American Medical Biographies/Bruce, Archibald
Bruce, Archibald (1777–1818)
Archibald Bruce, physician and mineralogist, was born in New York City, in February, 1777, and died there of apoplexy February 22, 1818. His father, William Bruce, the head of the British Army at New York, upon being ordered to the West Indies, specially directed that his son should not be brought up to the medical profession. Archibald had graduated in arts at Columbia College in 1795. He became interested in the lectures of Nicholas Romayne (q.v.) and in the teachings of Dr. Hosack (q.v.) and attended courses at Kings College. In 1798 he went to Europe and traveled in France, Switzerland and Italy for two years, collecting a mineralogical cabinet of great value, also attending lectures at the University of Edingburgh where he received an M.D. in 1800. He married in London and returned to New York in 1803 and began practice. From 1807 until 1811 he was professor of materia medica and mineralogy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, when on the reorganization of the faculty, he and Romayne and others lectured in an extramural course. In 1810 he edited the first purely scientific journal in America, the Journal of American Mineralogy, which with the discovery of the hydrate of magnesia at Hoboken, contributed materially to extend his fame.