In March 1839 he received his MD from Yale School of Medicine with clinical training at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.

His practice bloomed and he soon opened a private hospital at 37th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan primarily for foreign patients.

His beliefs formed the basis for the modern day approaches to such medical conditions as club foot, congenital dislocation of the hip, chronic joint diseases and poliomyelitis-related deformities.

He recommended opening and evacuating abscesses and washing them with warm water and chlorine, an early form of the more modern Carrel-Dakin method of wound treatment.

His work influenced the future orthopedic practices of Lewis A. Sayre, Charles Fayette Taylor and Edward Hickling Bradford.