He served as Chair of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and was one of the first physicians to differentiate between typhus and typhoid fever.

[2] He studied classics at Yale University, but was expelled for his participation in the Conic Sections Rebellion.

He subsequently traveled to Paris to learn medical diagnoses under Pierre Charles Alexandre Lewis.

He accepted a role as lecturer on pathology and medicine at the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction.

He worked as a professor of the theory and practice of medicine at Pennsylvania Medical College from 1845 to 1849 and as a visiting physician at St. Joseph's Hospital in 1849.