William Brenton Hall
Encyclopedia
William Brenton Hall was an 18th-century physician
in Connecticut
, United States
.
, William Brenton Hall was the eldest son of Brenton Hall, a prosperous farmer, and Lament Collins, daughter of Captain Jonathan and Agnes (Linn) Collins of Wallingford. Brenton Hall was son of Rev. Samuel Hall of Cheshire
(Yale, 1716). Described by Ezra Stiles
as the wealthiest minister in Connecticut, the Rev. Hall owned extensive properties in central Connecticut, as well as land inherited from his mother's prominent Rhode Island
family, the Brentons.
Hall was extraordinarily well-connected. His uncle, Jonathan Law
(Harvard 1695), served as Governor (1741–1750) and Chief Justice of Connecticut (1724–1741). His great-grandfather, served on the Governor's Council. His cousin, Lyman Hall
, would serve as Governor of Georgia and would be signer of the Declaration of Independence
. His uncle Elihu Hall (Yale 1731) was King's Attorney for the Colony. The land-rich Halls and their kin were pillars of the Old Light faction of Congregationalists that opposed the Great Awakening
and the ascendant commercial interests associated with it.
William Brenton Hall attended local schools and was prepared for Yale
by the Rev. Enoch Huntington of Middletown
. He entered the college in 1782. On graduating in 1786, he went to Philadelphia to attend medical lectures at Pennsylvania Hospital
, then completed his training with Dr. Jared Potter of Wallingford (Yale 1760). He set up practice in Middletown, then the largest city in the state and one of its most prosperous seaports.
In 1796, Dr. Hall married Mehetable Parsons, daughter of Revolutionary hero, Major General Samuel Holden Parsons
(Harvard 1756), who had died while serving as Chief Justice of the Northwest Territory
. The marriage brought him substantial land holdings in Ohio
, as well as a host of distinguished relatives, including brothers-in-law, Stephen Titus Hosmer, who would become Chief Justice of the State of Connecticut, Enoch Parsons, who would head the Middletown branch of the Bank of the United States, and Samuel Holden Parsons, who would long serve as High Sheriff of Middlesex County
.
Better prepared than most of his apprenticeship-trained contemporaries, Hall quickly became one of the leading physicians in the state. He pioneered obstetrics, guided by the detailed illustrated manuals, published in Edinburgh
, that he brought back from his studies in Philadelphia. He was particularly concerned with epidemic disease, repeatedly petitioning town authorities in Wallingford and Middletown for permission to establish a "pock house" for inoculating against small pox.
Hall's anti-federalist political inclinations may have helped him to develop a relationship with Boston physician Benjamin Waterhouse
, a correspondent of British physician Edward Jenner
, discoverer of vaccination
. Jenner sent samples of cowpox
matter to Waterhouse, some of which may have been passed on to Hall, who appears to have been the first physician in Connecticut to practice vaccination.
In 1796, Hall played a heroic role during a yellow fever
epidemic at Knowles Landing, south of Middletown on the Connecticut River
. When all the village's established physicians had fled, Hall stayed on to care for the sick and bury the dead. His exploits were reported in Miner & Tully's Essays on Fevers (1823), a pioneering study of epidemic disease.
Hall played a leading role in organizing the Connecticut Medical Society and served as its treasurer from 1799 until his death a decade later. He was noted as an educator of physicians and often had as many as six apprentices residing with him in his spacious house on Middletown's Main Street (William Brenton Hall Account Book, 1807–1809).
As Federalists struggled to take control of the Medical Society in 1807, Hall and his Jeffersonian friends, who were officers of the society, became the object of a vicious satirical poem by physician and wit, Mason Fitch Cogswell
:
Next see arise and puff across the stage,
The learned puppet of this learned age.
This pious child in Middletown appears,
With tongue much more supplied, than brains, or ears. . . .
With him, to make young Doctors rules are vain,
"Blair's Lectures" only, make the business plain,
With these in hand, he turns them out as fast
As tramping tinkers pewter buttons cast.
Strange, very strange, that in one soul we find
Such great and numerous offices combined;
Surgeon, Demagogue, Preceptor, Preacher,
Dentist, Physician, Midwife, Rhetoric-teacher,
Moral Philosopher, Schoolmaster, all
Unite & harmonize in Doctor Hall.
was an occupational disease for physicians in this era. Hall, known to be a heavy drinker, began to fail in the spring of 1809. Attempting to visit a patient in June 1809, he fell from his horse and died of his injuries on June 29, aged 45. He left a widow and two young sons, William Brenton and Samuel Holden Parsons. He is buried in the Liberty Street Cemetery in Middletown.
Had Hall followed his Yale classmate, fellow physician Elihu Hubbard Smith, to New York
-- where political and religious heterodoxy was tolerated --, he might have had a more distinguished career. Smith, who also studied medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital, established himself in New York, where he founded America's first medical journal, the Medical Repository.
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...
in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Biography
Born in Wallingford, ConnecticutWallingford, Connecticut
Wallingford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 43,026 at the 2000 census.- History :Wallingford was established on October 10, 1667, when the Connecticut General Assembly authorized the "making of a village on the east river" to 38 planters and freemen...
, William Brenton Hall was the eldest son of Brenton Hall, a prosperous farmer, and Lament Collins, daughter of Captain Jonathan and Agnes (Linn) Collins of Wallingford. Brenton Hall was son of Rev. Samuel Hall of Cheshire
Cheshire, Connecticut
Cheshire is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 28,543 at the 2000 census. The center of population of Connecticut is located in Cheshire. In 2009 Cheshire was ranked 72 in Money Magazine's 100 Best Places to Live.Likewise, in 2011 Cheshire was ranked 73 in...
(Yale, 1716). Described by Ezra Stiles
Ezra Stiles
Ezra Stiles was an American academic and educator, a Congregationalist minister, theologian and author. He was president of Yale College .-Early life:...
as the wealthiest minister in Connecticut, the Rev. Hall owned extensive properties in central Connecticut, as well as land inherited from his mother's prominent Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
family, the Brentons.
Hall was extraordinarily well-connected. His uncle, Jonathan Law
Jonathan Law
Jonathan Law was the 27th Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, serving in that office from 1741 until 1750. His term followed that of Joseph Talcott, governor from 1724 until 1741, and preceded that of Roger Wolcott, governor from 1750 until 1754.Law was born in Milford in what was then...
(Harvard 1695), served as Governor (1741–1750) and Chief Justice of Connecticut (1724–1741). His great-grandfather, served on the Governor's Council. His cousin, Lyman Hall
Lyman Hall
Lyman Hall , physician, clergyman, and statesman, was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Georgia. Hall County is named after him.-Early life and family:...
, would serve as Governor of Georgia and would be signer of the Declaration of Independence
United States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
. His uncle Elihu Hall (Yale 1731) was King's Attorney for the Colony. The land-rich Halls and their kin were pillars of the Old Light faction of Congregationalists that opposed the Great Awakening
Great Awakening
The term Great Awakening is used to refer to a period of religious revival in American religious history. Historians and theologians identify three or four waves of increased religious enthusiasm occurring between the early 18th century and the late 19th century...
and the ascendant commercial interests associated with it.
William Brenton Hall attended local schools and was prepared for 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...
by the Rev. Enoch Huntington of Middletown
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...
. He entered the college in 1782. On graduating in 1786, he went to Philadelphia to attend medical lectures at Pennsylvania Hospital
Pennsylvania Hospital
Pennsylvania Hospital is a hospital in Center City, Philadelphia, affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Health System . Founded on May 11, 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond, it was the first hospital in the United States...
, then completed his training with Dr. Jared Potter of Wallingford (Yale 1760). He set up practice in Middletown, then the largest city in the state and one of its most prosperous seaports.
In 1796, Dr. Hall married Mehetable Parsons, daughter of Revolutionary hero, Major General Samuel Holden Parsons
Samuel Holden Parsons
Samuel Holden Parsons was an American lawyer, jurist, and military leader.Parsons was born in Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Jonathan Parsons and Phoebe Parsons...
(Harvard 1756), who had died while serving as Chief Justice of the Northwest Territory
Northwest Territory
The Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Northwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 13, 1787, until March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio...
. The marriage brought him substantial land holdings in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, as well as a host of distinguished relatives, including brothers-in-law, Stephen Titus Hosmer, who would become Chief Justice of the State of Connecticut, Enoch Parsons, who would head the Middletown branch of the Bank of the United States, and Samuel Holden Parsons, who would long serve as High Sheriff of Middlesex County
Middlesex County, Connecticut
Middlesex County is a county located in the south central part of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was created in 1785 from portions of Hartford and New London counties. As of 2010, the population was 165,676....
.
Better prepared than most of his apprenticeship-trained contemporaries, Hall quickly became one of the leading physicians in the state. He pioneered obstetrics, guided by the detailed illustrated manuals, published 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...
, that he brought back from his studies in Philadelphia. He was particularly concerned with epidemic disease, repeatedly petitioning town authorities in Wallingford and Middletown for permission to establish a "pock house" for inoculating against small pox.
Hall's anti-federalist political inclinations may have helped him to develop a relationship with Boston physician Benjamin Waterhouse
Benjamin Waterhouse
Benjamin Waterhouse was a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School...
, a correspondent of British physician Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner
Edward Anthony Jenner was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire...
, discoverer of vaccination
Vaccination
Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material to stimulate the immune system of an individual to develop adaptive immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by many pathogens...
. Jenner sent samples of cowpox
Cowpox
Cowpox is a skin disease caused by a virus known as the Cowpox virus. The pox is related to the vaccinia virus and got its name from the distribution of the disease when dairymaids touched the udders of infected cows. The ailment manifests itself in the form of red blisters and is transmitted by...
matter to Waterhouse, some of which may have been passed on to Hall, who appears to have been the first physician in Connecticut to practice vaccination.
In 1796, Hall played a heroic role during a yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
epidemic at Knowles Landing, south of Middletown on the Connecticut River
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River is the largest and longest river in New England, and also an American Heritage River. It flows roughly south, starting from the Fourth Connecticut Lake in New Hampshire. After flowing through the remaining Connecticut Lakes and Lake Francis, it defines the border between the...
. When all the village's established physicians had fled, Hall stayed on to care for the sick and bury the dead. His exploits were reported in Miner & Tully's Essays on Fevers (1823), a pioneering study of epidemic disease.
Hall played a leading role in organizing the Connecticut Medical Society and served as its treasurer from 1799 until his death a decade later. He was noted as an educator of physicians and often had as many as six apprentices residing with him in his spacious house on Middletown's Main Street (William Brenton Hall Account Book, 1807–1809).
As Federalists struggled to take control of the Medical Society in 1807, Hall and his Jeffersonian friends, who were officers of the society, became the object of a vicious satirical poem by physician and wit, Mason Fitch Cogswell
Mason Fitch Cogswell
Mason Fitch Cogswell was a United States physician.-Biography:...
:
Next see arise and puff across the stage,
The learned puppet of this learned age.
This pious child in Middletown appears,
With tongue much more supplied, than brains, or ears. . . .
With him, to make young Doctors rules are vain,
"Blair's Lectures" only, make the business plain,
With these in hand, he turns them out as fast
As tramping tinkers pewter buttons cast.
Strange, very strange, that in one soul we find
Such great and numerous offices combined;
Surgeon, Demagogue, Preceptor, Preacher,
Dentist, Physician, Midwife, Rhetoric-teacher,
Moral Philosopher, Schoolmaster, all
Unite & harmonize in Doctor Hall.
Death
According to his contemporaries, alcoholismAlcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
was an occupational disease for physicians in this era. Hall, known to be a heavy drinker, began to fail in the spring of 1809. Attempting to visit a patient in June 1809, he fell from his horse and died of his injuries on June 29, aged 45. He left a widow and two young sons, William Brenton and Samuel Holden Parsons. He is buried in the Liberty Street Cemetery in Middletown.
Posthumous
Despite the advantages of pedigree and education, Hall was handicapped by the time and place in which he lived. The extensive kinship network of which he was a part would have served him well had the Old Lights been able to maintain their political dominance. Defeats at the polls and in ecclesiastical tribunals pushed them to the margins. Many, like Hall and his father Brenton (who represented Meriden in the legislature for many terms), became anti-federalists and ardent Jeffersonians. Others, like Hall's siblings, abandoned the established Congregational church for dissenting sects. This constituted a major obstacle to success in a state dominated by an oppressive Federalist-Congregationalist political machine.Had Hall followed his Yale classmate, fellow physician Elihu Hubbard Smith, to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
-- where political and religious heterodoxy was tolerated --, he might have had a more distinguished career. Smith, who also studied medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital, established himself in New York, where he founded America's first medical journal, the Medical Repository.