Austin Flint

Austin Flint (October 20, 1812 – March 13, 1886) was an American physician. He was a founder of Buffalo Medical College, precursor to The State University of New York at Buffalo. He served as president of the American Medical Association.

Flint was born at Petersham, Massachusetts. He was educated at Amherst and Harvard and graduated at the latter in 1833.

After practicing at Boston and Northampton, he moved to Buffalo, N. Y., in 1836. He was appointed professor of the institutes and practices of medicine in Rush Medical College, Chicago; resigned after one year, in 1846, and established the Buffalo Medical Journal. With Doctors White and Frank Hastings Hamilton he founded the Buffalo Medical College in 1847, where he was professor of the principles and practice of medicine for six years. He was afterward professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the University of Louisville, Ky., from 1852 to 1856. He was then called to the chair of pathology and clinical medicine at Buffalo. From 1858 to 1861 he was professor of clinical medicine in the School of Medicine at New Orleans. In 1859 he removed to New York and in 1861 was appointed visiting physician to Bellevue Hospital; from 1861 to his death, in 1886, he was professor of the principles and practice of medicine in Bellevue Hospital Medical College (consolidated with the medical department of New York University in 1898), and from 1861 to 1868 he was professor of pathology and practical medicine in Long Island College Hospital.

He was president of the New York Academy of Medicine from 1872 to 1885 and president of the American Medical Association in 1884.

His published works include:

• The reciprocal duties and obligations of the medical profession and the public. (1844)
• Clinical reports on continued fever based on analyses of one hundred and sixty-four cases. (1852)
• Clinical report on chronic pleurisy: based on an analysis of forty-seven cases. (1853)
• On variations of pitch in percussion and respiratory sounds, and their application to physical diagnosis. (1852)
• Clinical report on dysentery: based on an analysis of forty-nine cases with remarks on the causation, pathology and management of the disease. (1853)
• Clinical Reports on Continued Fever Based on Analyses of One Hundred and Sixty-Four Cases. (1855)
• Physical Exploration in the Diagnosis of Diseases of the Respiratory Organs. (1856; revised second edition, 1868)
• Diseases of the Heart (1859; second edition, 1870)
• Experimental researches into a new excretory function of the liver. (1862)
• Principles and Practice of Medicine (1866; revised fifth edition, 1884)
• Medical Essays on Conservative Medicine and Kindred Topics (1874)
• Clinical Medicine (1879)
• On Phthisis (1883)
• Manual of Auscultation and Percussion (revised third edition, 1883)
• Medicine of the future (1886)