Jefferson as a vacccinator / by Henry A. Martin.

  • Henry A. Martin
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Jefferson as a vacccinator / by Henry A. Martin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    not the place to give even a sketch oi the shameful history of the persecutions of Boylston and Waterho.ise. Tf life is spared to the writer, with somewhat ampler leisure, that history, so far as it relates to Benjamin Waterhonsc, shall be written, for of him no his house, Improving the opportunities of his immense practice, and of his dally, hourly Instruction ,and counsel. Afterwards he studied for a year or more at Edinburgh (then the second medical school) and subsequently, for a full term of study at Leyden (without question tJie leading school of the time) where he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He was the life-long friend and correspondent of Lettsom, Fothergill, Hunter, Jenner, and, Indeed, of all the leaders of English medicine. So great was his acknowledged merit that, no sooner had he settled down in a large practlceat Newport, (his native place) than he was;invited by the government of Massachusetts and of Harvard University to ac- cept the Professorship of Theory and Practice In the medical school of Harvard, of which Dr. John Warren (Anatomy and Surgery) and Aaron Dexter (Chemistry) constituted, with W., the entire Faculty. He was the author of the very earliest literary medical productions in Massachusetts which have the slightest claim to consideration and remembrance. Of his works I will mention the volume and several pamphlets and a very large number of letters and papers, some of them long and elaborate, and all of them very well written, on vaccination ; a very care- fully and practically written volume on JPertussis, forgotten and excessively rare^ but well worth consideration and study even now. A large octavo volume on the authorship of Junius, his most ambitious literary labor, in which Lord Chatham is held to be the man behind the mask. The mention of these worksi however, gives but a partial aud imperfect notion of his literary activity or of its results, which are to be found scattered among the various secular and medical journals of his time. Results produced, let it be remembered because such men as he vnisl work, must strive for the good and improvement of humanity and their profession, not bscause ho had any of those auspicious stimuli of success, popularity, applause and wcr Th which excite and reward an author. It would be hard to im- agine an atmosphere more chilling and p.aralyzing, a sky more leaden, forbidding, even threatening than surrounded and hung over the whole literary life of Water- house, from the first day that he j'ielded to the :;litteriug bait of a professorship and the honor of being a founder of the first medical school of New lingland. When one looks lor some reasons for the bitter animosity- of the Boston profession to W. dur- ing his long life after his removal to that Modern Athens, and the remarkable paucity of all biographical mementoes following his decease, they are quite readilj' and sufficiently found in the fact that he was, by natural capacity, as well ns by education, supe-■ ■ to any man in the coterie that opposed and persecuted him. That is an o:f • ise which mediocrity cannot forgive. (2d). That he was a man not to submit tame.y to \ rong nor to bend the knee to the Baal of popularity. (3d). That he was the vey v-sentativc of Jenner in America, chosen by that great bene- factor for that great work, ajiplaudcd by hir.i while it was being done and thanked and perfectly approved when it was finished. The authorities of the ISIassachusetta Medical Society had -i pet representative of vaccination of their own selection. It did not suit them at all that no one recognized or thought of him in that capacity except themselves. '.' iieir pet was a disciple of Pearson and Woodville, Waterhouse first, last and always a faithful follower of Jenner. (Jth.) He disapproved, and re- peatedly, with no uncertain sound, expressed his disapproval of the practice of his time, a practice which, for certain local reasons, reached a degree In Boston and the regions Influencedb;'- that professional centre.not paralleled elsewhere,a practice suf- ficiently defined by a famous sajing of one of Waterhouse's most prominent Boston
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