cences. Warren, like Marion Sims, had an excellent opinion of himself, but not with such good reason. The University of North Carolina gave him an LL. D. and he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France.
in 1857 Dr. Warren married Elizabeth Cotton, daughter of Samuel Iredell Johnstone, rector of St. Paul's Church (Episcopal) at Edenton.
In 1875 he settled in Paris and died there September 16, 1893.
Warren, John (1753–1815)
John Warren was born in Roxbury. July 27, 1753, and died in Boston, Massachusetts, April 4, 1815. His ancestor, John Warren, came fellow passenger with Governor Winthrop in the Arabella and arrived in Salem, June 12, 1630.[1] John (so far as the records show, was the father of Peter Warren, "Mariner," whose son Joseph built the family house in Roxbury, in which his grandson, Dr. John Warren, was born. Dr. Warren's father was a highly respected citizen of the town of Roxbury and added to and improved the homestead farm by the cultivation of many varieties of fruit trees. He was killed by a fall from an apple tree in October, 1755. His mother, Mary Warren, the daughter of Dr. Samuel Stevens of Roxbury, was a woman of great intelligence and piety, who survived her husband forty-five years and died in the paternal mansion in 1800. He was the younger brother of Dr. Joseph Warren (q.v.), killed at Bunker Hill. He was not much given to studious habits and was ten years old before he began to read, but under the favoring influence of the Grammar School in Roxbury, he applied himself to study with much zeal and acquired sufficient learning to enable him to enter Harvard College at the age of fourteen in July, 1767. Of his life at Cambridge but little is known except that he became a good classical scholar and acquired a facility of speaking the Latin language which was of essential use to him later in communicating with many foreigners, both lay and professional, who had no other common tongue and with whom the political conditions of the times brought him much in contact. This industry and a tenacious memory enabled him to stand well in his class during his whole college course. After graduating from Harvard in 1771 he immediately began the study of medicine with his brother Joseph, some twelve years his senior, having already while in college developed a strong taste for anatomy. With the exception of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, then still in its infancy, there was no medical school in this country at that time and he was obliged to be content to obtain his medical education by serving an apprenticeship with an active practitioner, after the manner of the day of those who could not find the time or means to journey to the centers of medical learning, such as London, Edinburgh or Leyden. His brother Joseph had been the pupil of Dr. Lloyd, who received his medical education in England, and was in the full tide of a successful practice. Doubtless he was thus enabled to enjoy the benefit of as good a medical education as could be obtained at that time in this country.
The course of study, eminently practical, fitted the pupil from the outset to be prepared for the intimate relation between patient and doctor and at least paved the way for the initial plunge into medical practice more effectively than the more formal curriculum of a systematic course of study.
It appears that Dr. Warren at one time entertained the intention of going to Surinam and for this purpose had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the Dutch language.
Boston had at the time of the Revolution a population of less than 20,000, and the field of practice was doubtless well filled by such men as Dr. Lloyd, Dr. Jeffries, Dr. Rand and Dr. Bulfinch, and many of the highly educated surgeons of the army then stationed in the city and its neighborhood. Fortunately an opening was discovered in the neighboring town of Salem under the patronage of Dr. Holyoke (q.v.), who was supposed to have reached that point in his career where a retirement for age would soon be justified and the field for a successor seemed a promising one.
The course of study, at that time required, was two years in length and Warren accordingly established himself in Salem as a practitioner in 1773. Only those physicians who, like Lloyd, had studied at a European University (and they were few and far between) enjoyed the title of M. D. Warren therefore began practice without any other title than that which he had received from the undergraduate department of his alma mater.
The first body in Massachusetts to issue a license to practise was the Massachusetts Medical Society and this organization was not incorporated until 1781. It was originally organized as an examining body with a view to meet the special need of regulating the
- ↑ See "Genealogy of Warren" by John C. Warren. 1854.
