Find A ProjectSign Up To TranscribeSign In
EN
DeutschEnglishEspañolFrançaisPortuguês

Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846. Place book of Benjamin Waterhouse, circa 1790-1803 (inclusive). H MS b16.4, Countway Library of Medicine.

ReadAboutContentsHelp

Contains autobiographical information and copies of correspondence written by Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846) from the 1790s to the early 1800s. Passages include notes on Waterhouse’s tenure as Professor of Natural History at Harvard, and notes on botany, in addition to correspondence regarding smallpox vaccination. The final page of writing includes a quotation from Waterhouse, of which there is a typed transcription tipped into the volume: "I consider myself the father of natural history in general, and mineralogy and botany in particular in Harvard College. If I was not who was?"

Biographical Notes

Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846) was the first Hersey Professor of Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard Medical School. He introduced vaccination against smallpox using cowpox matter in the United States in 1800. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was the head physician at the United States Marine Hospital in Charlestown, Massachusetts from 1807 to 1809. 1775, Waterhouse traveled to Europe, where under the guidance of his mother's cousin, physician John Fothergill, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, studying medicine with professors such as William Cullen, and then at the University of Leyden in the Netherlands, from which he earned an M.D. in 1780. While attending Leyden, Waterhouse stayed in the home of John Adams, then American minister to the Netherlands. After returning to the United States, he became the first professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (1782) and was one of the three original members of the Harvard Medical School faculty, alongside John Warren (1753-1815) and Aaron Dexter (1750-1829). In addition to his position as professor of medicine, Waterhouse was a lecturer in natural history from 1788 until 1809, when his course was abolished by Harvard.

Pages

(seq. 11)
Complete

(seq. 11)

there were upwards of forty, an in the tenth, sixty six.

Once in the day of small things greater difficulty & perplexity yt I ever before experienced I sunk under the discouragement, and resigned my professorship, but it was not received. Had it not been for the encouragement of Dr. Wigglesworth, the venerable Professor of Divinity, to whose exertions we owe principally our Medical School, I should never have resumed the task. "Persevere, said he and you will find a new ardor. Pursue your plan of Natural History in connections with Medicine, Botany especially, which will not fail of raising up friends and supporters. On this subject, I will venture, said he, to prophecy." When this worthy man died, I lost the most valuable of my collegiate friends, whether considered as a most judicious adviser, or as a cordial supporter of my scientific views and exertions.

The expences of every kind, which

Last edit almost 3 years ago by blackletterkate
(seq. 12)
Complete

(seq. 12)

I endured the first seven or eight years in thus attempting to lay the foundation of a future structure for Natural History in this University, being no longer oppressive, I can now look back with some satisfaction on the ground I have passed over. Allow me then, as I have occassionally mentioned the matter, to give you a sketch of the manner, in which I arranged the subjects I aimed to teach.

First conceive to your self a number of young persons, between the age of 17 & 20, and who excepting the lectures on mechanical, or experimental Philosophy and Astronomy, had confined their views to languages, logic, civil and church history. Although our library contained twelve or thirteen thousand volumes, there were but very few books in Natural History, and those were seldom, or never read.

Last edit almost 3 years ago by blackletterkate
(seq. 13)
Complete

(seq. 13)

We had no Encyclopedia, nor any English Book on Botany, or Mineralogy, but Hill and Decosta. We had Buffon, Reaumur and Goldsmith, but I could find scarcely a person acquainted with their contents. As to Linnaeus and Bonnet, they did not appear ever to have been perused. I had then to excite curiosity for this kind of study, and then to gratify it. To induce such young persons voluntarily to attend such lectures, when their time was pretty well taken up by the stated exercises, which the laws of this University compelled them to fulfill, required some address.

I found it necessary to cloth my subject at times in the drapery of allegory, to represent it figuratively, and often to treat it superficially. Thus.

I began by saying that Philosophy, in the most extensive sense of the word,

Last edit almost 3 years ago by blackletterkate
(seq. 14)
Complete

(seq. 14)

has three objects; 1st. God; 2d. man, and 3d. nature; also three rays; for that God strikes the human intellect by a refracted ray, from the inequality of the medium between us and him. 2d. man as exhibited to himself by a reflected ray; but that Nature strikes the human intellect by a direct ray. Again, that the sciences were like pyramids, erected upon the single basis of Natural History and experience; that the history of nature was the basis of natural Philosophy; that the first stratum, or stage from the basis was Physics; and that next the vertex was Metaphysics, but for the vertex itself, the manner in which the Deity has operated from the beginning, or the work, "which God worked from the beginning to the end, the summary of the law of nature, that that was higher than the

Last edit almost 3 years ago by blackletterkate
(seq. 15)
Complete

(seq. 15)

the human eye could reach.† Again, that the science of nature had three degrees; that the first fixes our attention to the out side merely, teaching us to collect external characters, in order to enable us to distinguish various natural bodies, and that this was Natural History. That if 2dly, we penetrated deeper, and examined the general qualities of matter, it was that, which was commonly called Natural Philosophy, or Physics; but that, 3dly, if we penetrate the most intimate part, and examine the material elements, their mixtures and proportions to one another, it was then Chemistry.‡ The recapitulation of this doctrine was, that Natural History taught us the elementary rudiments, the alphabet of the great book of nature; that Physics taught us the spelling, or putting these elements toge-------------------------------------- †See Lord Bacon on the outlines. ‡vid. Bergman

Last edit almost 3 years ago by blackletterkate
Displaying pages 11 - 15 of 62 in total