GEORGE ALBERT LATHROP

Dr. George Albert Lathrop was born in 1819 and was a native of New York state. He arrived in Honolulu June 24, 1849, aboard the "Montreal" from Boston accompanied by his wife, Frances Maria (Smith) Lathrop, and his son, Francis Augustus, born at sea two days before they reached the Islands.

Within a month of his arrival, the doctor was advertising vaccinations with vaccine matter of good quality proven by the fact that it has "taken on some half-dozen promising subjects". Early in 1850 he established his own drug store, but by December, 1850, the partnership was dissolved. Dr. Henry Lyman in his "Hawaiian Yesterdays" describes Dr. Lathrop as "a short, stout, kindly tempered little man ambling about on his white cob who made himself very acceptable to the foreign community and after a few years returned to America with a handsome fortune".

Dr. Lathrop took an active part in community affairs and the year 1850 saw him elected to the executive committee of the newly organized Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, serving on the committee to prepare a constitution and by-laws for a News Room and Library, and elected to the first Board of Health. In April, 1852, he joined forces with another American medical man, Dr. Seth Porter Ford, in the operation of a Hydropathic Establishment and Private Hospital in Nuuanu Valley, but by September the two had separated by mutual consent and Dr. Lathrop had his own office.

On August 25, 1851, a second son, George Parsons, was born to the doctor and his wife.

During the great small-pox epidemic of 1853, Dr. Lathrop was placed in charge of one of the medical districts into which Honolulu was divided. In the controversy over the carrying out of the compulsory vaccination program, Dr. Lathrop and Dr. Wesley Newcomb were the leaders of a Committee of 13 who blamed Dr. G.P. Judd, Minister of Finance and missionary doctor, for defective vaccine and general mismanagement of the epidemic. So strong was the feeling against Dr. Judd that he was forced to resign.

In 1885 (sic. 1855) Dr. Lathrop made a second attempt to establish a private hospital, which was located near the corner of Beretania and Punchbowl streets and called the Honolulu Marine Hospital. Doctors T.C.B.Rooke, W. Newcomb, C. Guillou and later B.F. Hardy were on the staff. However, this venture was also short-lived.

Dr. Lathrop was a charter member of the Hawaiian Medical Society organized in 1856. From March, 1856, to August of the following year, the doctor held the position of U.S. Vice-Consul. On January 26, 1858, after eight and a half years in Honolulu, Dr. and Mrs. Lathrop and their two sons returned to the mainland.

Eighteen years later the doctor returned to the Islands, but this time without his family. Announcing his arrival on September 21,1876, the "Pacific Commercial Advertiser" says, "the doctor looks hale and hearty with much of his old vivacity but the storms of northern winters have whitened his head". He practiced for a few months in Honolulu, and in March, 1877, he and Dr. F.H.Enders formed a partnership for the practice of medicine on Maui with a regular office at Wailuku and branch offices at Lahaina and Makawao.

On September 1, 1877, Dr. Lathrop died at Wailuku.

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