Thomas C. Brinsmade

Thomas Clark Brinsmade (1802 - 1868) was a physician in Troy, New York who was the sixth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He was born in New Hartford, Connecticut on June 16, 1802. After studying and practicing medicine in Massachusetts and Connecticut, he moved to Lansingburgh, New York in 1823 and then to Troy, New York in 1833. He received an honorary degree in medicine from Yale in 1839. After the deaths of Stephen Van Rensselaer (1839) and Amos Eaton (1842), when the Rensselaer School was in dire need of funds, Brinsmade bought the entire property and equipment of the school at an auction. He allowed faculty and students to use it until the school could repay him.

He was a president of the Rensselaer Medical Society and later moved to the state medical society In 1857 he was elected its vice-president of the State Medical Society, and the following year, president. In 1858, as vice-president, he delivered an address on the registration of diseases, and furnished the society an accurate record of his practice for twenty-one years,carefully analyzed and tabulated, covering three hundred pages of the published transactions, and comprising statistics of 37,872 cases. In 1860 he presented another paper on the registration of diseases, including statistics of 20,056 cases treated between 1858 and 1859. [Nason, Henry B., ed. "Biographical Record of the Officers and Graduates of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1886." D.H. Jones & Co.: Troy, NY (1855). [http://www.lib.rpi.edu/archives/e-collections/Nason,HB_1887/Part_1_bio_record_rens_officers_and_grads.pdf] ]

He was one of the earliest patrons of RPI and a trustee for twenty years. In 1865 he was elected Vice President of RPI, and he was elected President three years later on May 7, 1868. His tenure was short, however, as he died during a meeting of the Board of Trustees on June 22, 1868, while giving a speech demanding for more funds. ["Death of Dr. Thomas C. Brinsmade at Troy", "New York Times", June 23, 1868] cite web|url=http://www.lib.rpi.edu/Archives/history/presidents/brinsmade,t.html|title=Biographical Chronology of Thomas C. Brinsmade|publisher=Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Archives|accessdate=2008-09-07]

s-start s-aca s-bef|before=John F. Winslow s-ttl|title=President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute|years=1868 s-aft|after=James Forsyth end

References