Hopkins

HOPKINS, LEMUEL (June 19, i75o-Apr.
14, 1801), physician, satirist, was born in that
part of Waterbury, Conn., which is now Nauga-
tuck, the son of Stephen Hopkins by his second
wife, Dorothy, daughter of James Talmadge of
New Haven, Conn. He was a descendant of
John Hopkins who settled in Cambridge, Mass.,
in 1634, removing to Hartford in 1636. The lat-
ter's grandson, John, was one of the original
proprietors of Waterbury, where he ground the
people's corn, ran the tavern, and was a digni-
tary in the church. His grandson, Stephen, was
a well-to-do farmer, who made his sons work in
the field, but gave them a good education. A
tendency to tuberculosis early turned Lemuel's
attention to medicine, and he studied, first,
under Dr. Jared Potter of Wallingford, and later,
under Dr. Seth Bird of Litchfield, in which
town, about 1776, he began to practise. For a
brief period he served in the Revolutionary War.
In 1784 Yale conferred on him the honorary de-
gree of M.A., and about this time he removed
to Hartford, staying with his friend, Joel Bar-
low [#.#.]> un*il he could establish a home there.

Remaining in this city until his death, some
seventeen years later, he became one of the most
eminent practitioners in the state. He was un-
gainly in appearance, eccentric in manner, and
decidedly original in his methods. Having a
keen mind, he could perceive the truth almost in-
stantaneously, and an unusual memory enabled
him to quote fluently from any book he had read.
He hated sham and quackery, and expressed his
thoughts bluntly, with nervous conciseness, and
frequently with pungent wit and devastating
irony. In his day, his methods of treatment were
viewed as dangerously original. He employed
the "cooling treatment in fevers, in the puerperal
especially, and wines in fevers since called ty-
phus." Tuberculosis, however, was his specialty.
He asserted that it could be cured, and prescribed
fresh air and good food His knowledge was
"far ahead of that time" and proves him "to be
a rival with Rush for honors in treating the
great white plague" (W. R. Steiner, in H. A.
Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Dictionary of Amer-
ican Medical Biography, 1928). Many students
came to him for instruction. He was an honor-
ary member of the Massachusetts Medical Soci-
ety and one of the founders of the Connecticut
Medical Society.

Although a much better physician than poet,
he is generally remembered chiefly for his col-
laboration with the other "Hartford Wits" in
the production of certain political satires, which
had no little influence in the unsettled and con-
tentious period in which they were written; and

Hopkins

for a few brief poems of his own. Although he
is said to have had "infidel leanings" at one time,
he righted himself and became a stanch Calvin-
istic-Federalist supporter of the established or-
der, bitterly attacking whatever seemed to him
political quackery. With John Trumbull, Joel
Barlow, and David Humphreys [qq.vJ] he wrote
"The Anarchiad, a Poem, on the Restoration of
Chaos and Substantial Night," satirizing an-
archistic tendencies of the day. It was published
in The New-Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut
Magazine, the first number appearing in the is-
sue of Oct 26, 1786, and the last in that of Sept.
13, 1787; and was edited by L. G. Riggs and re-
printed under the title, The Anarchiad: a New
England Poem, in 1861. He also collaborated
with Richard Alsop, Theodore Dwight [qq.v.],
and others in writing "The Echo," a series of
papers which appeared in the American Mercury
in the years 1791 to 1805, and were reissued in
abridged form in 1807. Hopkins is credited with
the authorship of No. XVIII, which was pub-
lished separately in 1795 under the title, The
Dem&cratiad, a Poem in Retaliation, for the
"Philadelphia Jockey Club." Another work in
which he had a hand was The Political Green-
house for the Year 1798 (1799). The Guillotina,
or a Democratic Dirge, a New Year's poem for
Jan. i, 1796, was published separately that year.
His "Epitaph on a Patient Killed by a Cancer
Quack," is said to have helped banish such a
quack from Hartford (Elisha North, Outlines of
the Science of Life, 1829, p. 113) ; "The Hypo-
crite's Hope," satirizes pious pharisaism; and
his "Verses on General Ethan Allen" arraign
that personage for telling "the world the Bible
lies." He also wrote for Joel Barlow in 1785 a
paraphrase of Psalm CXXXVII, "Along the
banks where Babel's current flows." In March
1801 he became very ill with cough, pain in his
side, and fever. He partially recovered, but died
Apr. 14, in his fifty-first year.

[W. R. Steiner, "Dr. Lemuel Hopkins," The Johns
Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, Jan. 1910, is based in part
upon unpublished letters and manuscripts; see also
James Thacher, Am. Medic. Biog. (1828) ; J. W. Bar-
ber, Conn. Hist. Colls. (1836); Henry Bronson, The
Hist, of Waterbury, Conn. (1858) ; The Town and City
of Waterbury, Conn. (3 vols., 1896), ed. by Jos. Ander-
son; Am. Poems (1793) ; C. W. Everest, The Poets of
Conn. (1843) ; F. Sheldon, "The Pleiades of Connecti-
cut," Atlantic Mo., Feb. 1865; Annie R. Marble, Her-
aids of Am. Lit. (1007) ; H. A. Beers, The Connecticut
Wits (1920) ; V. L. Parrinffton, The Connecticut Wits
).l H.E.S.

HOPKINS, MARK (Feb. 4, iSos-June 17,
1887), educator, theologian, son of Archibald
and Mary (Curtis) Hopkins, was born in Stock-
bridge, Mass. His father, a farmer in humble
circumstances, was a nephew of Samuel Hopkins

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