AnAi?gusrt jmm* }      Teachers  of  Chemistry  in  America.  359 
in  the  earlier  volumes  of  the  Medical  Repository,  New  York,  one 
of  the  earliest  of  the  regular  medical  publications,  founded  and 
edited  by  Samuel  L.  Mitchill  (1 797-1826). 
From  a  pharmaceutical  point  of  view  the  career  of  Dr.  Mitchill 
is  particularly  interesting.  He  was  practically  the  author  of  the 
Pharmacopoeia  of  the  New  York  Hospital,  published  in  18 16,  and 
was  subsequently  elected  a  delegate  of  the  Medical  Society  of  the 
State  of  New  York  to  the  district  convention  for  the  Middle  States, 
which  met  in  Philadelphia  on  the  first  day  of  June,  18 19.  There  he 
was  elected  vice-president  and  appointed  one  of  the  delegates  to  the 
general  convention  that  was  to  meet  in  Washington  on  the  first  day 
of  January,  1820.  As  is  well  known,  the  general  convention  met  in 
the  Capitol  at  Washington,  on  the  appointed  date,  to  consider  the 
feasibility  and  advisability  of  issuing  a  National  Pharmacopoeia. 
Dr.  Samuel  L.  Mitchill  was  elected  president,  and  as  such  deserves 
considerable  of  the  credit  for  the  successful  inauguration  of  a  national 
standard  or  Pharmacopoeia. 
In  his  controversy  with  Priestley,  Mitchill  was  ably  seconded  by 
John  MacLean,  a  native  of  Scotland,  and  a  former  pupil  of  Black  and 
of  Hope.  Dr.  MacLean  was  probably  the  first  in  this  country  to  be 
elected  to  a  chair  of  chemistry  in  a  purely  academical  school.  He 
was  elected  professor  of  chemistry  at  Nassau  Hall,  Princeton,  in 
1795.  Dr.  MacLean  continued  to  teach  at  Princeton  until  some  time 
after  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  he  accepted  a 
similar  position  at  William  and  Mary,  in  Virginia.  The  third  op- 
ponent of  Priestley  was  Dr.  James  Woodhouse,  Priestley's  successor 
as  professor  of  chemistry  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  Dr. 
Woodhouse  was  born  in  Philadelphia,  November  17,  1 770.  He  was 
elected  professor  of  chemistry  in  1795,  and  was  probably  the  first 
in  America  to  devote  his  time  exclusively  to  the  study  and  teach- 
ing of  chemical  science.  Philadelphia  about  this  time  was  the 
most  populous  and  the  most  progressive  city  in  the  country.  It 
was  also  considered  the  centre  of  medical  as  well  as  scientific  knowl- 
edge, and  attracted  students  from  all  sections  of  the  United  States. 
An  excellent  descriptive  picture  of  Philadelphia,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  may  be  found  in  the  memoirs  of  Benjamin 
Silliman,  who,  after  his  election  as  professor  of  chemistry  at  Yale, 
came  to  Philadelphia  to  absorb  the  rudiments  of  that  science  from 
Dr.  Woodhouse.    From  these  memoirs  it  would  appear  that  the 
