Wheaton, Levi (1761-1851)
Levi Wheaton, pioneer physician of Providence, Rhode Island, was born in that city, February 6, 1761. He was the son of Deacon Ephraim Wheaton and the fourth lineal descendant of Robert Wheaton, who emigrated from Wales and settled in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, about the year 1640.
Levi entered Rhode Island College in 1774, but owing to the national disturbances of the times, his collegiate course was interrupted in 1776 and he did not graduate as A. B. until 1782, when he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the meantime, however, he had pursued his classical studies, and without any definite object in view, not having decided on a profession, he read, during this period, some of the standard works upon medicine and surgery. He also, during this interruption of his regular course of studies, had an opportunity of seeing something of a medical and surgical practice in the office of Dr. Hewes, a friend and neighbor. At the age of sixteen, he passed a season in the town of Smithfield, teaching school. In referring to this period of his life, in an autobiography, written some two or three years before his death, he says that he became familiar with Pope's works at an early age; and after making some remarks upon that author, he adds: "I record this especially as an event in my life, for, strange as it may seem, I think I can say with truth, no man has had so much influence on my tone of thinking of men and things."
In the year 1778, he entered the Military Hospital in Providence as a volunteer. The summer of 1779 he passed at Westerly, studying medicine with Dr. Babcock, and in the following year he completed his medical studies under the tuition of Dr. William Bowen, of Providence. After finishing his medical education, he served as surgeon on board a privateer; and in the autumn of 1782, while cruising off the southern coast, was taken prisoner and carried into New York by the British frigate Vesta. While detained prisoner in New York, he had charge for some months of the prison hospital ship, Falmouth, and ever after this event was recalled with much pleasure as having given him an opportunity to render some good offices to his imprisoned countrymen.
At the close of the war he accepted an invitation to settle in Hudson, New York State, which was then being settled by Eastern people. After ten years, however, this experimental settlement proved a failure. The town declined as rapidly as it had grown and Dr. Wheaton removed to New York City, where he lived for two years, when the death of Dr. Comstock, who had a large practice in Providence, seemed to make an opening for him there and he permanently established himself in his native town.
In the early part of his career in Providence he, in connection with Dr. William Bowen, established a smallpox hospital, to which many resorted for innoculation.
After a medical school was organized at Brown University in 1812, Dr. Wheaton was appointed professor of theory and practice of medicine in 1815, holding the position until 1828, lecturing on obstetrics as well as on medicine. He was physician to the post of Providence and original fellow of the Rhode Island Medical Society, being its president from 1824 to 1829.
Dr. Wheaton was a trustee of Brown University from 1798 to 1851, and at the time of his decease was at the head of the list of that honorable body. He was for many years physician to the Marine Hospital at the port of Providence.
It was not only as the thoroughly read and sound practical physician that Dr. Wheaton was entitled to pre-eminence; he was still more so as a man of erudition and general scholarship. He was a fine classical scholar and was, to an unusual extent, familiar with both ancient and modern literature and ready and frequent in his quotations in conversation. Few works of any pretentions, whether medical, scientific or literary, escaped his notice. As a prose writer, he had few superiors. He wrote an article upon yellow fever, as it appeared in Providence and another on calomel was published in one of the Philadelphia journals. In 1832 a somewhat lengthy article upon Asiatic cholera, from his pen, was published in the city papers and later in life he contributed several papers to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, under the signature of "Senex."
Dr. Wheaton, in his stature was tall and erect, in his deportment, dignified and graceful. His death, which occurred on August 29, 1851, was sudden and painless. He was fully aware that his end was fast approaching, but manifested no alarm, or concern, seeming to contemplate his case from a professional point of view, and to consider it a phenomenon in pathology.
Sketches of Rhode Island Physicians. Usher Parsons, M.D., 1859. Histor. Cat. Brown Univ., 1764-19:4.
