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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 361. 



of clergyman and physician, not one, from 

 the foundation of the American colonies, 

 attained so high distinction as a physician 

 as Jared Eliot of the class of 1706, who 

 was the first graduate of Yale College 

 to enter upon the practice of medicine. 

 His name is preceded in the triennial cata- 

 log by that of Phineas Fiske of the class of 

 1704, who was eminent both as a divine and 

 as a physician, but whose shorter profes- 

 sional career did not begin until five or six 

 years after that of Eliot. 



The name of Jared Eliot is a worthy one 

 to lead the long line of over 2,300 physicians 

 who have received their liberal or profes- 

 sional education at Yale College. The 

 grandson of the Rev. John Eliot, the 

 Apostle to the Indians, he spent his long, 

 twofold professional life of fifty-four years 

 in the town of Killingworth (now Clinton) 

 in this State, where he succeeded in the 

 ministerial office his teacher, Abraham 

 Pierson, the first rector of this College. Of 

 fine bodily presence and engaging person- 

 ality, for many years an influential trustee 

 of Yale College, the library fund of which 

 was started through his bequest, the friend 

 and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin, 

 Bishop (then Dean) Berkeley and other 

 learned men, a fellow, it is said, of the 

 Royal Society and recipient of a gold medal 

 from the London Society of Arts, accounted 

 in his day an excellent botanist, chemist 

 and practical and scientific agriculturist, 

 Eliot, as is stated by Dr. James Thacher in 

 his American Medical Biography (1828), 

 ' was unquestionably the first physician 

 of his day in Connecticut,' and in chronic 

 complaints " he appears to have been more 

 extensively consulted than any other phy- 

 sician in New England, frequently visiting 

 every county of Connecticut, and being 

 often called in Boston and Newport." It 

 is also said of him that " for forty succes- 

 sive years he never omitted preaching either 

 at home or abroad on the Lord's day." 



With evidences of such manifold activity 

 one is prepared to accept the statement in 

 his funeral sermon : " Perhaps no man slept 

 so little in his day, and did so much in so 

 great variety." 



It is customary to speak of Jared Eliot 

 as ' the father of regular medical practice 

 in Connecticut,' and when one considers 

 the number of physicians who were trained 

 under him, and that among these were such 

 leaders of the profession and successful 

 teachers of medicine as his son-in-law and 

 successor in practice, Benjamin Gale (Yale, 

 1733), and Dr. Jared Potter (Yale, 1760), 

 the title seems justly conferred. 



Among other clergymen noted. in their 

 day as medical practitioners may be men- 

 tioned Eliot's classmate, Jonathan Dickin- 

 son, the first president of Princeton College, 

 whose paper published in 1740, entitled, 

 ' Observations on that terrible disease, vul- 

 garly called the throat distemper,' is the 

 first medical publication by a graduate of 

 Yale College, and the third on diphtheria 

 by an American ; Benjamin Doolittle, Yale, 

 1716, Northfield, Mass., 'well skilled in 

 two important arts,' according to his epi- 

 taph ; Timothy Collins, of the class of 1718, 

 traditions of whose practice are still current 

 in Litchfield County ; Isaac Browne, of the 

 class of 1729, an early member of the New 

 Jersey Medical Society, the first State So- 

 ciety organized in this country ; Moses 

 Bartlett, 1730, the pupil and son-in-law of 

 Phineas Fiske, described on his monument 

 as ' a sound and faithful divine, a Physician 

 of Soul and Body,' and the father of a son 

 of the same name, graduated in 1763, who 

 was one of the last of the clerical physicians ; 

 Dr. John Darbe, of the class of 1748, who 

 received the honorary degree of M.D. from 

 Dartmouth in 1782, and is the first graduate 

 of Yale College to become doctor of medi- 

 cine ; and Manasseh Cutler (Yale, 1765), 

 skilled in medicine as well as in many 

 other arts. 



