mencement of the present century, and are now fully admitted. He insisted upon the correctness of the doctrine of the absorption of medicinal substances, and upon the explanation, by it, of their modus operandi.
Dr. Coxe at one time was the editor of the “Medical Museum.” This periodical was commenced in 1804; the same year as the publication of Dr. Barton, and was continued regularly until 1811. It may be said to be the first uniformly issued periodical in the city of Philadelphia, but not in the United States, as, in this respect, the city of New York takes precedence.[1]
He published, as editor, the “American Dispensatory,” a work largely derived from Duncan’s “Edinburgh Dispensatory.” In 1808 he published a Medical Dictionary. Late in life he issued an “Exposition of the Works of Hippocrates,” and an “Essay on the Origin of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.” In 1829 he introduced, and succeeded in cultivating, the true Jalap plant, thus enabling Mr. Nuttall to determine its real character and position. Dr. Coxe died at the advanced age of ninety years, March 22, 1864.
The vacation of the Chair of Materia Medica and Pharmacy having taken place in 1835, an opportunity was “offered to the Trustees to extend the organization and augment the efficiency of the Faculty, without interfering with the rights of the existing Professors, or increasing the expense of the pupils. That the subjects of Practice and Institutes of Medicine, which had for many years been combined, were together too copious for the time and powers of one Professor, was obvious to all who were acquainted with their great importance, and with the
- ↑ The “Medical Repository” of New York was projected by Dr. Elihu Smith, assisted by Drs. Samuel L. Mitchell and Edward Miller, and issued in 1797. With reference to this periodical, the biographer of Dr. Miller, his brother, the Rev. Dr. Miller, remarks: “From this work, as a parent stock, have sprung a number of works of a similar kind in Europe and America. It is not recollected by the writer of these sheets that any periodical publication devoted to medicine and medical philosophy, that could be said to be of the same nature with the ‘Medical Repository,’ had ever before appeared.” “The ‘Medical and Physical Journal of London’ was commenced soon after the appearance of the ‘Medical Repository,’ with the avowal of the Editor that he took the hint from New York.” The extent to which medical journalism has been carried in subsequent years is known to every reader.
