The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Cogswell, Mason Fitch

COGSWELL, Mason Fitch, American physician: b. Canterbury, Conn., 28 Sept. 1761; d. Hartford, Conn., 10 Dec. 1830. He was adopted by Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress and governor of Connecticut, and was graduated valedictorian at Yale 1780. He studied medicine with his brother James, at the soldiers' hospital in New York during the Revolution, and eventually became one of the best known surgeons in the country. He was the first in the United States to remove a cataract from the eye, and to tie the carotid artery (1803). Mainly through his influence the first asylum for deaf-mutes was founded in this country at Hartford, and his daughter Alice was its first pupil. He was also a founder of the Retreat for the Insane in the same city.