biography
| name: |
Colden, Cadwallader
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1688–1776)
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| biography:
| Physician, scientist, and public official, born in Ireland. Of Scottish parentage, he studied at the University of Edinburgh and then studied medicine in London. In 1710 he went to Philadelphia and engaged in business while practising medicine, then moved (1718) to New York City, where he took on several posts with the British colonial government. He continued to pursue his varied interests and wrote pioneering works about the Native Americans, botany, physics, medical subjects such as cancer and yellow fever, psychology, and mathematics. As New York's lieutenant-governor (1761–75) he was a loyalist; upon refusing to sign a request from certain colonists to repeal the Stamp Act (1765), he was burned in effigy. He tried to conduct government fairly until the battle of Lexington signalled that history was taking a different course, and he effectively retired to his estate on Long Island. |
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