HOLMES
HOLMES
tive and poetic nature and from early man-
hood he was an aggressive Unitarian in direct
opposition to the Calvinism of his fatlier. He first
attended a " dame school." kept by Mrs. Pren-
tiss, and from his tenth until his fifteenth year he
continued his education at a school in Cambridge-
port, under Winslow Biglow, where he had as
classmates Richard Henry Dana, Margaret Ful-
ler, and Alfred Lee, afterward bishop of Dela-
ware. From Caml)ridge he was sent to Pliillips
academy at Andover, Mass.. with the hope that
he might incline to the ministry. There he made
his first attempt at rhyme in the translation of the
first book of Vergil's '•^•Eneid." He was graduated
from Harvard in 1829 with William H. Channing,
Prof. Benjamin Pierce, James Freeman Clarke,
the Rev. S. F. Smith, and Benjamin R. Curtis.
He roomed in Stoughton hall ; was a frequent
contributor to college publications ; wrote and
delivered the poem at commencement, and was
one of sixteen of that class whose sciiolarship
admitted tliem to the Phi Beta Kappa society.
His cousin, Wendell Pliillips, Ciiarles Sumner and
John Lothrop Motley were in attendance at Har-
HoLMES HOUSE <:aa\bp,ic><:e,mass
vard. altliough not his classmates. He attended
the Dane law school in 1829, remaining one year,
and in that year devoted more time to verse
writing than he did to Blackstone. In 1830, on
reading a newspaper paragraph to the effect that
the frigate Constitution was condemned by the
navy department to be destroyed, lie wrote on
the impulse of the moment " Old Ironsides " which
appeared first in the Boston Daili/ Advertiser, and
quickly travelled tiirough eveiy newspaper in the
L'nited States, saving the vessel from destruction
and bringing fame to the author. The following
year he studied medicine at a private school under
Dr. James Jackson, and in 18:33 studied in the
hospitals of Paris and London, spending his vaca-
tions in travel. He returned to Cambridge in
December, 183"), received the M.D. degree from
Harvanl in 1836, and at once commenced his
professional career. The same year he publislied
hi-< first volume of poems, which contained forty-
five pieces. He received three of the Boylston
prizes for medical dissertations and the three
essay's were publislied in 1838. He was professor
of anatomy and physiology in Dartmouth college,
1838-40. On June 15, 1840, he was married to
Amelia Lee, third daughter of Charles Jackson,
of Boston, associate justice of the supreme ju-
dicial court. The young pair settled in Boston,
Mass.. where Dr. Holmes engaged in general
practice. He bought a house in Montgomery
place, which afterward became Bosworth sti'eet,
and there his three children were born : Oliver
Wendell, March 8, 1841 ; Amelia Lee, who died
in 1889, and Edward Jackson, who died in 1884.
His wife died at their Beacon street home in 1888.
In 1843 he publislied an essay on the "Conta-
giousness of Puerperal Fever," and on this rests
his claim to having made an original and valuable
discovery for medical science, which called forth
at the time a most hostile argument from the two
leading American professors of obstetrics. Profes-
sors H. L. Hodge and C. D. Meigs, of Philadel-
phia. He was appointed Parkinan professor of
anatoni}' and physiologj' at Harvard L^niversity
Medical school in 1847, and occasionally over-
stepped the strict boundaries of these depart-
ments to give instruction in mici-oscopy, psychol-
ogy and kindred subjects. He relinquished his
medical practice and was dean of the medical
school, 1847-53. In 1849 he built a house at Pitts-
field, Mass., upon the old family place on the road
to Lenox, in a township which had belonged to
one of his Dutch ancestors in 1735, and there
spent his summers until 1856, having as neigh-
bors and associates, Nathaniel Hawthorne. G. P.
R. James, Herman Melville, Miss Sedgwick and
Fanny Kemble. In 1852 he delivered in several
cities a course of lectures on the " English Poets
of the Nineteenth Century," twelve of which were
given before the Lowell Institute. Dr. Holmes
was a favorite with the lecture bureaus, and had
no lack of engagements ; and in his medical lec-
tures at Harvard the last period was assigned
to him, because he alone could holdtheattention
of his exhausted audience, listening to the fifth
consecutive lecture. As a lecturer he was in-
teresting, original and stimulating. He was wont
to speak of occupying not a "chair," but a
" settee " of medicine. He invented the arrange-
ment of the stereoscope, afterward universally
used, but obtained no patent for an article from
which he might have inade a fortune, "not car-
ing," as he expressed it, " to be known as the
patentee of a pill or of a peeping contrivance."
He was one of the founders of the Atlantic
Monthly in 1857. and gave the magazine its
name, contributing to it a series of conversa-
tional papers entitleil "The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table" (1^^58), which c-ontained some of
his best i)oems. Tiiis was followed by a second
