Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, M.D / C.F. Folsom.

  • Folsom, C. F.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, M.D / C.F. Folsom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fellow, straightforward, impulsive, pugnacious, ardent — although not an ardent scholar — sensitive and popular, always to be depended upon. After taking the degree of A.B. at Harvard in 1828, and later the A.M., he graduated at the medical school in 1832, having also been house-officer at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Bowditch spent two years in Europe studying for the most part with Andral, Chomel and especially Louis, whom he fondly called his master. It was still the day of dogmatism and pedantry and system-making, but Louis, one of the first of the iconoclasts, was teaching the close study of nature and the careful observation, faithful records and accurate analysis of facts as the true basis of med¬ ical knowledge and practice. Dr. Bowditch came back to Boston full of enthusiasm for Louis's methods, where, indeed, he found Dr. Jacob Bigelow, his senior by twenty-one years, already a pioneer in the new field. While waiting for practice he devoted much time to benevolent work and took great pleasure in helping those who needed encouragement or assistance, especially the younginterests which he kept up to the last. Having by chance been an eye-witness of the famous Garrison mob in 1835, his quick s}^mpathy and intelligent foresight led him to devote his “ whole heart to the abolition of slavery.” u But,” he adds in his diary, “ even anti-slavery never has taken me away from constant labor for the elevation of medicine.” When he became an abolitionist, church, State, the constitution andJaws of the country, old friendships, social ties were all against him. He was mocked, sneered at, passed on the street without recognition by his father’s old friends ; but his courage never faltered,