Samuel Latham Mitchill (August 20, 1764September 7, 1831) was an American physician, naturalist, and politician who lived in Plandome, New York.

Early life

Samuel Mitchill was born in Hempstead in the Province of New York, the son of Robert Mitchill and his wife, Mary Latham, both Quakers. He was sent to Scotland and graduated in 1786 from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with an M.D., his education being paid for by a wealthy uncle. Returning to the United States after medical school, Mitchill also completed law school. As a lawyer, he oversaw the purchase of lands in western New York from the Iroquois Indians in 1788.

Career

Mitchill taught chemistry, botany, and natural history at Columbia College from 1792 to 1801 and was a founding editor of ''

The Medical Repository ''The Medical Repository'' was the first American medical journal, founded in 1797 and published quarterly, with some interruptions, through 1824. It was printed by T. & J. Swords, Printers to the Faculty of Physic of Columbia College, New Yor ...

'', the first medical journal in the United States. In 1793, he was elected a Foreign Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were James Gregory, Dugald Stewart, and

John Rotherham John Rotherham or Rotheram (c.1750–1804) was an 18th-century British physician and scientist. Life He was born around 1750 in Hexham in northern England, the son of Catherine Roberts and her husband Dr John Rotheram. He was the eldest br ...

. In addition to his Columbia lectures on botany, zoology, and mineralogy, Mitchill collected, identified, and classified many plants and animals, particularly aquatic organisms. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1797. From 1807 to 1826, he taught at the

College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is the graduate medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Founded ...

and then helped organize the short-lived Rutgers Medical College of New Jersey, which he served as vice president until 1830. While at Columbia, Mitchill developed a fallacious theory of disease; however, it resulted in his promotion of personal hygiene and improved sanitation.Keir B. Sterling, "Mitchill, Samuel Latham
American National Biography Online
Mitchill served in the

New York State Assembly The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, with the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits. The Assem ...

in 1791 and again in 1798 and was then elected as a

Democratic-Republican The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early ...

to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1801 until his resignation on November 22, 1804. In November 1804, Mitchill was elected a U.S. Senator from New York to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Armstrong, and served from November 23, 1804, to March 4, 1809. He then served again in the House of Representatives from December 4, 1810, to March 4, 1813. Mitchill was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814. On January 29, 1817, Mitchill convened the first meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences, originally called the Lyceum of Natural History, of which he was later elected president. Mitchill strongly endorsed the building of the Erie Canal, sponsored by his friend and political ally

DeWitt Clinton DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769February 11, 1828) was an American politician and naturalist. He served as a United States senator, as the mayor of New York City, and as the seventh governor of New York. In this last capacity, he was largely res ...

; they were both members of the short-lived New-York Institution. Mitchill suggested renaming the United States of America Fredonia, combining the English "freedom" with a Latinate ending. Although the suggestion was not seriously considered, some towns adopted the name, including

Fredonia, New York Fredonia is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 9,871 as of the 2020 census. Fredonia is in the town of Pomfret south of Lake Erie. The village is the home of the State University of New York at Fredonia ( ...

. Some freebooters established a short-lived republic under that name in Texas in the late 1820s.

Personality

Mitchill was a man of "irrepressible energies... polyglot enthusiasms... nddistinguished eccentricities" who was not "a man afraid to speak out loud about the loves of plants and animals; indeed, he was not a man afraid to speak out loud on most any topic. In the early nineteenth century, Mitchill was New York's "most publicly universal gentleman... a man known variously as the 'living encyclopedia,' as a 'stalking library,' and (to his admired

Jefferson Jefferson may refer to: Names * Jefferson (surname) * Jefferson (given name) People * Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), third president of the United States * Jefferson (footballer, born 1970), full name Jefferson Tomaz de Souza, Brazilian foo ...

) as the 'Congressional Dictionary.'"Burnett, 44. In 1828, Martin Harris, an associate of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, visited Mitchill to ask him to authenticate the "

Reformed Egyptian The Book of Mormon, a work of scripture of the Latter Day Saint movement, describes itself as having a portion originally written in reformed Egyptian characters on plates of metal or "ore" by prophets living in the Western Hemisphere from perha ...

" characters that Smith said were taken from golden plates to which he said he had been directed by an angel. Mitchill would have been unsympathetic to the view that Indians were related to the Jews or the Egyptians because he was one of the few scholars of his day who believed that Native Americans were descended from

Asians Asian people (or Asians, sometimes referred to as Asiatic people)United States National Library of Medicine. Medical Subject Headings. 2004. November 17, 200Nlm.nih.gov: ''Asian Continental Ancestry Group'' is also used for categorical purpos ...

. Mitchill left no record of Harris's visit.; ; . "Once described as a 'chaos of knowledge,' Mitchill was generally more admired for his encyclopedic breadth of understanding than for much originality of thought." As a personality, he was affable but also egotistical and pedantic. Mitchill enjoyed popularizing scientific knowledge and promoting practical applications of scientific inquiry.

Published works

* Mitchill, S. L. 1818. Description of three species of fish. ''Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia'' 1, 407–412.
BHL link

References

External links

* *
Francis, John W. ''Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchell'', (1859).
From the Digital Collections of the National Library of Medicine.
Finding aid for the Samuel Latham Mitchill papers at the Museum of the City of New YorkSamuel Latham Mitchill Papers
at the

William L. Clements Library The William L. Clements Library is a rare book and manuscript repository located on the University of Michigan's central campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Specializing in Americana and particularly North American history prior to the twentieth centu ...