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  • Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse: A Life in Medicine and Public Service (1754-1846)
  • Andrea Rusnock, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Philip Cash . Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse: A Life in Medicine and Public Service (1754-1846). Sagamore Beach, Massachusetts, Boston Medical Library & Science History Publications, 2006. xii, 516 pp., illus. $56.

Benjamin Waterhouse is best known as the "Jenner of America" for his role in introducing and promoting smallpox vaccination in the early republic. During his long and productive life, Waterhouse taught medicine and natural history at Harvard, wrote extensively in the periodical press, and corresponded with leading politicians and natural philosophers. [End Page 540] Philip Cash's meticulously researched biography details the many aspects of Waterhouse's career and provides a rewarding glimpse into medical and scientific life around 1800.

Born in 1754 in Newport, RI, to English Quakers, Waterhouse began his education at a local Anglican school and then apprenticed with the Edinburgh-trained naval surgeon John Halliburton. At the age of twenty-one, Waterhouse traveled to Europe and studied medicine in Edinburgh, London, and Leyden. In London, he boarded with the Quaker John Fothergill and studied with George Fordyce and John Hunter; all three were leaders in the London medical community. In the eighteenth century, medical education in London was in private hands, so Fothergill sent Waterhouse to Leyden, where he received his M.D. in April 1780. While in Leyden he lived with John Adams' two sons, John Quincy and Charles. Waterhouse revealed his independent and feisty streak by signing the matriculation book as a "Citizen of the Free and Independent States of America." Holland had yet to recognize the newly independent government of the United States. Despite this display of patriotism, Cash emphasizes the fact that Waterhouse spent the Revolution abroad and suggests that this absence accounts for some of the hostility Waterhouse encountered when he returned to the United States.

In 1782, Waterhouse was appointed the first Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at the new medical school at Harvard College. Waterhouse would spend the rest of his long life (he lived until the age of ninety-two) in Cambridge and Boston. Waterhouse's appointment, much like the rest of his career at Harvard, was marked by contention and dispute. He was the only member of the medical faculty who did not have a degree from Harvard, an isolated and awkward situation that remained true until the mid-nineteenth century. While he enjoyed the support of the Harvard Corporation, the Boston medical community made it difficult for him to establish a private practice. To augment his income, Harvard created a lectureship in natural history for Waterhouse. For over twenty-five years, Waterhouse held these positions.

In March 1799, Waterhouse published a short notice of vaccination in Boston's local paper. After several unsuccessful attempts, Waterhouse finally secured active vaccine from England in July 1800 and vaccinated four of his children and two servants. After these preliminary trials, Waterhouse pioneered vaccination in New England and throughout the United States. He first sought to control the supply of vaccine to ensure its quality and increase his income, but charges of monopoly and the fact that medical men were able to get vaccine from other overseas' sources brought an end to Waterhouse's business venture. This episode tarnished his reputation, and John Blake's 1957 study Benjamin Waterhouse and the [End Page 541] Introduction of Vaccination: A Reappraisal (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press) argued that this incident accounts for the harsh treatment Waterhouse received from the Boston medical community. Cash presents a more balanced account, and while critical of Waterhouse's motives, Cash details Waterhouse's later efforts to distribute vaccine freely and to champion its adoption through publications in newspapers and pamphlets and through correspondence, especially with Thomas Jefferson. Waterhouse sent Jefferson vaccine that Jefferson used to vaccinate members of his family and more generally assisted Jefferson's efforts to establish vaccination in the southern United States.

Politics played a large part in Waterhouse's rocky career. The Boston medical establishment was overwhelmingly Federalist and viewed Waterhouse's collaboration with Jefferson suspiciously. After Jefferson became president, Waterhouse's positions at Harvard became increasingly tenuous. In 1809...

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