History of Tufts College, 1854-1896
Start, Alaric Bertrand
1896
JOHN L. HILDRETH, A. B., M. D.
JOHN LEWIS HILDRETH was born in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, November 29, 1838, and graduated from the New Ipswich Appelton Academy in 1860, and from Dartmouth College in 1864, having served in the field in the employ of the United States Sanitary Commission during the latter part of his college course. He had begun to teach school in 1857, and in 1865 became Principal of the Peterborough Academy, a position which he held for nearly three years, at the same time studying medicine at the Harvard and Dartmouth Medical Schools. Graduating from the latter in 1867, he first established himself in Townsend, Massachusetts, but removed in 1870 to Cambridge, where he has since resided. Dr. Hildreth has held many public appointments in the line of his profession and otherwise, among which may be mentioned almost continuous service on the Cambridge School Board from 1873 to 1889. He has always been active in | |
196 | forwarding all forms of public improvement, particularly hygienic and sanitary. In 1873, he organized the Cambridge Dispensary, and acted as its clerk for six years. Among the notable things accomplished by him as a member of the School Committee are: the rule forbidding children in whose homes a contagious disease exists from attending school, which is now copied in almost all the cities and towns of the United States; the introduction of laboratory methods into the scientific courses of the High Schools; and a careful attention to the hygienic and sanitary arrangements of all school houses in the city. |
In 1894 Dr. Hildreth accepted a call to the chair of Clinical Medicine at Tufts, and has entered into his work at the school with characteristic enthusiasm. | |
