Benjamin Waterhouse was born March 4, 1754 in Newport, Rhode Island; he died on October 2, 1846 in Boston. He was the son of Timothy Waterhouse, a maker of chairs who is said to have been a judge of the Court of Common Pleas and on the Governor's Council, and Hannah Waterhouse. In 1788 he married Elizabeth Oliver, with whom he had six children; in 1819 he married Louisa Lee, with no children resulting from the second marriage. He attended the academy founded by Bishop Berkeley. Between 1775 and 1178, he studied medicine with Dr. John Halliburton and judge Robert Lightfoot in Newport. In 1780, he studied medicine and science at Edinburgh for nine months and in London with his relative John Fothergill. In 1780, he obtained the M.D. degree in Leyden, where he spent another year studying history and the law of nations. In 1786, he received an honorary M.D. degree from Harvard University. He began...