Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll) Bowditch

Henry Ingersoll Bowditch was an American physician and a prominent Christian abolitionist. Bowditch was born on August 9, 1808, in Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Bowditch, a renowned mathematician. He graduated from Harvard College in 1828, earned his medical degree there in 1832, and afterwards studied medicine in Paris for 2 years with leading physicians of the day. From 1859 to 1867 Bowditch was Jackson professor of clinical medicine at Harvard; he later founded the Massachusetts State Board of Health. Bowditch was a fellow of the American Academy of Public Health and wrote a seminal textbook on the subject, Public Hygiene in America (1876).