Jackson, James, 1777-1867

U.S. surgeon, physician and professor at Harvard Medical School.

Jackson (Harvard, M.D. 1809) was Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard Medical School from 1812 to 1836 and dean of the Medical School from 1820 to 1821. He was involved in the introduction of smallpox vaccination in New England and was one of the founders of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Physician of Boston.

James Jackson received his A.B. from Harvard in 1796, and his M.D. in 1809. He was Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard Medical School from 1812 to 1836 and dean of the Medical School from 1820 to 1821.

James Jackson (1777-1867), a physician in Boston, Massachusetts, served as Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard from 1812 to 1836; Hersey Professor Emeritus from 1836 to 1867; and as a member of the Board of Overseers from 1844 to 1846. Jackson practiced medicine in Boston and was one of the first physicians in America to promote vaccination against disease. Recognizing that the quality of medical teaching at Harvard had languished for several years, Jackson joined a reform movement to reorganize and rebuild the Medical School. Appointed Professor of Clinical Medicine at Harvard in 1810, Jackson was given the task of delivering "courses of clinical lectures, to point out at the bedside of such sick persons when cases may be suitable for the purpose, the symptoms of the disease under which they may labor, and the indications of cure and methods of treatment." Jackson was appointed Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in 1812 and worked tirelessly with John Collins Warren, Hersey Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, for the establishment of a hospital that could both teach medical students and treat patients. They were largely responsible for the establishment of the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1811, although the hospital was not actually opened until 1821. Jackson published regularly in the New England Journal of Medicine, was the first physician in America to describe the effects of peripheral alcoholic neuritis and the symptoms of appendicitis, and in 1825 published his lecture notes on physiology, hygiene, pathology, and therapeutics in Text Book of a Course of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physic.

The chair of the Theory and Practice of Physic was established in 1783 but was not endowed as the Hersey Professorship until 1791 by the wills of Ezekiel Hersey, Sarah Derby, his widow, and Abner Hersey, his younger brother.

The previous holder of the Hersey Professorship of the Theory and Practice of Physic was Benjamin Waterhouse (1791-1812).