of observation, to see that everything was in order; and at the sight of such a morning, the gladness of their hearts was visibly expressed by a pleasant aspect upon their countenance,"

Transit street gets its name from that day's work. The observatory extemporized for the occasion stood near the line of that street, a little east of Benefit street.

The Revolutionary War turned men's hearts and minds into a very different direction, interrupted the teaching of the young college at Providence, and scattered the parishioners of Dr. Stiles. Soon after its close, a new era of instruction begins, ushered in by a native of Rhode Island, whom in his advanced years I have seen and heard. This was DR. BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE. I shall speak of him at somewhat greater length than would belong to a perfectly symmetrical treatment of my subject.

He

Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse was the son of Judge Timothy Waterhouse of Newport, and was born in Newport, March 4, 1754, with a birthright in the Society of Friends. He began his medical studies under Drs. Hunter and Haliburton. was a companion of Gilbert Stuart, who was a year or two younger. The two practised drawing together from the life, hiring a "strong-muscled blacksmith" as a model. At the age

of just twenty-one, when the Revolutionary War was about breaking out, young Waterhouse sailed for England, (March, 1775,) to be under the guidance and instruction of Dr. John Fothergill of London, who was his maternal relative, and a most admirable man and truly beloved physician, and an honored member of the Society of Friends. In London, he renewed his intimacy with Gilbert Stuart, and kept up his practice of drawing. "I was often to him," writes Waterhouse, "what Rembrandt's mother was to that wonderful Dutchman, an object at hand on which to exercise a ready pencil." Stu

art's portrait of Waterhouse in Redwood library, was probably painted at this time.

Dr. Fothergill took a deep interest in political affairs, was intimately acquainted with Dr Franklin, and sympathized with the colonies in the great struggle. "Who can wonder," wrote Waterhouse at a later date, "that Medicine and Politics were mixed together in a young, ardent and anxious brain, far distant from his suffering country?"

state.

Fothergill, in addition to the cares of a large practice, cultivated the sciences of chemistry and botany, and had an extensive garden at Upton, near London, for which he imported great numbers of plants from distant continents. Waterhouse was also acquainted with William Curtis, who for many years kept a botanic garden in different parts of the west of London, parts long since swallowed up in the growth of that enormous metropolis. This garden was a place of fashionable and even royal resort. In his company, young Waterhouse collected and studied plants growing in regions then rural in the outskirts of London. He thus laid the foundation of knowledge afterward to be made useful in the chief seat of learning in his native He used to jog round with Dr. Fothergill on his medical visits. He continued his studies at the more famous schools of Edinburgh and Leyden. The ample collections which still attract and detain the traveller of scientific tastes in those old university towns helped to give the young American student his inclination to the pursuit of anatomy, zoology and botany. At Leyden, he inscribed himself on the books of the university as "Liberae Reipublicae Americanae Foederatae civis." The British Ambassador in Holland objected to this, as the Revolution was not yet (1778) completed and acknowledged; and Waterhouse afterward styled himself simply Americanus. In vacations he travelled extensively on the continent of Europe. Dr. Fothergill was so well acquainted with the charms of Newport as to advise Waterhouse to make that his permanent home, believing that it would always be the resort of invalids from the less healthy south. He also recommended him to. make a

description of Rhode Island the subject of his dissertation at graduating; "but," writes Waterhouse, "my knowledge was then too scanty." Fothergill died December 26, 1780; and Dr. Franklin wrote Waterhouse, from Paris, a letter of condolence on the loss of one whom he styles "the worthiest of men." He took his medical degree at the University of Leyden. He returned to his native land by way of the West Indies. On his passage from Havana to Philadelphia, he was taken and carried into New York by a British vessel-of-war; his property was soon restored to him; the General Assembly gave him leave to bring goods from New York to Rhode Island; and he reached his home in Newport early in the year 1782. He had been absent seven years, and was no doubt one of the most accomplished young men in his profession in New England.

In the autumn of that year, he was elected a Fellow of Rhode Island College, (now Brown University.) In 1783, he and Rev. Dr. Stillman, with President Manning, were appointed to solicit aid for the college from His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVI. of France, with the view of establishing a professorship of French language, literature and history. Their memorial, addressed to the king, was very skilfully written; it dwells on the friendly alliance between the two nations, and the desire of cultivating a knowledge of French history and character, without being dependent on English authorities. But the French government, about that time, had enough to occupy it at home. In 1784, he was appointed professor of natural history in the same institution. This was the earliest professorship established in any New England college under this or any equivalent title; and his lectures were, as he claimed, "the first in this new world on Natural History in general, and Mineralogy and Botany in particular." They were begun in 1785, and continued till 1791. He began these labors without salary. Under the title "Heads of a course of lectures," a broad side, of which there are copies both in our own library and in that of Brown University, shows what was the scope of his instruction. It indicates more study of books than

of nature at first hand, and more disposition to wander over a sea of varied suggestions than to the condensed and systematic statement of facts and principles..

In 1783, the Medical School of Harvard University was founded at Cambridge, with at first two Professors, Dr. John Warren of anatomy and surgery, and Dr. Waterhouse of the theory and practice of medicine. The following year, Dr. Aaron Dexter was added, in the department of chemistry and materia medica. The compensation of instruction was at first entirely dependent on fees from students, and the whole department was based, in the words of President Quincy, "on the uncertain grounds of hope and expectation." Dr. Waterhouse soon became a resident of Cambridge, where he lived for more than sixty years. His inaugural address on beginning his professorship was in Latin. He published it in 1829, with a preface in which he betrays a sense of ill appreciated merit. His inaugural "fixes the era of an historical fact not to be found in the records of the University."

"That the origin of the second school of medicine in America should have been publicly celebrated, before the highest civil authorities of the Commonwealth,--clerical and literary bodies, with a festive entertainment, and by illuminations of all the college-buildings, and yet no record be made of the installation, must surprise all those unacquainted with the remissness of times past.'

In 1812, he was succeeded by the late Dr. James Jackson. He thought himself a much injured man, when this change was made, and I think it quite possible that the many admirable and winning qualities of Dr. Jackson, the respect and love with which his name was cherished by three generations, may have led to an inadequate estimate of his predecessor in this chair.

Dr. Waterhouse traced his own medical lineage to the illustrious Professor of Leyden, Boerhaave, whose influence long dominated that school and the memory of whose strong personality still broods over its museums and hospitals and gardens. He died forty years before Waterhouse was there. Boerhaave belongs in some respects rather to the middle than

the modern age. He deduced medical doctrines from mechanical and chemical premises or postulates. His reasoning was deductive, rather than inductive. But with all his mediaval theorising he united the sagacity and insight of the true physician. Probably, as in the common anecdote of a judge more wise than learned, his decisions were surer than his logic. I fear that Waterhouse inherited the erudition rather than the sagacity, and was more learned than practical. But, if this was generally true of him, one illustrious exception has made his name famous, and entitles him to grateful remembrance.

From his youth, he had been interested in measures for the prevention of small-pox. He communicated an account of laws and regulations for that purpose in America, to Dr. Haygarth of London, and his letter on the subject was printed in London in 1782.

The closing years of the last century were marked by one of the most signal events in the history of medicine. In 1798, Dr. Edward Jenner published his "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the Variolae Vaccinae or Cow-pox," which introduced vaccination to the English world. This book reached Dr. Waterhouse at the beginning of the year 1799, through his London correspondent, Dr. Lettsom. He appears to have immediately foreseen its importance, and he published a communication in a Boston newspaper, the Columbian Centinel, dated March 12, 1799, and entitled, "SOMETHING CURIOUS IN THE MEDICAL LINE," the first public notice of the subject in this country. He made diligent inquiry of other English physicians and wrote another newspaper article about it in November, 1799. On the eighth of July, 1800, having received the material from England, he performed the first vaccination in America, on his own son, five years old. Late in 1800, he issued a pamphlet on the subject, by which it appears that he had already vaccinated fifty or sixty persons, of whom three were his own children. He published a longer tract in 1802. By that time, he could report several cases where persons previously vaccinated were inoculated with small-pox material, and the disease did not