Benjamin Waterhouse

author

Benjamin Waterhouse

1754–1846

A pioneering American physician, he helped introduce smallpox vaccination to the United States and was one of the early medical professors at Harvard. His life links the young republic with a turning point in public health.

1 Audiobook

A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre of American prisoners.

A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre of American prisoners.

by Benjamin Waterhouse

About the author

Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Benjamin Waterhouse studied medicine in Europe before returning to the United States in the 1780s. He became one of Harvard's first medical professors, teaching the theory and practice of physic at a time when organized medical education in America was still taking shape.

Waterhouse is best remembered for bringing smallpox vaccination into early American medicine. After learning of Edward Jenner's work, he promoted vaccination in the United States and carried out some of the country's earliest efforts to spread it, helping move medicine away from the older and riskier practice of inoculation.

He was also known as a strong-minded and sometimes controversial figure, admired for his energy and learning but not always easy in public or professional life. Even so, his role in the early history of vaccination made him an important part of both American medical education and public health.