Edward A. Holyoke (222)

Edward A. Holyoke (1 August 1728–31 March 1829) was a physician and public officeholder, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Holyoke would spent the rest of his life never far from the Atlantic Ocean. His family moved to Cambridge in 1737 when his father was elected Harvard’s President, the institution that became Holyoke’s alma mater in 1746.  The following year Holyoke began the work that would define the rest of his adult life: the study of medicine. After working under Thomas Berry of Ipswich, Holyoke moved to Salem in 1749 and settled into a practice that spanned more than half a century. Over that time his practice attracted peers and thirty five apprentices alike looking to consult and learn from him. Always intellectually curious (he even performed autopsies on his children that died in infancy), Holyoke was one of the first adopters of vaccinations and, in 1777, it was his smallpox hospital that inoculated over six hundred people while only losing two. A sense of duty to community service paired with Holyoke’s relentless work ethnic translated to long days with many patients. He did his caseload no favors by he keeping his fees low and not pressing for payments. He did not welcome the American Revolution and he eventually recanted the public farewell address he signed to Governor Hutchinson. And while he sent his family to live on Nantucket for their safety, he remained in Salem to attend to his patients. In addition to his medicine practice he was active in a variety of public institutions including the Essex Historical Society and the Salem Athenaeum. He was a founding member in the American Academy of Arts of Science and the Massachusetts medical Society, serving as President for each institution. Always busy, Holyoke remained active up until his preternatural health began to fail in the winter of 1828-1829. He died just months away from his 101st birthday. Per his request, his colleagues performed a postmortem examination that confirmed his self-diagnosis regarding his final illness.