Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell / by John W. Francis ; enlarged from Valentine's City manual.

  • Francis, John W. (John Wakefield), 1789-1861.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell / by John W. Francis ; enlarged from Valentine's City manual. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    As a physician of that renowned institution, the New York Hospital, he never omitted, when the op- portunity presented, to employ the results of his inves- tigations for clinical appliances. The simplicity of his prescriptions often provoked a smile on the part of his students, while he was acknowledged a sound physi- cian at the bedside. His anecdotical remarks on the- ories and systems at once declared that he was fully apprized of previous therapeutical means, from the deductions of Hippocrates and Pliny, Boerhaave and Hoffman, to the fanciful speculations of Brown and Darwin. He was filled with the precepts of the Saler- nian code. But his great forte was natural history. Here his expositions of that vast science, in its several ramifications, gave the best proofs of his capacious stores of bookish wisdom and personal knowledge. He may fairly be pronounced the pioneer investigator of geological science among us, preceding McClure by several years. He was early led to give his countenance to the solidity of the Wernerian theory, but had occa- sion to announce his belief, from subsequent investiga- tions in after life, that the Huttonian system was not wholly without facts deduced from certain phenomena in this country. His first course of lectures on natural history, including geology, mineralogy, zoology, ich- thyology, and botany, was delivered, in extenso, in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in 1811, before a gratified audience, who recognized in the professor a teacher of rare attainments and of singular tact in un- folding complex knowledge with analytic power. Few left the lectures without the conviction that an able expositor had enlisted their attention. He in fact was a great teacher in that faculty which included Hosack,