Medical School and Early Career
In 1814 Torrey enrolled in medical school at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York (now Columbia University). He trained under Dr. David Hosack (1769-1835), founder of the first botanical garden in the U.S., and Dr. Samuel Mitchill (1764-1831), founder and first president of the New York Lyceum of Natural History in 1817.
Torrey was a frequent visitor to Hosack’s Elgin Botanic Garden. When Hosack gifted his personal herbarium to the New-York Historical Society, Torrey prepared the specimens to be transferred.
Torrey was a founding member of the New York Lyceum, now the New York Academy of Sciences. Torrey was soon appointed curator. Part of a tradition of learned societies in cities throughout the United States, the Lyceum served as a gathering place for practitioners of the natural sciences, many of whom were employed as physicians, chemists, and professors, and pursued their scientific studies on the side. Their research was published in the Annals of the New York Lyceum.
Image: The Elgin Botanic Garden, ca. 1815. Oil on canvas, 26 1/16 x 29 1/16 inches. LuEsther T. Mertz Library, The New York Botanical Garden
