Nathan Smith was an American surgeon, physician, and professor of theory practice of physic and of surgery.
Background
Nathan was born on September 30, 1762 at Rehoboth, Massachussets, United States, the son of John Smith by his second wife, Elizabeth (Ide) Hills, widow of Benjamin Hills. The Smith family had lived at Rehoboth for four generations, Henry Smith, the great-great-grandfather of Nathan, having come to the colonies from England in 1638. Shortly after Nathan's birth the family moved to Chester, Vermount, where the boy helped his father farm.
Education
Smith received meager education in Chester, Vermount. He had a year's preparation with the Rev. Dr. Whiting of Rockingham, and three years as pupil, assistant, and apprentice to Dr. Josiah Goodhue. Soon realizing the inadequacy of his training, he spent the year 1789-90 at the institute of medicine at Harvard College, under John Warren, Benjamin Waterhouse, and Aaron Dexter. At the termination of the year 1790, having presented a dissertation on "The Circulation of the Blood, " he received the degree of bachelor of medicine.
In 1801 Dartmouth conferred upon Smith the degree of M. D. , rarely given in those days, and in 1811 he received that degree from Harvard College.
Career
He served in the militia towards the end of the Revolutionary War.
While still a youth he was called upon to help Dr. Josiah Goodhue at an operation. The experience, it is said, made such an impression upon him that he determined to be a surgeon. He began to practise in 1787 at Cornish. Though Smith's practice grew, he was not entirely content. He gave some private instruction, one of his pupils being Lyman Spalding, but wished to teach more extensively.
Dartmouth College was not far from Cornish, and he became imbued with the idea that he might himself teach students medicine and surgery at this institution. With a directness which characterized many of his actions, he applied to the trustees, asking their approval and support "of a plan he had devised to establish a Professorship of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in connection with Dartmouth College". His plan in general was approved by President John Wheelock, but final action by the trustees was postponed for one year. Undaunted by this delay, he proceeded to fit himself for the post which he fully intended to occupy and spent a year abroad in study, traveling at considerable financial sacrifice, during the winter of 1796-97, to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. In the autumn of 1797 he returned with books for the library at Dartmouth and apparatus for anatomy, surgery, and chemistry.
At the age of thirty-five, he delivered a course of lectures on medicine at the College, although it was not until August 1798 that the trustees formally approved his plan and elected him professor. Among his students was George C. Shattuck of Boston, with whom he formed an intimacy that lasted through his entire life.
He traveled from Worcester, Massachussets, to Brattleboro, Vermount, and from Concord, Massachussets, to Wethersfield, Connecticut, couching for cataract with great success; performing operations for necrosis of bone; attending children with "spotted fever, " a disease which ravaged the Connecticut Valley in 1811; and caring for patients with "Typhus Fever. " He practised vaccination shortly after Waterhouse first introduced it into the United States in July 1800.
He went to state medical meetings and was elected president of the Vermont State Medical Society in 1811. He engaged Dr. Alexander Ramsay to give a course in anatomy in 1808. He visited the legislature repeatedly in efforts to obtain funds for the medical school, and was so far successful as to obtain a grant of $600 for chemical apparatus in 1803, and, after much perseverance, $3, 450 for a medical building, for which he himself donated the land. He became exasperated at the slowness of the legislature to act, at its lack of support, and at proposed laws which, if passed, would restrict dissections and thus materially hamper the teaching of anatomy. He wrote to Shattuck in May 1810 of his discouragement and, finally, of his determination to leave Hanover.
The previous year Jonathan Knight, 1789-1864, a tutor at Yale, had received a letter from Timothy L. Gridley, who was then a student under Smith, in which the writer pointed out the desirability of appointing Smith to the professorship of surgery in the proposed institute of medicine at Yale. In the result he was appointed to the position. But Smith was unable to leave Dartmouth until the autumn of 1813 and his resignation was not actually accepted until 1814. He was reelected professor there in 1816 and, though he declined, he gave a final course of lectures at Dartmouth that year, so that it was not until 1817 that he permanently removed with his family to New Haven. Smith went to Yale at the age of fifty-one with wide clinical experience.
It was largely through his personal efforts that the Connecticut legislature in 1814 appropriated $20, 000 to the institute for the purchase of land, the erection of a new building, and the development of a botanical garden. In addition to his teaching, he practised medicine and surgery throughout the state and in the neighboring parts of New England. In 1821 he performed successfully ovariotomy, unaware of the fact that Ephraim McDowell of Kentucky had previously done that particular form of operation for the first time in the United States.
In 1821 he assisted President Allen of Bowdoin College in the organization of a medical department, where he delivered a course of lectures each summer until 1826. He also lectured during the summer months at the medical department of the University of Vermont in Burlington. For succeeding generations the importance of his work is to be found in the fresh and original manner in which he attacked problems in medicine and surgery. His writings attest the fact that he had a conception of disease which is eminently modern. His Practical Essay on Typhous Fever (1824) is a classic. Typhoid fever, for it is that disease which he describes, had never before been so clearly defined or so accurately depicted. His "Observations on the Pathology and Treatment of Necrosis" is of almost equal importance.
From 1824 to 1826, with his son Nathan Ryno and others, Smith edited the American Medical Review. Smith died January 26, 1829 at New Haven, Connecticut.
It is said, that his religious beliefs were unorthodox.
Views
Smith emphasized experience rather than theory, and he largely eschewed bleeding and purging, favoring support of the body's own healing powers and attentiveness to the patient's comfort.
Quotations:
"However we may class diseases we must study them in detail. This mode of proceeding tends to substitute idleness for industry and dogmatism for patient inquiry".
Personality
He was vigorous, energetic. He was a gentleman, dignified in his mien, with keen penetrating eyes and a sensitive mouth.
Quotes from others about the person
Dr. William H. Welch said of Smith: "Famous in his day and generation, he is still more famous today, for he was far ahead of his times, and his reputation, unlike that of so many medical worthies of the past, has steadily increased, as the medical profession has slowly caught up with him. We now see that he did more for the general advancement of medical and surgical practice than any of his predecessors or contemporaries in this country. He was a man of high intellectual and moral qualities, of great originality and untiring energy, an accurate and keen observer, unfettered by traditions and theories, fearless, and above all blessed with an uncommon fund of plain common sense".
President Woolsey of Yale: "He was the most delightful, unselfish and kind-hearted man I ever knew, and we children all loved him".
Connections
He married, January 16, 1791, Elizabeth, daughter of Gen. Jonathan Chase of Cornish; two years later she died without issue, and in September 1794 he married her half-sister, Sarah Hall Chase. He had four sons and six daughters; all his sons became practitioners of medicine.