Mason Fitch Cogswell

Mason Fitch Cogswell

Mason Fitch Cogswell (28 September 1761 Canterbury, Connecticut – 17 December 1830[1] Hartford, Connecticut) was a United States physician.

Biography

Cogswell was born on September 28, 1761 in Canterbury, Connecticut, the third son of the Reverend James Cogswell and Alice Fitch. Mason Cogswell's mother died when he was 11 years old. Rev. James Cogswell relocated to New Scotland Parish in Windham, CT and soon remarried[2]. Consequently, Cogswell was adopted by Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress and governor of Connecticut. Cogswell then matriculated and graduated as valedictorian from Yale in 1780. He studied medicine with his brother James, at the soldiers' hospital in New York City during the American Revolution, and eventually became one of the best known surgeons in the country. He was the first in the United States to remove a cataract from the eye, and to tie the carotid artery (1803).[3] He was active in the social life of the city and was intimate with the Hartford Wits, a coterie of leading intellectual and literary figures. Cogswell died of pneumonia on December 17, 1830.

Dr. Mason Cogswell is a highly influential person with in American Deaf cultural history. His daughter, Alice, became Deaf at the age of two as a result of surviving scarlet fever. Though highly intelligent, her intellectual progress was slow. At this point, there was no established educational system for Deaf children, nor was there an established official language of the Deaf; though there did exist signed languages within the United States, such as Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, there was none which was standardized across the United States. Dr. Cogswell eventually had Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, his neighbor and member of his intellectual circle, travel to Europe to learn and bring back methods in instruction for the Deaf. Gallaudet first traveled to England, where an oral method was generally used, but was unable to gain access to instruction methods. He then traveled to France, where the educational system instead focused on use of French Sign Language as an instructional method. He eventually traveled back with French teacher Laurent Clerc who brought French Sign Language to the United States.[4]

With their return, Dr. Mason Cogswell assisted in the founding of the first permanent school for the Deaf in North America in Hartford, Connecticut, in which his daughter was the first pupil.

Notes

  1. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6168694
  2. ↑ https://chs.org/finding_aides/finding_aids/cogsm1830.html
  3. ↑ https://chs.org/finding_aides/finding_aids/cogsm1830.html
  4. ↑ Padden, Carol, and Tom Humphries. Inside Deaf Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005. Print.

References

  •  Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Cogswell, Mason Fitch". Encyclopedia Americana.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.