Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/316

 COXE S

He had a most attractive personality, a magnificent physique, and a figure that would attract attention anywhere.

As a lecturer, he was fluent, earnest, forcible. As a writer, brilliant, broad, witty and comprehensive. He was president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Louisville, and chief surgeon of the L. C. & L. Railway.

Dr. Cowling married Mary, daughter of Col. Samuel B. Churchill, who with three daughters survived him when he died suddenly at Louisville on April 2, 1SS1, from heart complication following acute rheumatism. W. O. R.

Am. Pract. Louisville, 18S2, xxv (D. W. Yandell).

Coxe, John Redman (1773-1863).

As a scholar and collector, as writer and chemist, John Redman Coxe, born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1773, is better re- membered than as a physician.

When a little boy he was educated under the care of his grandfather, Dr. Redman in Philadelphia. This relation had studied in Europe as a medical stu- dent and seems to have liked English methods best, for he sent his grandson to English schools and on to Edinburgh when sixteen to begin classical studies under a chosen teacher. There the surgeon with whom he boarded induced him to attend the hospital lectures.

In his autobiography he says: "After fifteen months in Edinburgh I returned to London in 17S9 and attended two courses of anatomy and chemistry at the London Hospital and in 1790 left Eng- land to more directly study medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush, and stayed with him until I obtained my degree in the University of Pennsylvania of doctor of medicine in 1794." During the yel- low fever in 1793 in Philadelphia so great was the number of patients that he fought the plague side by side with Dr. Rush and seldom saw fewer than thirty to fifty a day. For "his skill, fortitude, pa- tience and perseverance, and humanity " during that hard time. Dr. Rush gave him a "Commentary on Boerhaave. "

1 COXE

Redman seems to have had "travel fever" rather badly. In 1794 he went for another three years to London, Edin- burgh and Paris, and then returned to Philadelphia to act on the hospital staffs and attend the dispensary.

One thing done by Coxe did much to destroy ignorant prejudice against vac- cination. A warm enthusiastic advocate of it, he was the first to use it in Philadel- phia, and in 1S01 vaccinated himself and his baby son Edward Jenner, thus doing much to establish confidence in the new preventative. In 1S29 he succeeded in cultivating the true jalap plant, so that its real character and position might be determined.

The success of the " New York Medical Repository," then seven years old (1804), made Coxe think of publishing a quarter- ly, "The Medical Museum," with a sec- tion called the "Medical and Philosoph- ical Register."

It had a fine debut, for the best doc- tors contributed good papers and the "Museum" had a vigorous existence until 1811, paving the way for similar journals, while being itself the first uni- formly issued periodical in Philadelphia.

His biographers give Coxe place as unique among the medical men of Philadelphia and the founder of medical journalism, but it is said he was too much "under the influence of earlier systems and became the most notable illustrator of the conservative teaching of an older time, though this in no way affected the good he did as the inaugurator of med- ical journalism. "

Dr. Coxe died in Philadelphia, March 22, 1S63, at the advanced age of ninety.

He was professor of chemistry, Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, 1S09; professor of materia medica and pharmacy, 1819; editor of the "Medical Museum," "The American Dispensary," and a Medical Dictionary," 1808.

His writings included:

"Practical Observations on Vaccina- tion," Philadelphia, 1802. Late in life he issued an exposition of the works of Hippocrates, Philadelphia, 1846, and