Nathaniel Peabody (Boston)

Nathaniel Peabody (March 30, 1774 – January 1, 1855) was an American physician and dentist from Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, having studied at Dartmouth College in the class of 1800.^[1] Peabody was described as an "experimentally minded doctor and dentist".^[2] He began his medical practice using "heroic" practices of large amounts of emetic and purgative medicines. For instance, a patient could become very sick or die from mercury poisoning of a purgative called calomel. Upon becoming familiar with the work of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, Peabody used botanical medicines in small doses to treat his patients, which reduced the side effects and potential death from the heroic practices.

Dentistry was a relatively new field when Peabody became a dentist. He wrote the book The Art of Preserving Teeth in 1824 and in the 1830s he used hypnosis as a pain management technique for teeth extractions.

He was father of three intellectual women: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne.