Samuel Henry Dickson was an American poet, physician, writer and educator born in Charleston

Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...

, South Carolina

South Carolina

South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...

.

Dickson graduated from Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

 and the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. He was one of the founders of the Medical College of South Carolina. He also taught at NYU and the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dickson was a popular published poet and a leader in Charleston intellectual circles. He was friends with Charleston poet William Gilmore Simms

William Gilmore Simms

William Gilmore Simms was a poet, novelist and historian from the American South. His writings achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced...

 and William Cullen Bryant

William Cullen Bryant

William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...

. He and his brother Dr. John Dickson played a significant role in the medical education of the US's first female doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female doctor in the United States and the first on the UK Medical Register...

. He was also active in organizing the first railway in the U.S. by helping bring the locomotive "the Best Friend of Charleston

Best Friend of Charleston

The Best Friend of Charleston was a steam-powered railroad locomotive. It is widely acclaimed as the first locomotive to be built entirely within the United States. It also produced the first locomotive boiler explosion in the US.- History :...

" into service. He died in Philadelphia in 1872.

Selected Works

• Hygiene : an introductory lecture (1848)
• On the progress of the Asiatic cholera during the year 1844-45-46-47-48 (1849)

Sources

• Bain, R. et al. (1980) Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary LSU Press ISBN 080710390X (Southern Writers on Google Books, p126)