Nathaniel Chapman

[2] Chapman founded the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1820 and served as its editor for some years, and also served as President of both the Philadelphia Medical Society and the American Philosophical Society (elected 1807).

[5] Upon his graduation, Chapman traveled to the United Kingdom in 1801, spending a year in London as a pupil of John Abernethy, and three in Edinburgh, where he attended lectures at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh.

While in Edinburgh he became acquainted with a number of well-known people, including Dugald Stewart, the Earl of Buchan, and Henry Brougham.

Chapman returned to the United States in 1804, and established a medical practice in Philadelphia.

He gave a private course of lectures on obstetrics in the same year, which proved so popular that, in 1806 at age 26, he was elected adjunct to the Professor of Midwifery at the University of Pennsylvania, and soon thereafter was made chair of Materia Medica.