832 



SCIENCE. 



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



The first original separate medical work 

 in this country after the close of the Eevo- 

 lutionary war was the volume published in 

 New Haven in 1788, entitled, * Cases and 

 Observations by the Medical Society of New 

 Haven County in the State of Connecticut.' 

 This publication, which contains twenty- 

 six papers reporting cases of disease and 

 autopsies, is an event of importance in 

 American medical bibliography, not so much 

 on account of the intrinsic value of the com- 

 munications, although several are interest- 

 ing, but because, in evidence of the newly- 

 awakened medical life of the young republic, 

 there is collected here for the first time a 

 series of independent, original observations 

 and studies by different American physi- 

 cians. Nothing of the kind had appeared 

 before in this country. One-third of the 

 contributors to this volume are graduates of 

 Yale. 



Nine years later, in 1797, was started the 

 first American medical journal, The Medical 

 Repository, published in New York, and its 

 projector was the talented and scholarly 

 Elihu Hubbard Smith of the class of 1786, 

 with whom were associated Dr. Samuel L. 

 Mitchell and Dr. Edward Miller. Dr. 

 Smith, the father of American medical 

 journalism, died much lamented the follow- 

 ing year. Although so young, he was phy- 

 sician to the New York Hospital, the editor 

 of several works, and a contributor to liter- 

 ary periodicals as well as to his own journal, 

 in which his scholarly papers on the plague 

 of Athens and the plague of Syracuse can 

 still be read with pleasure and profit. The 

 establishment of The Medical , Repository, 

 which was continued until 1824, was of 

 great service in promulgating medical 

 knowledge and stimulating medical thought 

 and writing in this country at the close of 

 the eighteenth and in the early years of the 

 nineteenth centuries. 



The graduate of Yale, however, whose 

 published contributions in the eighteenth 



century are of the greatest permanent value 

 to medicine was not a physician, but was 

 that useful and versatile man, Noah Web- 

 ster, of the class of 1778. Noah Webster 

 is the first epidemiologist which this coun- 

 try has produced. In 1796 he published 

 ' A collection of papers on the subject of 

 bilious fevers, prevalent in the United 

 States for a few years past,' and in 1799 

 appeared in two volumes a work, well 

 known to all students of epidemiology, en- 

 titled, ' A brief history of epidemic and 

 pestilential diseases,' which is of unusual 

 interest, and on account of its records and 

 observations of epidemic diseases in this 

 country has an enduring value. There are 

 scattered papers by him on various medical 

 subjects, and one of these buried in The 

 Medical Repository (Second Hexade, Vol. 

 II.) should be rescued from forgetfulness. 

 In this critique of Erasmus Darwin's theory 

 of fever Noah Webster gives a well-rea- 

 soned, clear and definite presentation of 

 that modern theory, associated with 

 Traube's name, which explains febrile 

 elevation of temperature by the retention 

 of heat within the body. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



With the turning of the century Yale 

 College, under the guidance of the first 

 President Dwight, passed not only in name 

 but also in spirit from the eighteenth to the 

 nineteenth century. It was transformed 

 from a local to a national institution, and 

 it entered upon a new era of expansion in 

 which seeds were planted destined in the 

 natural course of development to grow into 

 the spreading tree of a university. The 

 first fruit of this new university idea was 

 the establishment of the Medical Depart- 

 ment, some account of which will now en- 

 gage our attention. 



The need at that time of a medical school 

 in this place is apparent from the fact 

 that only eight or nine graduates of the 



