Improve, Perfect and Perpetuate: Dr.Nathan Smith and Early American Medical Education - Hardcover

Hayward, Oliver S.; Putnam, Constance E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0874518601 ISBN 13: 9780874518603

Publisher: Dartmouth College Press, 1998

Synopsis

This is the first full-scale biography of Nathan Smith - medical pioneer, founder of Dartmouth Medical School and cofounder of three other medical schools (Yale, Vermont, and Bowdoin), and progenitor of a long line of physicians. Smith was a central figure in early American medical education from 1787, when he began practicing in New Hampshire, to his death in New Haven in 1829. Readers become immersed in Smith's life and the spirit of the times as they examine early Victorian notions of disease, how medical students were taught (the chapter on body snatching is especially lively), the politics and economics of founding professional medical schools in early America, and other topics. The book provides a vivid description of what it was like to study and practice medicine, and be the recipient of the ministrations of physicians, during this critical period.

About this title

About the Author:

The late Oliver S. Hayward, M.D. graduated from Dartmouth and Harvard medical schools, interned at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, and practiced medicine for most of his life. He compiled his years of research on Smith into a rough draft, which has been fashioned into the present book by Constance E. Putnam, a writer who specializes in the fields of history of medicine and medical ethics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0874518601
• ISBN 13: 9780874518603
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432