American Medical Biographies/Coxe, John Redman
Coxe, John Redman (1773–1864)
Scholar, collector, writer and teacher of materia medica, John Redman Coxe was born in Trenton, New Jersey, September 16, 1773.
When a little boy he was educated under the care of his grandfather, Dr. Redman, in Philadelphia. This relative had studied in Europe as a medical student and seems to have liked English methods best, for he sent his grandson to English schools and on to Edinburgh when sixteen to begin classical studies under a chosen teacher. There the surgeon with whom he boarded induced him to attend the hospital lectures.
In his autobiography he says: "After fifteen months in Edinburgh I returned to London in 1789 and attended two courses of anatomy and chemistry at the London Hospital and in 1790 left England to more directly study medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush, and stayed with him until I obtained my degree in the University of Pennsylvania of doctor of medicine in 1794." During the yellow fever in 1793 in Philadelphia so great was the number of patients that he fought the plague side by side with Dr. Rush and seldom saw fewer than thirty to fifty a day. For "his skill, fortitude, patience and perseverance, and humanity" during that hard time, Dr. Rush gave him a "Commentary on Boerhaave."
In 1794 he went for two years to London, Edinburgh and Paris, for study in the hospitals, and then returned to Philadelphia, 1796–7, to settle in practice.
One thing done by Coxe did much to destroy ignorant prejudice against vaccination. A warm, enthusiastic advocate of it, he was the first to use it in Philadelphia, and in 1801 vaccinated himself and his baby son Edward Jenner, thus doing much to establish confidence in the new preventive. In 1829 he succeeded in cultivating the true jalap plant, so that its real character and position might be determined.
He invented "Coxe's Hive Syrup," Syrupus Scillae Compositus U. S. P., that had a great vogue for half a century. He lectured to druggists and apothecaries until a sufficient number had been educated to form the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.
The success of the New York Medical Repository, then seven years old (1804), made Coxe think of publishing a quarterly, The Medical Museum, with a section called the Medical and Philosophical Register.
It had a fine debút, for the best doctors contributed good papers and the Museum had a vigorous existence until 1811, paving the way for similar journals, while being itself the first uniformly issued periodical in Philadelphia.
His biographers give Coxe place as unique among the medical men of Philadelphia and the founder of medical journalism, but it is said he was too much "under the influence of earlier systems and became the most notable illustrator of the conservative teaching of an older time, though this in no way affected the good he did as the inaugurator of medical journalism."
He married Sarah Cox, daughter of Colonel John Cox, and they had six children.
Dr. Coxe died in Philadelphia, March 22, 1864, at the advanced age of ninety.
He was professor of chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, 1809–1818; professor of materia medica and pharmacy, 1818–1835; editor of the Medical Museum, "The American Dispensary," and a "Medical Dictionary," 1808.
Coxe had one of the largest private libraries in the country—about 15,000 volumes. In personal appearance he was thin, about five feet six and a half inches high, had a good sized head covered with hair growing low over the forehead and brushed back, eyes black and piercing, nose of Grecian contour, and a good sized mouth made somewhat irregular by the projection of several front teeth.
His writings included:
"Practical Observations on Vaccination," Philadelphia, 1802. Late in life he issued an exposition of the works of Hippocrates, Philadelphia, 1846, and an essay on the "Origin of the Circulation of the Blood," Philadelphia, 1834.