CHOVET 219 CHOVET Mitchell relates the following: "Dr. Physick told my father that while living in London, Chovet tried to save a too adventurous gentle- man about to be hanged for highway robbery, by opening the trachea before the hangman operated. The patient was rapidly removed after the execution, and is said to have spoken. A queer tale, and doubtful, but worth the telling. The government is said to have lacked due appreciation of this valuable experiment, and Chovet brought his queer Voltarian visage to America." Neither Sidney Young nor D'Arcy Power, F. R. C. S., to whom the author wrote asking for confirmation of the story, could find any ground for the story and Chovet did not come direct to America, for Chastellux {The Uni- versal Asylum and Columbian Magazine for 1790) and Norris state that he spent some years in the Barbadoes and afterwards went to Jamaica. During these wanderings Chovet did not lose his interest in anatomy. Chastellux relates that during the war of 1774 a prize was brought into Barbadoes with a large quantity of wax in the cargo. Chovet improved the opportunity and made a considerable number of anatomical models. The date of his leaving Barbadoes and of his arrival in Jamaica are not known, but in the Gentleman's Magazine for the month of May, 1759, under the pro- motions for that year, appears the following: "Abra. Chovet, Esq., surgeon of Kingston in Jamaica, a Dr. of physick." In the list of M. D.'s conferred by Oxford, Chovet's name does not appear and there is no Hst of Cam- bridge graduates or of the M. D.'s granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury; we are, there- fore, ignorant of the source of this degree. If the story related by S. Weir Mitchell be true it seems strange that this degree should have been conferred on Chovet. In order to escape an impending insurrec- tion of the slaves, Chovet, with his wife and widowed daughter, fled from Jamaica and came to Philadelphia. The date of his arrival is uncertain. In his obituary notice in the Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine for March, 1790, it is given as 1770; Norris gives 1774 as the date, but it seems probable that the earlier date is the correct one. Shortly after Chovet's arrival in Philadel- phia he began giving lectures on anatomy. If the reader will turn to the files of the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, and of the Pennsylvania Gazette, for the months of October and November, 1774, he will find notices of the time and place of the lectures, also a very laudatory account of his first lecture which was attended by "his Honour the Governor, the Trustees and Fac- ulty of the College, the Clergy, the Doctors of Physic, the Students of Medicine, and a con- siderable number of the most respectable in- habitants of the City." During the years 1776 and 1777 the lectures given by Chovet were the only lectures on anatomy given in Phila- delphia. In Philadelphia, Chovet lived on Water Street and until 1777 he had his museum and lectures in a building situated in Videl's Alley. In 1777 he built an amphitheatre in connec- tion with his house on Water Street, the first lecture being given there in January, 1778. Soon after the peace of 1783 he moved to Race Street and seems to have at the same time given up his lectures on anatomy. Dr. John Fothergill, of London, was ex- ceedingly interested in the young medical school at Philadelphia and presented it with a number of anatomical models, skeletons and eighteen anatomical charts done in crayon. These were used by Prof. Shippen in con- nection with his lectures on anatomy at the medical school; but they were inferior to those made by Chovet. John Adams of Massa- chusetts visited both collections ; the one at the hospital on Tuesday, August 30, 1774, and Chovet's on Friday, October 14, 1774. He made no uncertain comparison, for he says of Chovet's collection, "This exhibition is more exquisite than that of Dr. Shippen at the hospital." Chastellux visited Chovet in 1780 and, after examining his preparations, said they "appear superior to those of Bologna." Dr. George B. Wood, speaking of the collec- tion given by Dr. Fothergill, says, "These served as the basis of a Museum, which was afterwards greatly increased by the purchase from the executors of Dr. Chovet, an eminent, but somewhat eccentric physician of Phila- delphia, of his collection of preparations and wax models, then deemed masterpieces of art in that department." Morton, in his History of the Pennsylvania Hospital, says, "In 1793 the Managers acquired for the Museum a very remarkable collection of anatomical prepara- tions, including dried, injected and painted specimens, together with a series of beautiful wax models by Dr. Abraham Chovet." It is a matter of regret that the entire collection of Chovet's preparations was destroyed by fire in 1888, while the inferior collection given by Fothergill was saved intact. It would seem better if the elements had left a portion of Chovet's collection ; for every one who saw it bore testimony to its excellence. As a practitioner of medicine and surgery
