ABSTRACT
Jonathan Potts was class valedictorian and the first of the medical graduates from the College of Philadelphia to become a member of the American Philosophical Society suggest a high level of intelligence. Because of his university background and his hospital training, Potts represented a new breed of physicians emerging in the late colonial era who won high positions in the Continental army. By 1774, after initiating a promising medical practice, Potts became a radical in politics, long before most Pennsylvanians championed the cause of American freedom. Viewed in a broader perspective, it is apparent that Potts’s endeavors typified developments in military medicine from 1775 to 1783. Yet he supervised the largest army hospital of the war, and he directed the first mass inoculation of American troops. Potts represents the dedicated army doctor who toiled under incredible difficulties to ease the misery of sick and wounded soldiers. He truly symbolizes the patriotic doctors of the American Revolution.
