Benjamin Waterhouse was a physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 and professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 at Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

. He is most well known for being the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine

Smallpox vaccine

The smallpox vaccine was the first successful vaccine to be developed. The process of vaccination was discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796, who acted upon his observation that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox...

 in the United States, which he carried out on his own family.

Early life

Waterhouse was born into a Quaker family, although he never adopted the religion as his own. His parents were Timothy Waterhouse, a chair maker who also served on the Governor's Council, and Hannah Waterhouse. His medical career began at age 16, when he apprenticed for a doctor in his hometown. At age 21, he left the United States to study medicine in Europe at several notable institutions, such as with Dr. John Fothergill

John Fothergill (physician)

John Fothergill FRS was an English physician, plant collector, philanthropist and Quaker.- Life and work :...

 in London, England. He was also educated in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 and Leyden, where he received his medical degree. While living in Holland, he roomed with future U.S. president John Adams

John Adams

John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

.

Medical career

After returning to the United States in 1782, Waterhouse joined the faculty of the new medical school at Harvard as one of three professors, including John Warren

John Warren (surgeon)

John Warren was a Continental Army surgeon during the American Revolutionary War, founder of the Harvard Medical School and the younger brother of Joseph Warren.-Early life:...

 and Aaron Dexter, in the area of Theory and Practice of Physic. He was also elected that same year as a Fellow at Rhode Island College

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

 (now "Brown University"). In 1814, Waterhouse resigned his Harvard professorship after opposing a plan to establish the Medical School in Boston and attempting to found a rival medical school. He was a strong supporter of Samuel Thomson

Samuel Thomson

Samuel Thomson was a self-taught American herbalist and founder of the alternative system of medicine known as "Thomsonian Medicine", which enjoyed wide popularity in the United States during the 19th century.-Early life:...

's medical system throughout the 1820s.

Smallpox vaccine

Waterhouse first wrote to then-President John Adams

John Adams

John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

, his former roommate, hoping to spread the word about cowpox vaccinations preventing smallpox. When he found President Adams unresponsive, he wrote a letter to Vice President Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 entitled "A prospect of exterminating the smallpox."

Jefferson replied with a letter dated Christmas Day, 1800, and soon offered his support. Once Jefferson became President the following year, Waterhouse introduced Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner

Edward Anthony Jenner was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire...

's method of cowpox vaccination in the United States. He attempted to maintain a monopoly over the cowpox vaccine, for both financial reasons and to protect the vaccine from incompetent or fraudulent physicians. Waterhouse made the first vaccinations in the United States on four of his children. He commissioned a controlled experiment at the Boston Board of Health in which 19 vaccinated and 2 unvaccinated boys were exposed to the smallpox virus. The vaccinated boys demonstrated immunity and the 2 unvaccinated boys succumbed to the disease.

Personal life

In 1788, he married Elizabeth Oliver, with whom he had six children. She died in childbirth in 1815. In 1819, he married Louisa Lee; no children resulted from this marriage.

Death and Legacy

He died in his home in Cambridge in 1846, and was survived by his wife Louisa. He is interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain...

, where Louisa erected a small monument in his honor. He is the subject of a biography entitled Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse: A Life in Medicine and Public Service (1754—1846) by Philip Cash. His portrait hangs at the Harvard Medical School and his house on Waterhouse Street near Cambridge Common

Cambridge Common

Cambridge Common is a public park in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is located near Harvard Square and borders on several parts of Harvard University.-History:...

 bears a plaque commemorating his introduction of the smallpox vaccine in the United States.

Waterhouse's work with the smallpox vaccine was dramatized in a 1964 episode of the historical anthology series The Great Adventure

The Great Adventure (TV series)

The Great Adventure is a historical anthology series that appeared on CBS for the 1963-1964 television season. The series, hosted each week by Van Heflin, and featuring theme music by Richard Rodgers, presented each week a one-hour dramatization of the lives of famous Americans and important...

. He was portrayed by Robert Cummings

Robert Cummings

Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings , mostly known professionally as Robert Cummings but sometimes as Bob Cummings, was an American film and television actor....

.

Selected works

A Synopsis of a Course on the Theory and Practice of Medicine. In Four Parts (1786)

The Rise, Progress, and Present State of Medicine (1792)

A Prospect of Exterminating the Small Pox, Part I (1880), Part II (1802)

Cautions to Young Persons Concerning Health...Showing the Evil Tendency of the Use of Tobacco...with Observations on the Use of Ardent and Vinous Spirits (1805)

Information Respecting the Origin, Progress, and Efficacy of the Kine Pock Inoculation (1810)

The Botanist, Being the Botanical Part of a Course of Lectures on Natural History...Together with a Discourse on the Principles of Vitality (1811)

External links

• Biography
• Second biography
• History of Vaccines Website – Waterhouse Brings Vaccination to the States History of Vaccines, a project of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.