William Edmund Aughinbaugh

Born in 1870, William Edmund Aughinbaugh built an unusually varied career as a physician, lawyer, author, and journalist. Archival records at the New York Public Library describe him as a widely traveled expert on foreign trade and note that he served as the Foreign and Export editor of the New York Commercial.

Sources from the New York Academy of Medicine and library catalogs show that he wrote across several subjects, including medical adventure and international business. His memoir I Swear by Apollo: A Life of Medical Adventure reflects the restless, firsthand spirit that seems to have shaped much of his writing, while later works on Latin America drew on his experience as a traveler and observer of trade.

Aughinbaugh died in 1940. What stands out most about him is the range of his life: he moved between medicine, law, journalism, and authorship with unusual ease, and his books preserve the voice of a man who seems to have treated the world itself as a field of study.