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Medicine in American Art |
1 Department of Radiology, Mount Auburn Hospital, 49 Baskin Rd., Lexington, MA 02421.
Received December 21, 2005; accepted after revision January 5, 2006.
Address correspondence to S. C. Schatzki
(sschatz{at}massmed.org).
Keywords: art • Harvard Medical School • Waterhouse, Benjamin
Benjamin Waterhouse, one of the most interesting early American physicians, was born on March 4, 1754 in Newport, RI. He attended a local parish school and became a friend of Gilbert Stuart, who would later become America's most important portrait painter of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the age of 15, Waterhouse began to study medicine with a local surgeon. A wealthy Newport merchant, Abraham Redwood, admired Waterhouse and introduced him to John Fothergill, a leading figure in the London, England, medical community. Waterhouse went to England in 1775, first studying at the University of Edinburgh and then in London hospitals. During his time in London, he worked closely with Dr. Fothergill, through whom he met many of Europe's leading physicians and scientists. In 1778, Waterhouse went to the University of Leiden to study medicine and lived in the home of John Adams, then the American minister to The Netherlands. He received his M.D. from Leiden in 1882.
On his return to America, Waterhouse briefly practiced in Newport. At the time, Harvard's new medical school was searching for its first professor of medicine. No other physician in the United States could match Waterhouse's medical and scientific credentials and, despite opposition from John Hancock and Samuel Adams, questions about his loyalty to the new republic, and concerns that he was not a graduate of Harvard, he was installed as Harvard's first Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic—a position that continues today—in October 1783. To augment his income, Waterhouse developed a course in natural history, which he taught at Harvard from 1789 to 1809 and at Brown University. He played an important role in the development of the mineralogical and botanical collections at Harvard by soliciting, collecting, and cataloging specimens.
In 1799, Waterhouse received a copy of Edward Jenner's An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of Variolae Vaccinae, which maintained that vaccination with cowpox was a safe and effective way to prevent smallpox. In July 1800, he received the first effective cowpox vaccine in the United States, with which he vaccinated several members of his family. Over the next several years, he became the most powerful advocate of vaccination in America, answering questions about the vaccine in numerous publications. At first Waterhouse attempted to maintain a monopoly over the vaccine's use in New England, which he indicated was to prevent it from falling into incompetent hands. However, others believed he had mercenary motives, and this, plus his superior manner, alienated him from most of the Boston medical community. President Thomas Jefferson supported his work and arranged to have the vaccine used in the Mid-Atlantic and southern states, and the London Medical Society hailed him as the "Jenner of America." However, in 1812, Waterhouse was dismissed from his professorship at Harvard because of his severe incompatibility with the rest of the medical faculty. Between 1813 and 1821, Waterhouse served as the medical superintendent of several military facilities in New England. After 1821, his life was primarily devoted to writing and supporting vaccination.
Stuart's portrait of Waterhouse was painted when the artist was only 19 and remained in the sitter's possession, later being given by his widow to the Redwood Library. Benjamin Waterhouse, who had received an honorary M.D. degree from Harvard in 1789, died in Cambridge, MA, on October 2, 1846. Although he was a controversial figure during his lifetime, his contributions to vaccination are an important chapter in the history of public health in the United States.
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