Alexander
Hamilton to Rockefeller Center:
David Hosack
MD
Tension gripped the air as two men faced each other in a tragic duel. Alexander Hamilton had just arrived at a lonely spot amongst dense cedar trees on the New Jersey shore where Aaron Burr was awaiting him, early July, 1804. At a prearranged signal Burr fired, wounding Hamilton in the right side, the bullet lodging in his lumbar
spine. Hamilton sank to the ground, partly supported by his second who
shouted for medical help. Doctor David Hosack, waiting at the shore by the boat that had ferried them over, scrambled
up to the site. The devastating scene is best
recounted in his own words: “His
countenance of death I shall never forget. He had at that instant just strength
to say, ‘This is a mortal wound, Doctor', when he sunk away and became to all
appearance lifeless…. His pulse was not to be felt; his respiration was
entirely suspended: and upon laying my hand on his heart, and perceiving no
motion there, I considered him irrecoverably gone…” (from a letter to the editor of The New York Evening Post). Hosack
liberally applied spirits of hartshorn (an ammonia solution distilled from the
horns and hooves of deer, later called smelling salts). On the skiff back to New
York Hamilton regained consciousness, started breathing more normally and his pulse felt stronger. He complained that he had no sensation in his legs.
He was placed in the house of a friend and given laudanum and other pain relievers. Hosack
called in consulting surgeons, but none had more to offer and Hamilton
expired in pain the following afternoon, a great loss to the young nation.
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| Scene of the Duel (Wikipedia) |
Who was Dr. Hosack?
He was, in fact, an important figure in the early history of medicine in New
York. As physician to Hamilton’s family, he had watched over one son severely ill
with scarlet fever, and had attended another son dying from wounds inflicted in
a duel 3 years earlier. He had also been consulted by Burr in the past.
David Hosack was born in 1769 on Manhattan, where he spent his childhood during the Revolution while British troops roamed
the Island. He attended Columbia College (the name “King’s” College had been
dropped) and the College of New Jersey at Princeton. He studied medicine at the
Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania, where he befriended Benjamin
Rush, followed by nine months at the University of Edinburgh and a year in
London. In London he studied botany at the Linnaean herbarium under James
Edward Smith and became a dedicated plant lover.
 |
| David Hosack by Rembrandt Peale (Wikipedia) |
Back in New York
Hosack entered private practice and did well. He was on the faculty of the
Columbia Medical School, and later partnered in practice with Dr. Samuel Bard,
perhaps the best-known physician in New York. In 1795 and 1798 he and Bard worked through yellow fever epidemics, both contracting yellow fever in the
process. As treatment he employed Glauber’s salts (sodium sulfate, a moderate
laxative), bathed the patient with vinegar and cool water, and applied warm
blankets while feeding liquids (called the “stove-room technique” by some).
Aware of Benjamin Rush’s regimen of bleeding and violent purges he tried it in
the 1798 epidemic. But after losing 40 patients he reverted to his milder
method, with better results. The milder treatment also brought him many patients. He
was a cofounder of the Medical and
Philosophical Register, a respected medical journal, was the first in the U.S.
to ligate the femoral artery for aneurysm, and innovated treatment of hydrocele
by injection. He wrote many medical essays, and his practice included most of
the luminaries of New York Society.
Botany was little
taught in New York and there were no large herbaria in the country. Hosack saw
the need and purchased twenty acres of land between what is now 47th
and 51st Streets to create the Elgin Botanic Garden (named after his
father’s home town in Scotland). He poured his heart, and his money, into the
garden,
ordering plants from around the world, quickly becoming recognized as
an expert botanist. As Professor of Botany and Materia Medica at the College of
Physicians and Surgeons he regularly took his medical students through the
garden, teaching.
 |
| Engraving, Elgin Garden. (Medical Repository 1810) |
Hosack fostered the
development of arts in New York. He was a founder of the New York Historical
Society, the NY Academy of the Arts, and supported other organizations. He was an
outgoing person, enjoying his students as well as social company. In 1825 he
married a wealthy woman (2 other wives had died) allowing him to purchase a
large estate at Hyde Park. There he built a large garden and entertained in
style, hosting many notables of the day and giving up most of his practice. He died
after a stroke in 1835.
The Elgin Garden of
his dreams had long before proved too expensive to maintain and he sold it to New York
State in 1811. It was transferred to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, then
to Columbia College. John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased the land in 1928 and built the giant Rockefeller Center on the site. Columbia sold it only in 1985. Now, strolling in Rockefeller Center on the way to the ice
rink one can see a small plaque commemorating Dr. Hosack, part of which reads,
“In memory of david hosack, 1769-1835,
BOTANIST, PHYSICIAN, MAN OF SCIENCE AND CITIZEN OF THE WORLD”.
Sources:
Robbins,
C.C. David Hosack: Citizen of New York.
1964
Hamilton, A.M.: The Intimate Life
of Alexander Hamilton. pp 395-404, 1911.
Garrison, F. “David Hosack”. Bull N Y Acad Med 1925. 1: 167-71
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