Saturday, April 9, 2016

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
Scene of the Duel (Wikipedia)
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.

     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,
Engraving, Elgin Garden. (Medical Repository 1810)
 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. 
     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.
   New York Academy of Medicine Site:  
   Garrison, F. “David Hosack”. Bull N Y Acad Med 1925. 1: 167-71

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