Excerpt from Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, M.D: The Memorial Meeting of the Section for Clinical Medicine, Pathology and Hygiene of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Suffolk District

Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch was born in Salem, Mass., August 9, 1808. His father was Nathaniel Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, and his mother Mary Ingersoll; parents who have transmitted in a remarkable degree to their descendants the honesty and strength of character peculiar to them. The father, as is well known, educated himself in hours which by others were taken for rest or recreation; and this hard experience led to restrictions in the edu cation of the children, which, though some of them were afterwards regretted by the latter, may have been on the whole beneficent. As one instance, they were never allowed to devote any time to music, the study of which, considering the hard struggle in life before them, the father considered a waste of time, and likely to lead to greater waste in the enjoyment of it. That this and other restrictions were imposed with con siderate tenderness is abundantly shown by the thor ough respect and obedience of the children.

The only school in Salem attended by Henry, of which I have any positive knowledge. Was the Salem Private Grammar School situated on Green St., which was kept at the time by John Walsh, son of Michael, of arithmetic fame. I know that Dr. Bowditch attended here in 1822, for I have seen a programme of an ex hibition at the school in this year, on which he appears for a Latin dialogue with J. B. Bigelow. It is inter esting to notice on the same programme the names of Henry 'v. Pickering, of this city, and Benjamin Peirce, late Professor in Harvard College. The fact that Dr. Bowditch was selected for a Latin dialogue argues, I think, that he was at this time a good deal more of a student than he used to represent himself. He was, however, not a house-rat (as we were accustomed to call boys who stayed in with their books all the time), but was a thorough boy, fond of outdoor exercise, full of life and innocent fun. On a photograph of the typical Salem house in which he was born and lived, he has marked an upper middle window as one from which he and his brothers used to pelt with beans the promenading boys and girls on Sunday, they them selves being allowed out on that day only to go to and from church. There is a tradition also of the subject of our sketch having had a hand in introducing some fire-crackers into a certain old lady's tea-pot.

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