After giving one or two instances of his quick diagnostic ability and his highly successful practice, he continues:
"Dr. Smith was a great and good man. He never appeared to toil for professional fame, but to do good to his fellow-man: and in view of his virtues as a citizen and his justly preëminent skill as a physician, one of his surviving pupils of those early days, who now counts more than four-score years, feels impelled to exclaim,—Honored be the memory of Nathan Smith, the founder, father, and for many years the sustainer of the Medical Department of Dartmouth College; ever recognized by all his friends and acquaintances—and their name was legion—as an honest man and most useful citizen."
Professor Smith married successively, Elizabeth and Sarah, daughters of Gen. Jonathan Chase, of Cornish, N. H. He died at New Haven, Conn., where he had been some years a professor in the Medical Department of Yale College, January 26, 1829.
A commemorative "Address," by Professor A. B. Crosby, contains the following account of Professor Smith's successor:
"Reuben Dimond Mussey was born in Pelham, N. H., June 23, 1780. His father, Dr. John Mussey, was a respectable physician and an excellent man.
"Determined to have an education, although too poor to immediately attain it, he labored on a farm in summer and taught a school during the winter. This he continued to do until, at the age of twenty-one, he entered the Junior class in Dartmouth College, in the year 1801. He continued to teach for his support while in college, and acquitted himself creditably as a scholar, being reckoned in the first third of his class.
"He was graduated in August, 1803, and immediately became a pupil of Dr. Nathan Smith, the founder of Dartmouth Medical College. The following summer young Mussey taught an academy at Peterborough, and studied with Dr. Howe of Jaffrey.
"He completed his studies with Dr. Smith, sustained a public examination, and read and defended a thesis on Dysentery. The degree of Bachelor of Medicine having been conferred upon him in 1806, he commenced practice in Ipswich, now Essex, Mass. Here he practiced successfully for three years, when he settled his business and went to Philadelphia, where he engaged in medical study for a period of nine months. While at Chebacco, now Essex, Mass., he married Miss Mary Sewall, who survived the marriage only three years. He subsequently married Miss Hetty Osgood, a daughter of Dr. Osgood of Salem, who served as a surgeon in the army during the Revolution. Under the instruction of Benjamin Smith Barton, he attended a full course of lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, and was graduated as a Doctor in Medicine in the year 1809. The professors at that time were Rush, Wistar, Physic, Dorsey, Barton, and Woodhouse.
"Drs. Chapman and James gave the course in Obstetrics. Dr. Mussey here distinguished himself by a series of experiments tending to rebut some of the generally received physiological doctrines of the time.