John Lee Comstock

John Lee Comstock (1787 to 1858) was an American surgeon and educator from East Lyme, Connecticut. He began medical study around the age of twenty with his older brother, attended medical lectures at Brown University, and served as an assistant surgeon in the United States Army during the War of 1812, in charge of three hospitals in Pittsburgh. After the war he settled in Hartford, practiced medicine until about 1830, and then turned to writing. He published more than twenty school and general-audience textbooks on botany, chemistry, mineralogy, natural history and physiology; his Natural Philosophy of 1831 sold in very large numbers, and his Outlines of Physiology of 1836 was said to be the first text on the subject widely used in American schools. Some of his books drew heavily on European authors, and several were republished abroad. In 1828 he received the first United States patent for waterproofing cloth or leather. He died in Hartford in 1858.