Nathaniel Walker Appleton was born on June 14, 1755 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Nathaniel Appleton, a Boston merchant, and Mary (Walker) Appleton.
He chose as his preceptor--for these were the days before the beginnings of medical schools in New England--his father's cousin, the celebrated centenarian, Edward Augustus Holyoke.
He received his A. B. from Harvard in 1773 and his A. M. in 1774, after which he moved to Salem, Massachussets, to become a student of medicine.
Though a diffident man of an impersonal frame of mind, Appleton appears to have acquired a large practise, but his reputation has come down to us chiefly through his activities in the early Massachusetts Medical Society (founded in 1781).
He did for this early medical society much what Henry Oldenburg had done for the Royal Society of London in its early days. He aroused interest in the meetings, kept copious notes of the proceedings, and often recorded the outside activities of the members of its council. In many instances our only information concerning the early members of the Society is derived from Appleton's carefully penned minutes and records.
He was also chairman of the committee which in 1790 brought out the first volume of Medical Communications, the official channel of publication for the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society--a journal which continued to be issued regularly for 124 years. As far as is known, Appleton's professional contributions were only two in number, published in the Medical Communications. The first was entitled, "An Account of the Successful Treatment of Paralysis of the Lower Limbs, Occasioned by a Curvature of the Spine"; the second, "History of H'morrhage from a Rupture of the Inside of the Left Labium Pudendi. "
Appleton was an incorporator of the Massachusetts Medical Society and its recording secretary for the first ten years of its existence; he attended every meeting of the society and council during that time, writing and signing a record for every one, through all those years fostering the infant organization.
He was said to be a most amiable man but too diffident to display his real worth and abilities, which were far above mediocrity.
Quotes from others about the person
James Thacher: "When we consider that he was an incorporator of the Massachusetts Medical Society and its recording secretary for the first ten years of its existence; that he attended every meeting of the society and council during that time, writing and signing a record for every one, through all those years fostering the infant organization, Appleton deserves to have the meager facts of his life transmitted to future generations. "
On May 24, 1780 Appleton married Sarah Greenleaf, by whom he had seven children.
