Background
Abraham Chovet was born on May 25, 1704 in London, England, the son of David Chovet, a wine merchant of London.
( The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Medical theory and practice of the 1700s developed rapidly, as is evidenced by the extensive collection, which includes descriptions of diseases, their conditions, and treatments. Books on science and technology, agriculture, military technology, natural philosophy, even cookbooks, are all contained here. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ National Library of Medicine N026553 London : printed for the author, 1732. 26p. ; 4°
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Abraham Chovet was born on May 25, 1704 in London, England, the son of David Chovet, a wine merchant of London.
In 1720 Abraham was apprenticed for seven years to Peter Gougeux Lamarque, a foreign brother of the Company of the Barber-Surgeons of London, paying Lamarque one hundred and five pounds for the privilege. At the expiration of his apprenticeship he went to France, where he studied anatomy, having Winslow as one of his teachers.
In 1732 Chover started to give demonstrations of anatomy on wax models in London. At that time teachers of anatomy had the greatest difficulty in procuring subjects for dissection, the lack being supplied by means of wax models and other preparations. Chovet was particularly skilled in constructing such material. In 1734 Chovet became a foreign brother of the Company of the Barber-Surgeons of London, and in the same year he was chosen one of the Demonstrators of Anatomy at Surgeons’ Hall. The term “foreign brother” does not necessarily imply that its holder was a foreigner or alien, but that he was “a surgeon who practised within the jurisdiction of the Company of Barber-Surgeons of London and was not ‘free’ of the Company by patrimony, servitude or redemption. ” Sidney Young states that judging from his residence in Leicester Fields and his position in the Company, Chovet must have acquired some eminence. In 1736 Chovet resigned his position of Demonstrator of Anatomy, and as after 1740 his name no longer figures on the lists of the Company, Young thought he must have died. In reality he had only transferred his activities to other fields.
He next appeared in the Barbados, pursuing his anatomical labors with the same enthusiasm. Peachey found his name as a resident of Antigua in a list of subscribers to the Protestant schools in Ireland. In 1759 he was practising surgery at Kingston, Jamaica. Thence he fled with his wife and daughter to escape a threatened uprising of the locals and sometime before 1774 he settled in Philadelphia, as on October 12, 1774 he advertised a course on anatomy in that city. His advertisements all stress the fact that studying his preparations is unattended with the disagreeable smells and sights unavoidable in the dissecting room. Many laymen seem to have attended his demonstrations.
When John Adams arrived in Philadelphia as a delegate to the Congress of 1774 he was taken to see the anatomical paintings which Dr. Fothergill had presented to the Pennsylvania Hospital to be used by Dr. Shippen in his lectures on anatomy. The statesman was much impressed with what he termed their “exquisite art, ” but when a little later he saw Chovet’s wax preparations he writes, “This exhibition is more exquisite than that of Dr. Shippen at the Hospital. ” In 1793 after the death of Chovet, the managers of the hospital purchased his collection of preparations and wax models, which in 1824 they presented to the University of Pennsylvania, where it remained until utterly destroyed by fire in 1888.
( The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)
According to Marquis de Chastellux, who met Chovet in 1780, when the English were in Philadelphia, Chovet was a Whig, after they left he proclaimed himself a Tory.
From many contemporary pen portraits Chovet seems to have been an eccentric character. Chastellux terms him “a perfect original. ” John F. Watson says he was “licensed to say and do what he pleased, at which no one took umbrage, ” and that he was noted for possessing much sarcastic wit and for using expletives which were “neither useful nor ornamental”. He gives a pathetic picture of him as he appeared on the streets of the city in his old age. Coste, the chief medical officer of Rochambeau’s army, is quoted as speaking most highly of Chovet’s skill in anatomy and surgery. S. Weir Mitchell depicts him, quite unfairly, in one of the characters of his novel The Red City (1908).
