Author: Jackson, Samuel
Biography:
JACKSON, Samuel (1787-1872: WBIS)
Although the Original Poems of 1816, published in Philadelphia, is generally assigned to this Samuel Jackson, there is room for doubt about the attribution. This one was the son of a pharmacist, David Jackson, and his wife Susan (or Susanna) Kemper. He studied medicine and graduated MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1808. He enlisted in a cavalry regiment in the War of 1812; after the war he established a successful medical practice in Philadelphia. He was President of the Board of Health, a founder of and professor of materia medica at the College of Pharmacy, attending physician to the Philadelphia almshouse, and Chair of the Institutes of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania from 1835 to 1863. He published extensively on medical topics and on theories of education. He did not marry until 1832, when he met the daughter of a British officer, a Miss Christie, in Canada while he was conducting an investigation into an outbreak of cholera there. Given his busy professional life, the fact that he has no other publications with the printer of the Original Poems (though it is true that he seems hardly to have employed the same printer twice), and the absence of any reference to Original Poems in biographical accounts of him, the attribution is suspect. The author furthermore is identified on the title-page as Samuel Jackson Esq–though this one was already MD–and the contents of the volume hardly reflect Jackson's recent experiences in medicine and in war, the subjects of the poems including friendship, freemasonry, and the expeditions of Lewis and Clarke. (DAB, ANBO 9 June 2019) HJ