Lecture tickets for Nathaniel Chapman
Nathaniel Chapman (28 May 1780 – 1 July 1853) was a well-known
early American physician.
Chapman was born in Summer Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia. He
received his early education in six years at the classical
academy of Alexandria. He later attended two colleges for a
short time, before moving to Philadelphia in 1797, where he
began studying under Benjamin Rush and attending lectures at the
University of Pennsylvania. He earned his M.D. in 1800, with a
thesis on hydrophobia.
Upon his graduation, Chapman traveled to the United Kingdom in
1801, spending a year in London as a pupil of John Abernethy,
and three in Edinburgh, where he attended lectures at the
medical school of the University of Edinburgh. While in
Edinburgh he became acquainted with a number of well-known
people, including Dugald Stewart, the Earl of Buchan, and Henry
Brougham.
Chapman returned to the United States in 1804, and established a
medical practice in Philadelphia. He gave a private course of
lectures on obstetrics in the same year, which proved so popular
that, in 1806 at the age of only 26, he was elected adjunct to
the Professor of Midwifery at the University of Pennsylvania,
and soon thereafter was made chair of Materia Medica. He married
Rebecca Biddle (daughter of Clement Biddle) in 1808. Upon the
death of Benjamin Rush in 1813, he was transferred to the chair
of Theory and Practice of Medicine (after Benjamin Smith Barton
held the post for a brief time. Chapman gained the post in
1815.), which he would retain for nearly forty years, until his
retirement in 1850. In addition to his lectures at the
University of Pennsylvania, he also gave annual lectures at the
Philadelphia Alms House and the Medical Institute of
Philadelphia.
Among his notable activities in professional service, Chapman
founded the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1820 and
served as its editor for some years, and also served as
President of both the Philadelphia Medical Society and the
American Philosophical Society.
Of
his published works, the most popular were Select Speeches,
Forensic and Parliamentary (1804), touching on both medical and
political matters, and Therapeutics (1817), a work on what was
then termed materia medica that went through seven editions.
