EDWARD STEVENS : GASTRIC PHYSIOLOGIST, PHYSICIAN and AMERICAN STATESMAN

by Stacey B. Day MD

The life and background of Edward Stevens had excited little curiousity or interest prior to this study. That Stevens' researches as a young man laid the keystone to the correct understanding of the process of gastric digestion was little appreciated. Of his life apparently nothing was known. For Professor Fulton, Historian of Yale, he was "an obscure physician of Edinburgh". In fact he was one of the most notable contributors to the growth of the infant American Republic; a close associate of Alexander Hamilton; a Consul General of the United States to Santo Domingo; a contemporary of Benjamin Rush during the Great Yellow Fever Plague in Philadelphia in 1793; and can fairly be claimed as one of the first American Physiologists and Physicians of note. There is a presumption from the Pickering Manuscripts in Boston that Alexander Hamilton and Stevens may have shared a kinship of some sort (?). The whole impact of Stevens' life indicates that he is an important figure in American History