, Bigelow, Torrey, the teacher 

 and collaborator of Asa Gray, himself a 

 graduate in medicine, Engelmann, whose 

 names are perpetuated in genera of plants, 

 and many others up to this day. Until the 

 coming of Agassiz, who trained many who 

 did not enter medicine (although among 

 his pupils were also not a few medical men, 

 including the Le Contes and A. S. Pack- 

 ard) , most of the zoologists were also physi- 

 cians, and Agassiz found already at work 

 in his field in Boston the physicians, Goidd, 

 Storer, Harris, and one worthy of a place 

 by his side, Jeffries Wyman. Of the de- 

 lightful naturalist type of physician there 

 have been many, such as Samuel Latham 

 Mitchell, John D. Godman, Jared Kirtland, 

 and above all a man who belongs to the 

 world's history of biological and paleon- 

 tologieal science, Joseph Leidy, whose 

 monument was recently dedicated in Phila- 

 delphia. Geologists will call to mind such 

 names as Gibbs, Newberry, John Lawrence 

 Smith, also a chemist and mineralogist, and 

 the Le Contes ; and ethnologists the names 

 of Samuel G. Morton, Daniel G. Brinton 

 and Edward H. Davis. How many of the 

 Arctic explorers from this country, as 

 Kane, Parry, Hayes, Schwatka, as well as 

 from England, have been physicians! 

 There have been many whose interest in sci- 

 ence was first awakened by the study of 

 medicine, but who were not graduated as 

 doctors, as Joseph Henry, Sears Cook 

 "Walker, Thomas Sterry Hunt and Spencer 

 P. Baird. Particularly interesting as in- 

 vestigators in physical science were mem- 

 bers of the medical families of the Drapers, 

 the Le Contes and the Rogers. This bare 

 mention of a few of the American medical 

 contributors to science, mostly of an earlier 

 period, will perhaps afford some indication 

 of the services of medicine to scientific de- 

 velopment in this country. 



