Tobias Watkins, in addition to editing the Portico: A Repository of Science and Literature, practiced medicine as a private physician, published medical and scientific articles, edited the short-lived Baltimore Medical and Physical Recorder, translated articles from the French, and was a medical officer for the military. He was known as "an elegant scholar and accomplished gentleman," according to Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell. Yet he gave up both publishing and medicine to take a post with the U.S. government.

Tobias Watkins was born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on 12 December 1780. He graduated from St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1798 and earned the doctor of medicine degree in 1802. He served as assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy from 20 July 1799 to 1 January 1801. After earning the M.D., he was licensed in mid-wifery and began practice at Baltimore in 1803 or 1804. Watkins became physician to the Marine Hospital and later, on 20 May 1813, was...