He graduated from Harvard in 1801, with a B.A., and later received two medical degrees there (M.B., 1804, after serving for three years as an apprentice to John Warren, whose daughter Mary he married in 1808,[1] and M.D., 1811).
Between his medical degrees, he studied chemistry privately in London with Friedrich Accum, and then with Thomas Hope at the University of Edinburgh.
He opened a medical practice in Boston in 1806, and maintained it throughout his academic career.
[2] Gorham resigned his academic position in 1827 to give more attention to his thriving medical practice.
[1][3] He was a founder, and for 15 years an editor, of The New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, where he published several papers.