JACOB BIGELOW 121 



ing scientists of the world. He was of New 

 England ancestry, his people coming over about 

 1640 and settling in Watertown, Massachusetts. 

 Jacob Bigelow, father, was a Congregational 

 minister, who married a daughter of Gershom 

 Flagg. 



The son was born February 27, 1787, his child- 

 hood being passed in the country at farm work, 

 with scanty schooling. Painfully his father man- 

 aged to send him to Harvard, where he graduated 

 in 1806, and in 1808 attended the medical lectures 

 there as a pupil under Dr. John Gorham and 

 taught in the Boston Latin School. Then he went 

 to the University of Pennsylvania to attend the 

 lectures of Rush, Wistar, Barton and Coxe and 

 to receive the doctor's degree ( 1810) . 



He was a private pupil under Benjamin Smith 

 Barton, and so had his botanical knowledge con- 

 siderably augmented. Some years previously, 

 Ward Nicholas Boylston had instituted a prize 

 for the best dissertation on a medical subject, and 

 student Jacob says : 



" So great was my diffidence at the thought of 

 presuming at a mark far beyond my reach, that 

 I concealed my purpose from every one and 

 wrote a long essay on Cyanche Maligna, in win- 

 ter time, in a cold chamber, being obliged to wear 

 a glove on my right hand to preserve the flexi- 

 bility of my fingers." At last, when it was fin- 



