The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent].

  • Josiah Charles Trent
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    JOSIAH CHARLES TRENT* On the seventh of March, 1775, Benjamin Waterhouse, then a young man of twenty-one, boarded the ship Thomas in the harbor of New¬ port, Rhode Island, the last ship to have left the blockaded port of Boston. Having served an apprenticeship in medicine under Dr. John Halliburton of Newport, Waterhouse was on his way to complete his professional training abroad. He was leaving behind him a country on the verge of armed rebellion against its king. Six years later, in the course of his long homeward journey, he was to hear that Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown.1 Throughout the Revolution, in which Waterhouse, Quaker bred, could have taken no active part even had he stayed at home he pursued his medical studies in London, Edinburgh, and Leyden, taking his doctor’s degree at the latter university on the nineteenth of April, 1780. He returned to Newport in June, 1782, to take his place as one of the most learned citizens of the new republic, and also one of its most opinion¬ ated citizens, one must add. During the formative years abroad, particularly those spent in London, Waterhouse experienced much that contributed to his development. The friends and acquaintances he made there influenced him greatly and pro¬ foundly affected his later attitudes and opinions. Examination of his Lon¬ don years, therefore, may give us a better understanding of what motivated his actions on his return to America. Obviously, in this brief study, we can concern ourselves only with the more general phases of his life in London and must leave the details of his medical education for future analysis. When Waterhouse arrived in London, in April, 1775, he was cordially received by his mother’s cousin, the learned and philanthropic physician, John Fothergill,2 Warmly interested in the American colonies and con¬ cerned for their welfare, Dr. Fothergill favored all measures aiming to- * Department of Thoracic Surgery, Uni¬ versity of Michigan Hospital. 1 Letter from Waterhouse to Jared Sparks, Cambridge, April 30, 1838; original in Harvard College Library. * In the preface to his Essay on Junius and His Letters (Boston, Gray and Bowen, 1831), Waterhouse gives a brief autobiographical sketch, from which many of the above state¬ ments are drawn. See also the extensive quo¬ tations from a manuscript memoir by Water- house, in William Dunlap, History and Prog¬ ress of the Arts of Design in the United States (New York, George P. Scott and Co., 1834, I, 162 ff.).
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