Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1125

BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE (1754-1846) Cautions to young persons concerning health. Printed at the University Press by W. Hilliard 1805 32 pp. 20.6 cm.

Waterhouse, first professor of medicine at Harvard and voted the "Jenner of America" by the London Medical Society, was a native of Newport, Rhode Island. He was apprenticed to a local physician at the age of sixteen and in 1775, on the last ship the British allowed to leave Boston, sailed for England to study medicine. While abroad Waterhouse studied with Fothergill (see No. 914 ff.), a relative of his mother's. He received the M.D. degree at Leiden in 1781 before returning to the United States the following year. Waterhouse helped found the Harvard Medical School where he taught for many years, introduced vaccination for smallpox into the United States. He became superintendent of the United States Marine Hospital at Charlestown later in his career. This was Waterhouse's most popular work, going through six editions, and being translated into several foreign languages. The complete title describes the date, place of delivery, and content of his address: Cautions to young persons concerning health, in a public lecture delivered at the close of the medical course in the chapel at Cambridge, Nov. 20, 1804; containing the general doctrine of chronic diseases; shewing the evil tendency of the use of tobacco upon young persons; more especially the pernicious effects of smoking cigarrs; with observations on the use of ardent and vinous spirits in general.

See Related Record(s): 914

Cited references: Austin 2005; Cushing W66

Gift of John Martin, M.D.