N.S. Davis, whose notable accomplishments in medical education and organized medicine extended over one-half century, was born in a log house near Greene, Chenango County, New York State, into a pioneer rural family.1 Although a major portion of his early childhood was given to the farm which his father had homesteaded, Davis attended the village school, and then for a six months' term, the Cazenovia Seminary in Madison County; there he studied English, Latin, chemistry, natural philosophy, and algebra. Without benefit of additional instruction, young Nathan began an apprenticeship in practice in 1834 with Dr. Daniel Clark, of Smithville Flats and continued in the office of Dr. Thomas Jackson of Binghamton, NY. In the meantime, he attended three courses of lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Western New York at Fairfield from which he graduated in 1837, three years before the school was disbanded. His thesis,