ingitis. He was also the author of many contributions to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Communications of the Massachusetts Medical Society and to the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery. He delivered the first Boston Fourth of July oration in 1783.
In 1808, at the request of Dr. Warren, an adjunct professorship was created to aid him in the course of lectures which were at that time delivered in Cambridge, access to which consumed much time of a busy practitioner. His eldest son, John Collins Warren (q.v.), was elected to fill this position. For this reason, and the difficulty in giving clinical instruction, the school was moved to Boston in 1810, where Dr. Warren continued to teach to the time of his death
Dr. Warren was a member of and participated in the formation of numerous societies which sprang into being after the Revolution. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences received its charter on the 5th of May, 1780, and Warren became a member the subsequent year. He was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1781 and its president from 1804 until his death. He was also one of the founders of the Boston Medical Society in 1780, which established a fee table. In 1782 he was chosen grand master of all the Massachusetts Lodges of Free Masons. He was corresponding member of the London Medical Society.
The Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was instituted in 1785 and Warren was its second president. This society was the forerunner of many other charitable organizations. He was also at one time president of the Agricultural Society.
He was the father of seventeen children, the eldest of whom was John Collins Warren (q.v.) and the youngest Dr. Edward Warren, his biographer.
Dr. Warren was a devout student of the scriptures and a regular attendant at the Brattle Street Church—a society at that time in a transition state from Trinitarian to Unitarian doctrine. He was a man of ardent temperament and agreeable social qualities. His frankness, candor and hospitality were conspicuous traits. His voice was harmonious and utterance distinct and full, and his language as a lecturer was well chosen.
For some years before his death he had suffered from attacks of angina and in 1811 a slight paralytic affection of the right side came on, which never entirely disappeared. He died April 4, 1815, in the full tide of his professional activities after a short illness from inflammation of the lungs in the sixty-second year of his age. The funeral services were held at King's Chapel during which "an Eulogy" was delivered by Dr. James Jackson before the governing body and the students of the university. Later a sermon was preached at the Brattle Street Church by the Rev. Joseph McKean and an oration was delivered by Josiah Bartlett (q.v.) before the Grand Lodge of Masons. His wife. Abigail, died in 1832.
Warren, John Collins (1778–1856)
Among the men of past generations few led more steadily laborious and useful lives than John Collins Warren. He was born in Boston in 1778, on the first of August, the eldest son of that interesting John Warren (q.v.) who served in the Revolution and founded the Harvard Medical School.
Warren was intended by his father for a mercantile life, but passed a couple of years at French and the pretended study of medicine, as he himself says. Then he went to Europe and settled down to serious work in 1799. London claimed him first, where he became a pupil of William Cooper, and later of William Cooper's nephew, Astley Cooper. Warren secured a dresser's position at Guy's Hospital—it was merely a matter of money down—and served at such work and dissecting for something more than a year, then went to Edinburgh for a year, where he received his medical degree, and for a final year to Paris. In the two latter places he studied hard, going in for chemistry, general medicine and midwifery, as well as anatomy and surgery. He lived in Paris with Dubois, Napoleon's distinguished surgeon, and studied anatomy with Ribes, Sabatier, Chaussier, Cuvier and Dupuytren; medicine with Corvisart, and botany with Desfontaines. That was a brilliant gathering for the edifying of a young gentleman from Boston.
In 1802 Warren came home, and found his father in very poor health. In order to relieve him he immediately assumed a great part of his practice.
The years between 1802 and 1810 were important years to Warren. To begin with, he married, in 1803, a daughter of Jonathan Mason, and began the rearing of his many children. With Jackson, Dixwell, Coffin, Bullard and Howard, he formed a Society for Medical Improvement. In 1806 he was made adjunct to his father in the chair of anatomy and surgery at Harvard, and succeeded to the full professorship, upon his father's death, in 1815.
