Adam Kuhn (28 November 1741 – 5 July 1817) was an Americanphysician andnaturalist, and one of the earliest professors ofmedicine in a North American university.
Kuhn was born inGermantown,Province of Pennsylvania, a son of German immigrant parents. He studied medicine under his father, Dr. Adam Simon Kuhn. Then he went toSweden and studied medicine and natural history 1761–1764 atUppsala University, where he studied withCarl Linnaeus.[1] Linnaeus named a flower in Kuhn's honor:Kuhnia eupatoriodes.[2] He continued his studies at theUniversity of Edinburgh, where he graduated asM.D. in June 1767, and published his thesis,De Lavatione frigida ('About cold baths').[1]
Returning to America, he practiced as a physician inPhiladelphia and was 1768–1789 professor ofMateria medica and 1789–1797 of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at theMedical School of the College of Philadelphia (later theUniversity of Pennsylvania), founded in 1765 as the first faculty of Medicine in the thirteen colonies. Concurrently, he was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1768 where he served as its curator from 1769-1770 and 1771-1772.[3]
Kuhn was a physician of thePennsylvania Hospital from May 1775, until January 1798. He was one of the founders of theCollege of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1787, and was its president from July 1808 until his death.[1] His students includedValentine Seaman, who mapped yellow fever mortality patterns in New York and introduced the smallpox vaccine to the United States in 1799.[4]
Benjamin Rush wrote in his autobiography that Kuhn, after the death of DrJohn Jones in June 1791, was considered the leading physician in Philadelphia and the one favored by "the principal officers of the general government". He treated "Washington Custes" (George Washington Custis, the son of Washington's stepson, seeMartha Washington) and functioned as the family physician ofGeorge Washington. There is, however, no evidence that he actually treated the President.[5]
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