Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1096

NAME SMITH 1074 SMITH mont, where John Smith was a pioneer, and Nathan aided his father in the common duties of farm life. As a boy he was fond of fishing and hunting and other outdoor sports. This environment gave him courage and self- rehance in the midst of dangers from wild animals, and hostile Indians, at whose hands he once narrowly escaped death. He be- longed to the State militia on the Canadian frontier, and distinguished for bravery, was promoted to a captaincy. From this origin there arose "one of the most interesting and important figures in American medicine" (Welch). As a boy he was hungry for all knowledge. With but indifferent opportunities he became a teacher in the local rural school. During this period Dr. Josiah Goodhue (q. v.). of Putney, Vermont, visited the neighborhood to amputate a leg and Nathan acted as volunteer assistant. He then and there expressed a desire to study medicine, but Dr. Goodhue advised a prepara- tion at least sufficient to enter the freshman class at Harvard College. The Rev. Whiting of Rockingham, Vermont, became his tutor in 1783, and in 1784 he presented himself to Dr. Goodhue as a private medical student; here he remained for three years, and during this time a strong and loyal friendship sprang up between teacher and pupil. Nathan Smith, now twenty-five years old, began to practise medicine in 1787 in Cornish, New Hampshire, without a medical degree, but in accord with the common custom of admitting a student after three years of private tuition with a regular physician ; the diploma might come later from one of the three medical colleges then in existence. He attended several courses of lectures at the Harvard Medical School, and received his degree of Bachelor of Medi- cine in the class of 1790, the fifth student to graduate from the medical school in the third class; the degree of M. D. was con- ferred in 1811, as well as upon all who had graduated in medicine previous to that date. On graduation he presented a thesis on the circulation of the blood which was published by request of the medical faculty. He then returned to Cornish, New Hampshire to renew the practice interrupted to secure the M. B. degree. In 1791 he married Elizabeth Chase, who died childless in 1793. In 1794 he married her half-sister, and in 1795 a son v:-as born named David Solon Chase Hall Smith; all these names are family names except Solon taken from Ossian. The name of his second son, Nathan Ryno, was also inspired by Ossian. During his practice in Cornish he became impressed with the meagre facilities offered young men seeking a medical education, as well as with the scarcity of men fit for pro- fessional responsibilities. He therefore sought to fit himself to undertake the great task of reconstructing medical education in the United States and to this high aim he really devoted his whole life's best energies. The first step towards the establishment of a school for medical education was taken in 1796 in con- nection with Dartmouth College at Hanover, New Hampshire, not far from his Cornish home ; the plan was postponed by vote for one year. At this time the three medical schools in America were the University of Pennsyl- vania (1765), the Medical School of Kings, College (Columbia University) (1767), and Harvard Medical School (1782). Smith, undaunted by the delay of the Dartmouth faculty, continued to prepare himself by sailing on the bark Hope for Glasgow, where he remained a short time, and then went to Edinburgh, where he studied for three months attending lectures on anatomy and surgery by Munro and chemistry by Black. He then visited the London celebri- ties and returned to America in the fall of 1797. Soon after his return he received a diploma from the medical society of London, with a notice of his election as correspond- ing member. In the Autumn of 1797 he delivered his first course of medical lectures at Dartmouth; in August, 1798, the trustees established a medical department, with Nathan Smith as professor, lecturing on anatomy, surgery, chemistry and physics. The degree of A. M. was conferred by the Faculty of Dartmouth in 1798, and in 1801 that of Hon. M. D. Thus began the fourth medical col- lege in the United States, and Nathan Smith, as Abraham Flexner remarks, "was its en- tire Faculty and a very able Faculty at that." The success of the medical school at Dart- mouth is shown by a statement by Dr. Hub- bard who said that between the years 1798 and 1828 Harvard graduated two hundred and thirty students, while Dartmouth gradu- ated three hundred and forty. In the year 1812 Yale College voted to establish a med- ical school and invited Nathan Smith to become professor of the theory and prac- tice of physic, surgery, and obstetrics, but he was unable to leave Hanover to accept this new professorship until the autumn of 1813, being detained by a severe epidemic of typhus. He was now associated with the founding of the sixth medical college in the