Existing comment:
David Hosack, 1769-1835
David Hosack was a New York physician renowned for his pioneering surgical techniques and successful clinical practice in treating yellow fever and typhus. During the terrible yellow fever epidemics of 1795-99, Hosack rejected the extreme purges and strong medicines advocated by most doctors, prescribing instead mild baths, nursing care, and plenty of liquids. This might not have cured his patients -- there was no cure until the end of the nineteenth century -- but it didn't kill them either, as did many treatments of the time. Hosack was a man of wide interests: collector of minerals, founder of the Elgin Botanical Garden and the New York Historical Society, and incorporator of the American Academy of Fine Arts. He attended the dying Alexander Hamilton after his duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.
Hosack holds a book by Hermann Boerhaave, an essential reference work for doctors; other volumes on the table are by physicians William Cullen, Thomas Sydenham, and Hippocrates.
Thomas Sully, 1815 |