A Physician of Old New York

DALLAS PRATT

vNE fine summer's day in the year 1834, an Englishwoman
in her early thirties and an elderly American gentleman
sat in a pavilion on the latter's estate at Hyde Park, New
York, admiring the extensive view. The lady's eye moved across
well-kept lawns, noted "the conservatory remarkable for Amer¬
ica," skimmed the broad ribbon of the Hudson, and came to rest
on the Catskills, mountains whose picturesque outline exactly met
the taste of the period for the romantically sublime. Not that Aliss
Harriet Martineau was a romanticist, being more inclined to
philosophical speculations and an interest in social issues. Probably
she discussed the prickly subject of Abolition, in which cause she
was a partisan, with her host. Dr. David Hosack, a retired New
York physician well-known for his charitable and civic activities.

She writes,* however, only of the bucolic pleasures of that well-
reported afternoon. They visited the bustling poultry-yard, "paid
our respects to the cows," and inspected the flowers and slirubs.
Here Miss iVIartineau had to rely on the eye alone, since she suf¬
fered from a deficiency in the sense of smell. Dr. Hosack told her
of his trouble with the villagers who, on days of fete, swarmed
over his property uprooting rare plants through ignorance of their
preciousness. "Dr. Hosack would frequently see some flower that
he had brought with much pains from Europe flourishing in some
garden of the village below. As soon as he explained the nature of
the case, the plant would be restored with all zeal and care, but the
losses were so frequent and provoking as greatly to moderate his
horticultural enthusiasm."

In the vegetable garden the doctor surely urged her to sample
his strawberries, in which he took peculiar pride, but iMiss Mar¬
tineau, as deficient in taste as she was in smell, could not have been

* In Retrospect of Western Travel, London, 1838.
25