Benjamin Waterhouse was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on March 4, 1754. He was a physician, co-founder, and professor of Harvard Medical School. He is known for being the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States, which he carried out on his own family. Waterhouse was born into a Quaker family, although he never adopted the religion as his own. His parents were Timothy Waterhouse, a chairmaker who served on the Governor’s Council, and Hannah Waterhouse. Born and raised in Rhode Island, his medical career began at age 16, when he apprenticed for a doctor in his hometown. At age 21, he left the United States to study medicine in Europe at several notable institutions, such as with Dr. John Fothergill in London, England. He was also educated in Edinburgh at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. He enrolled on October 28, 1778, at Leiden University in the Netherlands and received his medical degree at the same University on April 19, 1780. The title description of his thesis is Dissertatio medica De sympathia partium corporis humani, ejusque, in explicandis et curandis morbis necessaria consideratione. This translates to “On the sympathy of the parts of the human body and its necessary consideration in explaining and treating diseases.” The thesis was dedicated to John Fothergill, M.D., “inspirer of my studies.” While living in the Netherlands, Waterhouse roomed with future U.S. President John Adams.
After returning to the United States in 1782, Waterhouse joined the faculty of the new medical school at Harvard as one of three professors, including John Warren and Aaron Dexter, in Theory and Practice of Physic. He was also elected that same year as a Fellow at Rhode Island College (now Brown University), where he taught natural history. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1795. In 1814, Waterhouse resigned his Harvard professorship after opposing a plan to establish the Medical School in Boston and attempting to found a rival medical school.
Waterhouse wrote to then-President John Adams, his former roommate, hoping to spread the word about cowpox vaccinations preventing smallpox. When President Adams was unresponsive, he wrote to Vice President Thomas Jefferson: “A prospect of exterminating the smallpox.” Jefferson replied with a letter dated Christmas Day, 1800, and soon offered support. Once Jefferson became President the following year, Waterhouse introduced Edward Jenner’s method of cowpox vaccination in the United States. He attempted to maintain a monopoly over the cowpox vaccine for financial reasons and to protect the vaccine from incompetent or fraudulent physicians. Waterhouse gave four of his children their first vaccinations in the United States. He commissioned a controlled experiment at the Boston Board of Health in which 19 vaccinated and two unvaccinated boys were exposed to the smallpox virus. The vaccinated boys demonstrated immunity, and both unvaccinated boys succumbed to the disease.
In 1788, he married Elizabeth Oliver, with whom he had six children. She died in childbirth in 1815. In 1819, he married Louisa Lee; no children resulted. Waterhouse was a prickly character with a tendency to become involved in controversy. Waterhouse had a commission in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, the days before military physicians were accorded rank. Waterhouse was assigned to a Navy frigate that the Royal Navy eventually captured. Waterhouse, along with the surviving crew members, was held in a British prison ship under harsh conditions until the end of the war. After repatriating to the United States, Waterhouse published a critical account of the British POW system. Choosing to remain in the military after the war, Waterhouse held the position of “Hospital Surgeon.” in 1818, he was promoted to “Post Surgeon,” and in 1821, he was honorably discharged.
Throughout the 1820s, Waterhouse strongly supported Samuel Thomson’s medical system. He died in his home in Cambridge on October 6, 1846, and was survived by his wife Louisa. Waterhouse was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1791. His portrait hangs at the Harvard Medical School, and his house on Waterhouse Street near Cambridge Common bears a plaque commemorating his introduction of the smallpox vaccine in the United States. Waterhouse’s work with the smallpox vaccine was dramatized in a 1964 historical anthology series, “The Great Adventure Episode.” Robert Cummings portrayed him.
In 1805, he wrote a treatise on ‘the evil tendency of the use of tobacco by young persons, 150 years before the cigarette companies had to include cancer warnings on their products.
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse was inducted into The Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2012.
For Further Reading:
• Cash, Philip. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse: A Life in Medicine and Public Service (1754 –1846). Boston: Medical Library and Science History Publications, 2006.
• Cash, Philip. “Setting the Stage: Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse’s Reception in Boston, 1782–1788.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 47 (1992): 5–28.
• Cash, Philip, and Higomoto, Yoshio. “Further Information Concerning Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse’s Appointment as Harvard’s First Professor of Medicine.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 49 (1994): 419-148.
• Cohen, I.B., Ed. The Life and Scientific and Medical Career of Benjamin Waterhouse. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
• Higomoto, Yoshio. “The Democratization of American Medicine: Benjamin Waterhouse and Medical Men in Massachusetts.” Diss., Brown University, 1997.
• The Makers of Modern Rhode Island, Patrick T. Conley, The History Press, 2012.