Hosack, David

Biography

Physician David Hosack [1769-1835], the son of Alexander and Jane Arden Hosack, was educated at Princeton [then the College of New Jersey] and pursued his medical studies in New York and Philadelphia and in Europe. His distinguished career included teaching positions at Columbia College, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Rutgers Medical College. He was instrumental in the 1820 founding of Bellevue Hospital. David Hosack is credited as being among the first physicians to use the stethoscope and to advocate vaccination. To the historian, Hosack is best remembered as the attending physician of the Burr-Hamilton duel in 1802, after which he pronounced Hamilton dead.

Hosack had interests outside medicine as well, including mineralogy (he donated his collection to Princeton in 1821) and the arts. He was a founder of the New York Historical Society, serving as its president from 1820-1828, and was an incorporator in 1808 of the American Academy of Fine Arts. In 1792 Hosack married Catherine Warner of Princeton, with whom he had a child. Shortly after her death he married, in 1797, Mary Eddy of Philadelphia, who also predeceased him. He married a third time, to Magdalena Coster.

Bibliography

1933

DAB, 1943, IX:239-240

1964

Robbins, Christine Chapman. David Hosack, Citizen of New York. Philadelphia, 1964: 188-194, 198

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