Henry Ingersoll Bowditch

• Henry Ingersoll Bowditch
• Born: August 9, 1808
• Died: January 14, 1892

Abolitionist, physician, and proponent of public health, was born to Nathaniel Bowditch, the prominent mathematician, and Mary (Ingersoll) Bowditch at Salem, Massachusetts. Bowditch attended a private grammar school in Salem until the family relocated to Boston in 1823. He studied there for two years at Public Latin School. In 1825 he matriculated at Harvard College as a sophomore, and received his degree in 1828.

He went on to study at Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1832. He chose medicine as a career largely because he was uninterested in becoming a minister, lawyer, or businessman. A real interest in medicine developed during his internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1832 Bowditch departed for Europe with the intention of spending a year studying in Paris and another in England. In Paris he worked with some of France’s leading physicians who had a profound influence upon him. He developed a deep commitment to medicine, and he adopted a method that stressed close observation and rigorous inductive reasoning. After his year of study in France, Bowditch traveled to England but, finding medical practice inferior there, he went back to Paris to spend an additional year.

He returned to Boston in 1834 and established a practice. Opposed to slavery, he became an active abolitionist in 1835 after a mob attack on William Lloyd Garrison—taking this position even though it was costly to his professional reputation and his social standing. Bowditch became a close associate of such leading abolitionists as Garrison and Wendell Phillips, but he did not accept their views on peaceable northern and southern disunion or their opposition to connections with political parties. He gave limited support to the Liberty and Free-Soil parties, feeling that they helped to arouse public opinion in the North.

Bowditch exerted much effort in aiding runaway slaves and in opposing fugitive slave laws. In 1842, in Boston, when George Latimer, an escaped slave, was arrested, Bowditch was one of three men who organized the Latimer Committee to protest this action. The committee issued a newspaper for several months and so swayed Massachusetts public opinion that a state law was adopted that forbade state authorities to aid in the return of fugitive slaves. Afterward, Bowditch continued to aid these slaves.

When the Civil War broke out, Bowditch became a fervent supporter of the Union cause. In 1862 he volunteered his medical services on the Virginia front. He was appalled by conditions there, especially the lack of an adequate ambulance service to remove wounded men from the battlefield. He began lobbying vigorously for the creation of an army ambulance corps but encountered resistance in the Senate. In 1863, when one of his sons died as a result of wounds received in battle, Bowditch issued a pamphlet. Citing his son’s sufferings, he pleaded for the creation of an ambulance corps. The publication had a sufficient effect on public opinion to lead to the establishment of such a corps.

This was but one of Bowditch’s efforts to improve public health. In 1862 he provided the Massachusetts Medical Society with a report on the distribution of tuberculosis in the state. Based on extensive research, the report linked the disease to poor housing conditions and suggested that the sickness was contagious. Aware of the influence of the environment on public health and believing in the importance of preventive medicine, Bowditch worked for the establishment of health boards at the national, state, and municipal levels. The Massachusetts State Board of Health was organized in 1869, in large part because of his efforts. He was appointed chairman and served in that position until 1879. Under his leadership the board worked to control disease and improve sanitation in the state. Bowditch also served on the National Board of Health, created by Congress in 1879.

Bowditch belonged to the American Medical Association, working actively within it to stimulate interest in public hygiene. Because of his efforts he was elected president of the AMA in 1879. He also supported medical training for women, something few other doctors then did. As Bowditch explained his position, “I am always ‘lugged in’ and have to bear the brunt of battle for an unpopular idea. I can’t help it; I cannot sit by and see an honest cause abused and spit upon without at least protesting.”

From his boyhood on, Bowditch was devout. He was associated with the Warren Street Chapel until 1842, when he left in protest over the refusal of his fellow officers to permit sermons on abolition. Afterward, he seldom attended church services, finding the ceremonies uninspiring and preferring to spend the Sabbath outdoors. In 1880 Bowditch’s health began to fail. After the death of his wife, Olivia (Yardley) Bowditch, whom he had married on July 17, 1838, he declined badly. He died on January 14, 1892, at the age of eighty-three.

See V. Y. Bowditch, ed., Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, 2 vols. (1902). Other biographical material includes The Dictionary of American Biography (1929); A. A. Walking, “Henry Ingersoll Bowditch,” Annals of Medical History, 1933; and C. F. Folsom, “Henry Ingersoll Bowditch,” American Academy of Arts and Sciences Proceedings (1893).