Call no. 10a/123                                                                                                    Acc. 51531
(Hirsch 140)


Chapman, Nathaniel, 1780-1853.
   Apoplexia, or apoplexy, [between 1837 and 1853].
   1 v.

Biographical

Nathaniel Chapman was born on 28 May 1780, in Fairfax County Virginia, the son of George and Amelia (Macrae) Chapman. He received his early education at the Alexandria Academy. At 17 he went to Philadelphia to study medicine, becoming a private pupil of Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), and eventually enrolling in the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1801. He then went to Edinburgh to further his medical studies, staying for three years, before returning to Philadelphia in 1804 to establish a practice.

While he actively practiced medicine for fifty years, Chapman is best known as a medical teacher, editor, and professional advocate. He became editor of the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences in 1820, a journal still published today (2000) as the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. From 1810 on he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, serving as professor of materia medica and professor of the theory and practice of medicine and clinical medicine. In 1817 Chapman founded the Medical Institute of Philadelphia, considered the first medical post-graduate school in the United States.

The principle publications of Chapman’s career are based on his lectures, such as his A Compendium of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine (1846).

As a professional advocate, Chapman served six terms as president of the Philadelphia Medical Society (a group similar to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia that amalgamated with the College in the 1830s). Also, he was elected by acclamation the first president of the American Medical Association in 1847. Chapman also served as President of the American Philosophical Society. Chapman was also a Fellow of the College of Physicians, elected in 1807.

A gifted teacher, charming, full of vitality, with a great sense of humor, Chapman was popular, and through his personality and competence rose to social prominence. He married Rebecca Biddle, daughter of Col. Clement Biddle, an officer in the Revolutionary War and close friend of George Washington. Chapman died in Philadelphia on 1 July 1853.



Scope and Contents

One volume (114 leaves) containing a lecture by Nathaniel Chapman on apoplexy (leaves 1-75) and an incomplete lecture on paralysis (leaves 75-114). Lectures are probably not in Chapman’s hand, but marginal annotations are. References to “the late Dr. Physick” imply a date of 1837 or later.

Provenance

The volume was presented to the College in 1894 by Henry Cadwalader Chapman, M.D.

Henry Cadwalader Chapman (1845-1909), the son of George W. and Emily (Markoe) Chapman and grandson of Nathaniel and Rebecca (Biddle) Chapman, was born in Philadelphia in 1845. He received two M.D.s, one from the University of Pennsylvania in 1867 and the other from Jefferson Medical College in 1878. At Jefferson, Chapman was Professor, Institutes of Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence from 1880-1909, retiring just months before his death. During this time he lectured and authored standard texts on physiology and medical jurisprudence. Chapman was a member of many medical and scientific societies, including the Fellowship of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, where he served a term on the Library Committee (1891-1892). Most notably, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Curators at the Academy of Natural Sciences from 1891-1904. Childless, Chapman was survived by his wife of 36 years, the former Hannah Nagler Megargee, when he died at his summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1909.

[Between 1837 and 1853]
1 v.

6/15/00
lg