Brainard, Daniel

Born: 1812-05-15 Oneida County, New York

Died: 1866-10-10 Chicago, Illinois

Flourished: 1836 to 1866 Chicago, Illinois

Daniel Brainard, physician and medical educator, received his early education in Whitesboro, New York, at common schools and at the Oneida Institute. In 1829 he began studying medicine under local physicians, first in Whitesboro and subsequently in Rome. Brainard attended a medical course at Fairfield Medical College in Fairfield, New York, then studied in the Medical Department of Jefferson College in Philadelphia for two courses, graduating from that institution in 1834. He returned to Whitesboro to study privately for two years, then gave a series of lectures on anatomy and physiology at the Oneida Institute. In 1836 he settled in Chicago, Illinois, where he opened a medical practice. Brainard continued his medical studies in Paris, France, for about two years beginning in 1839. Following his return to Chicago, Brainard was appointed chair of anatomy at St. Louis Medical College in 1842 and delivered two lecture courses there. As early as 1836, Brainard had begun work to establish a medical college in Illinois to be named in honor of physician Benjamin Rush, and Rush Medical College opened in Chicago late in 1843 with Brainard as chair of anatomy and surgery. In addition to serving as a professor of surgery at Rush Medical College for the rest of his life, Brainard helped establish what became the Chicago Medical Journal and contributed to the creation of the city’s first general hospital in 1847. He returned to Paris late in 1853, and undertook the study of snake venom and of curing poisoned wounds and inflammations by injections. After several months in France, Brainard returned to the United States, where he was elected president of the Illinois Medical Association in 1854. In politics, Brainard was a Democrat. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Chicago as a Douglas Democrat in the spring of 1858, but over the course of the next few months he broke with Stephen A. Douglas and threw his support behind the administration of James Buchanan. Brainard married Evelyn Sleight in 1845 and was survived by two children from this marriage.

James M. Phalen, “Brainard, Daniel,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929), 2:589-90; Janet Kinney, Saga of a Surgeon: The Life of Daniel Brainard, M.D. ([Springfield]: Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 1987); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 1, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 145; The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 10 March 1858, 1:5; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 3 June 1858, 3:1; 6 September 1858, 3:1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 9, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 62; Chicago Tribune (IL), 11 October 1866, 1:1; 12 October 1866, 4:3; Gravestone, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, IL.