John Dix Fisher

degree in 1825 from what was then called Massachusetts Medical College of Harvard University, he immediately accompanied his brother, the artist Alvan Fisher, on a trip to Europe.

In Paris, he pursued his professional studies with such eminent physicians of the period as René Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope; Gabriel An l, distinguished pathologist; and Alfred Velpeau, renowned for his knowledge of surgical anatomy.

Inspired, he returned to Boston and spent the next three years persuading family and friends who had both the means and the conscience to help fund an American version of the Paris school.

Howe opened the school in the summer of 1832 using an approach that gave students both the ability to think and the skills to support themselves to turn out independent, productive, well-educated members of society.

[2] As one of a group of young American doctors influenced by the teachings of another French physician, Pierre Louis, Fisher was an advocate of the "numerical method" in the United States, where the emphasis on the collection of observable, detailed data and their statistical analysis became a guideline for medical research and the foundation for epidemiology.

[3] He was present along with William Cogswell, Richard Fletcher, Oliver Peabody, and Lemuel Shattuck at a meeting held on November 17, 1839, in which the American Statistical Association (ASA) was formed.

He was also a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society which, in concert with the ASA in 1842, led the effort to establish the first statewide system to collect and publish vital statistics in the United States.

In 1846, Fisher was elected attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, a position he held until his death on March 3, 1850, at his home in Hayward Place, Boston.

According to an extract from Flashes of Light from the Spirit-Land compiled by Allen Putnam and published in 1872 by William White & Co., Boston, Mrs. J. H Conant was an American medium who, through the generosity of Luther Colby, editor of The Banner of Light, (a weekly subtitled "An Exponent of the Spiritual Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century," which had the largest circulation of any spiritualist paper in the world) gave, for the last 17 years of her life, free public séances in Boston.