David Meredith Reese (1800–May 13, 1861) was an American medical doctor and skeptic who worked at various institutions and wrote about his observations including on the Yellow Fever epidemic in New York in 1818.
He was born in Baltimore.https://mdhistoryonline.net/2018/06/02/md439/ He graduated from the University of Maryland. He was a "Vaccine Physician" in Baltimore in 1824 and "Censor". He was a professor of medicine at Castleton College in Vermont in 1841 and 1842; Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence at Washington University in Baltimore from 1842-45 and Professor of Medicine at Albany Medical College. He was a resident physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York and a founder of the New York Academy of Medicine. He served as Vice-President of the American Medical Association in 1857. He was a professor of Practice of Medicine at New York Medical College, in 1860. He edited the American edition of “Cooper’s Dictionary of Practical Surgery” published in 1844. He was an editor for the American Medical Gazette in New York. He ied in New York May 13, 1861.
Reese worked as a medical doctor at the Bellevue Hospital until 1849.Kelly; Howard Atwood; Burrage, Walter Lincoln. (1920). American Medical Biographies. Norman, Remington Company. p. 968 He was a skeptical of the many "isms" of his day.Lewis, W. David. (2009). From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796–1848. Fall Creek Books. p. 236. He had heavily criticized quackery in his book Humbugs of New York (1838).Miller, Julie. (2008). Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-century New York City. NYU Press. p. 103. He was highly critical of phrenology.Fabian, Ann. (2010). The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America's Unburied Dead. University Of Chicago Press. p. 74.
Reese's book was published several years before Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) and has been described as early debunking work.Logan, Peter Melville. (2003). The Popularity of "Popular Delusions": Charles Mackay and Victorian Popular Culture. Cultural Critique. No. 54. pp. 213–241Loxton, Daniel. (2013). Why Is There a Skeptical Movement? The Skeptics Society. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
In 1835, Reese published Letters to the Hon. William Jay. A Reply to his 'Inquiry Into The American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Movements, in which he supports the efforts of the American Colonization Society.
Publications Letters to the Hon. William Jay. A Reply to his 'Inquiry Into The American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Movements (1835) Phrenology Known by Its Fruits (1836) Humbugs of New-York: Being a Remonstrance Against Popular Delusion, Whether in Science, Philosophy, or Religion (1838) Medical Lexicon of Modern Terminology (1848) Elements of Zoology, Or, Natural History of Animals (1849)
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