Poet, essayist, chemist, geologist, educator, entrepreneur, publisher--Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864) was one of the virtuosi of the Early Republic and a founder of the American scientific community. This absorbing biography is not only a study of the youth and early career of a complex and remarkable man but also a window on his times. In lively and often moving detail, Chandos Michael Brown opens the broad context of Silliman's life in his native Connecticut. From Silliman's father's disastrous captivity among the British during the Revolution to the intensities of New England religious revivals, from the international celebrity of the Weston Meteor to the economic hazards of introducing artificial mineral waters to the New York market, here is an engaging portrayal of the growth of an American scientist within his rich cultural setting. Brown tells how the young Silliman confronted the declining fortunes of his distinguished family and how he strove to invent a new career worthy of his ambition and social standing. He describes Silliman's education at Yale College and in Philadelphia, his European tour, and his subsequent activities as a professor of chemistry and mineralogy, founder of the Yale Medical School, and editor of the American Journal of Science. Throughout this cultural biography, Silliman appears as the concerned member of an often troubled family--a man who nonetheless managed to achieve that elusive quality, greatly admired by his contemporaries, that of the representative American. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the first full-scale biography of Nathan Smith -- medical pioneer, founder of Dartmouth Medical School and cofounder of three other medical schools (Yale, Vermont, and Bowdoin), and progenitor of a long line of physicians. Smith was a central figure in early American medical education, from 1787 when he began practicing in New Hampshire, to his death in New Haven in 1829. In his day, Smith was probably the nation's leading physician, surgeon, and medical educator, and well ahead of his time in insisting that doctors practice "watchful waiting" and emphasizing patient-centered care. In the process of telling Smith's life and story, authors Hayward and Putnam fill out in new ways the picture of medical treatment and medical education in post-Colonial America. The tale of Smith's remarkable career unfolds in New England, where the authors create a sense of time and place through an exhaustive study of primary and secondary sources, and especially Smith's own letters and lecture notes taken by his students. Readers become immersed in Smith's life and the spirit of the times as they examine early Victorian notions of disease, how medical students were taught (the chapter on body snatching is especially lively), the politics and economics of founding professional medical schools in early America, and other topics. The book provides a vivid description of what it was like to study and practice medicine, and be the recipient of the ministrations of physicians, during this critical period.