in which capacity he gained so much of his confidence and friendship, that he consented to liberate him, after two or three years, upon easy terms.  From Dr. Derham’s numerous opportunities of improving in medicine, he became so well acquainted with the healing art, as to commence practicing in New Orleans, under the patronage of his last master.  He once did business to the amount of three thousand dollars a year.  Benjamin Rush, who had the opportunity to meet him, said:  “I have conversed with him upon most of the acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he lives and was pleased to find him perfectly acquainted with the modern simple mode of practice on those diseases.  I expected to have suggested some new medicines to him; but he suggested many more to me.  He is very modest and engaging in his manners.  He speaks French fluently and has some knowledge of the Spanish language."[4]

The most noted colored physician after the time of James Derham was Doctor James McCune Smith, a graduate of the University of Glasgow.  He began the practice of medicine in New York about 1837, and soon distinguished himself as a physician and surgeon.  He passed as a man of unusual merit not only among his own people but among the best elements of that metropolis.  That he was appreciated by the leading white physicians of the city is evidenced by the fact that in 1852 he was nominated as one of the five men to draft a constitution for the “Statistic Institute” of which he became a leading member.  For a number of years he held the position of physician to the colored orphan asylum, serving on the staff with a number of white doctors.

Living in a day when the Negro was the subject of much anthropological and physiological discussion, Doctor Smith could not resist participating in this controversy.  There were at this time a number of persons who were resorting to science to prove the inferiority of the Negro.  Given a hearing extending over several evenings, Doctor Smith ably discussed “The Comparative Anatomy of the Races” before an assembly of the most distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the city, triumphing over his antagonist.  In 1846 he produced a valuable work entitled “The Influence of Climate on Longevity, with Special Reference to Insurance.”  This paper was written as a refutation of a disquisition of John C. Calhoun on the colored race.  Among other things Doctor Smith said:  “The reason why the proportion of mortality is not a measure of longevity, is the following:  The proportion of mortality is a statement of how many persons die in a population; this, of course, does not state the age at which those persons die.  If 1 in 45 die in Sweden, and 1 in 22 in Grenada, the age of the dead might be alike in both countries; here the greater mortality might actually accompany the greater longevity."[5]