Benjamin Waterhouse

Benjamin Waterhouse was an American medical doctor, born in Rhode Island in 1754 and dead in 1846, who co-founded and taught at Harvard Medical School. He began his medical training at sixteen as an apprentice in his hometown, studied in London under John Fothergill and at Edinburgh, and took his degree at Leiden in 1780, where he roomed with the future president John Adams. After returning to the United States in 1782 he joined the Harvard faculty as one of three professors, teaching the theory and practice of physic. He is best known for introducing Edward Jenner method of cowpox vaccination to the United States in 1800 and 1801, with the support of Thomas Jefferson, and for making the first American vaccinations on four of his own children. He later served as a hospital surgeon in the United States Army.