Horatio Gates Jameson

Artist: Unknown; Oil on canvas

Horatio Gates Jameson was born in York, PA in 1778. His father was his first teacher, and he began to practice in 1795 at Wheeling, WV, and later in Pennsylvania. He attended medical lectures in Baltimore, where he had settled in 1810. He attended the new University of Maryland Medical School and graduated in 1813. 

During the War of 1812, he held the office of Surgeon to the United States troops in Baltimore, for which his widow received a pension after his death in 1885. He was a physician to the City Jail for several years, and from 1821 to 1835, he was consulting surgeon to the City Board of Health. He was a founder and president of the Washington Medical College (now Mercy Hospital) in 1827.

“Dr. Jameson was about five feet ten inches in height, well built, erect, and muscular, but not corpulent; his head was covered with a sufficiency of snow-white hair; his face was always clean shaven, his complexion florid and healthy; his eyes were dark brown and piercing, and surmounted by bushy eyebrows; his face remarkably smooth and free from wrinkles. He retained his strength and power of endurance to the last.” He wore heavy — remarkably heavy — gold spectacles. He dressed in black, wore a black tie, and was very careful and neat in his appearance — no one ever saw him look untidy.  

Jameson was involved in a notorious lawsuit against Dr. Frederick E.B. Hintze for defamation of character, which Jameson won.

During a visit to New York, he was taken suddenly ill and died August 24, 1855, aged seventy-six years. His remains were brought back to Baltimore and interred in the Baltimore cemetery, corner of Gay Street and Boundary Avenue.