Henry Austin Martin was the eldest son of Henry James Martin. He was born on July 23, 1824 in London. The Martins were descended from a distinguished Huguenot family, and his great-grandfather, Gen. James Agnew, was in command of the British troops in Boston at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Martin was also descended from the Earl of Eglinton, and was a cousin of Lord Kingsale.
Martin graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1845.
Immediately after graduation he settled in Roxbury, Massachussets, where he enjoyed a large practice for nearly forty years. Although primarily a physician, he was skilful both as an accoucheur and surgeon. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was made staff surgeon at Fort Monroe and was subsequently transferred to Southeastern Missouri. Here he became ill and was forced to return to Norfolk, Va. , where he served as medical director; later he was at Portsmouth in the same capacity, and finally at Newbern. Eventually he was appointed surgeon-in-chief of the 16t Division of the II Corps of the Army of the Potomac under General Miles. At the end of the war he was dismissed with the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel, with special citation for his services. He then returned to Roxbury, where he practised until his death. Martin's great service to American medicine arose from his energetic investigation of vaccination and the conditions essential for standardizing the procedure. After Jenner had convinced the world in 1798 that vaccinia (cowpox) gave permanent protection against smallpox, cases of spontaneous cowpox became rare, and many accidents had occurred through careless vaccination and the use of an attenuated humanized virus. On April 26, 1866, a spontaneous case of cowpox occurred at Beaugençy, a town near Orléans, France. The strain was transmitted to a heifer and a strong virus was in this way produced. The heifer-transmitted Beaugençy virus was brought to America by Martin in 1870, and in a memorable report on animal vaccination in the Transactions of the American Medical Association Martin introduced the modern method of vaccination and of standardization of the vaccine virus. He was bitterly attacked both in the profession and out, as is evidenced by the following: "I gave them every aid in my power freely, frankly, and fully, and was repaid by ingratitude, slander, and an effort, as futile as it was earnest and persistent, to rob me of the scrap of professional honor and reputation I had worked so hard to win and deserve, in introducing and firmly establishing in America a system which has already conferred infinite though hardly fully appreciated blessings". He died in Boston on December 7, 1884, of diabetes.
Though a finished writer, Martin liked controversy, and few were more skilful in literary invective. He was a handsome, well-formed man impatient, proud, quick to denounce, but loyal always to his friends. He collected books and works of art, and was widely read in the history of medicine.
In 1848 he had married Frances Coffin Crosby, a daughter of Judge Nathan Crosby of Lowell, Massachussets. They had five children, two of whom, Stephen Crosby and Francis Coffin, became physicians.
