Background
Adam Kuhn was born on November 17, 1741 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Adam Simon Kuhn and his wife, Anna Maria Sabina Schrack.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Adam Kuhn was born on November 17, 1741 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Adam Simon Kuhn and his wife, Anna Maria Sabina Schrack.
Under his father young Kuhn began his first studies in medicine. In the autumn of 1761 he set out for Sweden and continued his medical studies at the University of Upsala, where he fell under the tutelage of Linnaeus in botany. A picture of his life there has been preserved by a fellow-pupil, Johann Christian Fabricius, who writes of the enjoyment derived from the lectures and confidential friendship of the great Swedish botanist: "In summer we followed him into the country. We were three, Kuhn, Zoega and I, all foreigners. In winter we lived directly facing his house, and he came to us every day". After his course at Upsala, Kuhn went to London in 1764, studying there for a time, and then going to the University of Edinburgh where he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1767.
During his stay in England Kuhn came under the notice of John Ellis, English botanist and correspondent of Linnaeus. The latter, in a Latin letter to Ellis in 1765, pronounced Kuhn "one of the most worthy and industrious young men I ever knew".
Returning to the Province of Pennsylvania, Kuhn became, in January 1768, professor of materia medica and botany in the College of Philadelphia. There he fell under the appraising eye of Dr. Charles Caldwell.
He was made physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital, and in 1786 consulting physician to the Philadelphia Dispensary; he was chosen professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the University of the State of Pennsylvania in 1789; and on the union of the medical schools of the College and the University, he was appointed professor of the practice of physics. This chair he held from 1792 to 1797.
Kuhn did nothing to advance the science of botany, though a virgin vegetation lay at his doors. He did, however, carry with him a new plant of North America in a living state to Linnaeus. It represented a new genus and the Swedish botanist named it Kuhnia. Through Kuhnia eupatorioides, a widely distributed species of the family Compositae, all field students of the eastern United States recall his name.
At the age of seventy-three he gave up medical practice, and three years later died in Philadelphia, after a brief illness without pain.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Kuhn was a member of the American Philosophical Society.
"He was, by far, the most highly and minutely furnished specimen of old-school medical production . His hair of which nature had furnished him with an exuberant abundance, his hairdresser so arranged as to give it the resemblance of a fashionable wig, well pomatumed, stifly curled, and richly powdered. His breeches were black, his longskirted waistcoat white or buff, and his coat snuff-colored. In his hand he carried a goldheaded cane and a gold snuff-box, and his knee and shoe buckles were of the same metal. .. . He entered the sick-room at a given time, spent a given number of minutes and never suffered deviation to be made from his directions".
With his foibles and his pomposity, a good deal of a precisian and thus arousing antagonisms and resentments, he was nevertheless strong in sense and discreet in judgment. Lacking powers of imagination, he had a capacity for accurate observation. In addition he possessed the homely virtues of punctuality, faithfulness, and diligence.
When he was thirty-nine years of age Kuhn married Elizabeth (Hartman) Markhoe, widow of Francis Markhoe and daughter of Isaac Hartman, of St. Croix. By her "he had two sons, respectable characters. "
