Physician And Botanist

Early Life.

Jacob Bigelow was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1787, the son of a Harvard graduate who was a Congregational minister and a farmer. Educated in a country grammar school until age thirteen, Bigelow then studied privately under Reverend Samuel Kendall in Weston to prepare for the university. He attended Harvard from 1802 until 1806, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Late in life he recalled that "my original distaste for the profession of medicine was removed by the eloquence of Dr. John Warren, the oldest of a line of distinguished physicians, who, at that time, lectured on anatomy to the senior class of undergraduates. I thought I discovered that a physician might be fluent and accomplished, and serve his generation in other ways than as a mere vehicle of pills and plasters."

Medical Education.

Upon his graduation Bigelow taught for one year at Boston Latin...