Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/57

APPLETON the day, but was chiefly remarkable as a pioneer; the only physician in the community for a long time, and he left so many pleasant memories. Instead of acting the dictator, as the only physician, he persevered gently toward his aims and in the care of his patients. He ended his career May 5, 1849, aged seventy-six, just worn out with old age, revered and well thought of by his fellow physicians.



Appleton, Nathaniel Walker (1755–1795)

James Thacher, who lived during the lifetime of Nathaniel Walker Appleton, has this to say of him: "He was a most amiable man but too diffident to display his real worth and abilities, which were far above mediocrity." When we consider that he was an incorporator of the Massachusetts Medical Society and its recording secretary for the first ten years of its existence; that he attended every meeting of the society and council during that time, writing and signing a record for every one, through all those years fostering the infant organization, Appleton deserves to have the meagre facts of his life transmitted to future generations.

The son of Nathaniel Appleton of the Harvard class of 1749, a Boston merchant and member of the "Committee of Correspondence," Nathaniel was born in Boston, June 14, 1755. His mother was Mary Walker; his grandfather, Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Appleton, of the Harvard class of 1712 and minister of the "Church in Cambridge" from 1717 until his death in 1784. Nathaniel was graduated A.B. from Harvard in 1773, then he wrote interesting letters to his classmate, Eliphalet Pearson, the first preceptor of Phillips Andover Academy, later profesorprofessor [sic] of Hebrew at Harvard and a member of its Corporation, on one occasion acting president. Appleton's letters show accurracyaccuracy [sic] and attention to minutiae that are so characteristic of the records of the medical society that have been preserved for us intact; they manifested a considerable skill in the art of writing, were filled with affection for his friend and evinced a spirit of patriotism, describing as they did the incidents of the Revolution in and about Boston. Of a modest and impersonal frame of mind Appleton wrote too little of himself, from the biographer's point of view.

Until the fall of 1774 he lived in Cambridge, taking an A.M. at Harvard; then he moved to Salem where he studied medicine, as was the custom of the day before the beginnings of medical schools in the East, living and working with his father's cousin the centenarian, (q.v.), he who trained thirty-five practitioners in the art of medicine and was the first president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Finishing his novitiate Dr. Appleton settled in practice in Boston and married Sarah Greenleaf, May 24, 1780. They had seven children, four of them dying in childhood and the other three living to the ages of 68, 69 and 70 years.

We do not know whether Dr. Holyoke inspired his pupil with the enthusiasm for organizing and nourishing the state medical society, the first in the United States to have a continuous existence. Holyoke was president from 1782 to 1784, and again from 1786 to 1787. The other presidents during Appleton's secretaryship were Cotton Tufts, who although living in Weymouth, twelve miles away, was most punctilious in his attention to the duties of his office, and William Kneeland of Cambridge, who attended few meetings during his two years in office. A careful study of the records would lead to the belief that the society could not have existed without the fostering care of Appleton and Tufts.

According to contemporary accounts Dr. Appleton had a good practice. "The Boston Directory" of 1789, the first year such a book was published, gives the doctor's residence as, "South Latin-School Street, near the Stone-Chappel," that is to say, he lived in the present School Street, near King's Chapel. In this year Appleton became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and he was serving as chairman of the committee of the Massachusetts Medical Society that brought out the first volume of the "Medical Communications" in 1790, a publication that was to continue in yearly numbers until 1914, one hundred and twenty-four years. He served also on a committee of the society on education that drafted the qualifications of candidates for a license to practise, in conformity with the act of the Legislature having reference to the society, passed in 1789.

It would appear that his health was not good, for in a letter to his friend Pearson, dated March 23, 1782, he says that he was sending a messenger with his letter "being somewhat unwell myself and not daring to be out in the evening air," and again in 1784, "at present I am confined with a bad cold." In 1788 he asked leave to resign as secretary but