Although too often forgotten today, Dr. David Hosack (1769-1835) was one of early America’s most prominent physicians, botanists, and educators, as well as a proponent of the use of plants for healing and health. He was also the family physician and friend of both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and he served as the attending physician at the fatal duel between these two political rivals on July 11, 1804 in Weehawken, NJ. By the conventions of the code of honor, he had stayed back from the duel so as not to be a witness, but as soon as he heard the gunshots, he was faced with the terrible knowledge that one or both of his friends could have been shot.
Hosack quickly realized that Hamilton’s wound would be mortal. He tended him on the boat that carried him back across the Hudson River to New York, easing his friend’s suffering as best he could, and remained with him until his death the following day at the home of William Bayard. He also performed the autopsy, determining that the fatal ball had broken one of Hamilton’s ribs, passed through his liver and diaphragm, and finally lodged against his spine.
Hoping that the shot he’d fired would not prove fatal, Burr wrote this anxious letter to Hosack, requesting an update on Hamilton’s condition. Delivered to Hosack’s house, it’s unlikely that the doctor read it until after Hamilton had already died.
Hamilton died deeply in debt, leaving little for the support of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, and their surviving children. When a group of Hamilton’s closest friends created a private fund by subscription to help Eliza, Hosack contributed as well, buying two shares at $200 a piece.
But a year later, Hosack’s own fortunes had declined, and he finally submitted a bill for his last medical services to Hamilton’s estate. In addition to medicines for the first part of 1804, the final item for “General Hamilton” is fifty dollars due for attending him “during his last illness” - a sorrowfully understated description of an excruciating death that need never have happened.
Many thanks to my friend Victoria Johnson for her assistance with this post. For more about the fascinating Dr. Hosack, I recommend her wonderful biography of him, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.
Above: Bill from David Hosack to the Estate of Alexander Hamilton for Hamilton’s final medical expenses, August 16, 1805. New-York Historical Society.
Right: Dr. David Hosack, by John Trumbull, c1810, Linnean Society of London.
Read more about Alexander Hamilton and Dr. Hosack in my historical novel, I, Eliza Hamilton. My latest novel, The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr, is now available everywhere. Order here.